Something odd in a new image from Mars. Image included in post.

I found this newly released image today on NASA's website.
Link to NASA article

I found something that might be interesting.



Link to bigger image

This is definately not like all the other rocks. Could it be off from the rover? I doubt it but I wanted to share this and get everyones opinion. Look at the shape and the color.

Now I know that Mars geology is really different from Earths but I dont think this is a rock. What do you guys think?

Star

My humble opinion is that it is a rock reflecting light.

Ha! This is no longer a one line post.

Really? I thought it looked like a juice box personally

But we all now that the Martians only drink Tang and that came in a can or was it a bottle?

Anyhow, any other opinions? All opinions are welcome.

Thanks
Star

A juice box? The martians know they have company and they can't even pick up the place? Rude!

It's a box of Kellogs Rasin Bran

The martians have been buying them up like crazy to get the new decoder ring and attack Earth

Ok, seriously now

If it is a rock then how did it get all shined up pretty and all when the other rocks all around are still dirty?

That doesn't make any sense either does it?

Star

If you look at the other rocks around it, you'll see that serval of them have lighter spots, one in particular is a lighter shade of gray.
Most likely it's a light rock that's catching the light, making it appear lighter than the rest of them.
Actually, the lighter part of the rock pretty much matches the color of the sand. Couple that with some camera errors, it looks like, and you have: a rock.
Sorry mate.

I found these features towards the right part of the image. I think they are interesting:



(Edit to add that I have not made any adjustements, I have only cropped the image.)

[edit on 26-8-2008 by ziggystar60]

reply to post by Stari
I vote for Juice Box.

I wonder what brand it is.

Nice find ziggystar60, if you keep looking through this image you are going to find tons of unusual looking "rocks".

Star

Yeah I moved to AZ, just for the interesting rocks, some of them are pretty cool, just laying around like some force of nature had put them there.

reply to post by Stari


From what I can see it is either one of two things:

(i). It is a tempeoral hyperspatial manifold- part of a Weyl Graviton flux generator used in Rigelian star ships to give them some speed- probably a relic left over from the Procyon-Lyrian wars (the refugees came this way you know)

(ii). It is a rock catching the sunlight, and because of the low quality of the camera, the rock looks unusually angular in the dimer Martian sunlight which no doubt the camera has had to compensate for, making it look a little artificial.

I think suggestion (ii) for now- though I could be wrong about that!

[edit on 27-8-2008 by timelike]

reply to post by timelike


"...and because of the low quality of the camera..."

Uh, low quality camera? Is that why it's so hard to get a spacecraft to land on Mars, because NASA is sending stuff up there that they got on sale at Circuit City? Hmmm. Might explain a few things.

Anyway, it looks like litter is not just an Earth problem.

Nice find Ziggy, it does look like a piece of rusted out metal. Question though? is this image made up of several and then spliced together? or is it supposed to be just one image of the whole area? because I found a few odd splice lines when zoomed in.

reply to post by QBSneak000


Hi, my friend! And yes, you are absolutely right, this very large panorama image is made of several photos:

This 180-degree panorama shows the southward vista from the location where Spirit is spending its third Martian winter inside Mars' Gusev Crater. The rover's overwintering location is on the northern edge of a low plateau informally called "Home Plate," which is about 80 meters or 260 feet in diameter.
This view combines 168 different exposures taken with Spirit's panoramic Camera (Pancam) -- 42 pointings with 4 filters at each pointing. Spirit took the first of the images that are combined into this view during the mission's 1,477th Martian day, or sol, (February 28, 2008). That was two weeks after the rover made its last move to reach the location where it would stop driving for the winter. Solar energy at Gusev Crater is so limited during the Martian southern hemisphere winter that Spirit does not generate enough electricity to drive, nor even enough to take many images per day. The last frame for this mosaic was taken on Sol 1,599 (July 2, 2008). The rover team plans for Spirit to finish taking images for the northern half of the scene during the Martian spring.

www.nasa.gov...

I was also going to say that perhaps the lighter (whiter) portions of the rocks and other spots is just ice?

Originally posted by QBSneak000
I was also going to say that perhaps the lighter (whiter) portions of the rocks and other spots is just ice?

I'm leaning more towards it being a rock that has been shined up. What I can't figure out is what shined that one rock so nicely and didn't even clean up the other rocks as much as this one.

Star

reply to post by QBSneak000


Yes, the white areas could be ice - or actually morning frost! This is an image from the Phoenix Lander, and white areas are also visible here:



This is what NASA says about the image:

A thin layer of water frost is visible on the ground around NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander in this image taken by the Surface Stereo Imager at 6 a.m. on Sol 79 (August 14, 2008), the 79th Martian day after landing. The frost began to disappear shortly after 6 a.m. as the sun rose on the Phoenix landing site.

www.nasa.gov...