Mars Meteorite plus a Mystery Object

Ok so I get a tweet from the guys over at NASA with this picture:

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has found a rock that apparently is another meteorite, less than three weeks after driving away from a larger meteorite that the rover examined for six weeks.

Opportunity used its navigation camera during the mission's 2,022nd Martian day, or sol, (Oct. 1, 2009) to take this image of the apparent meteorite dubbed "Shelter Island." The pitted rock is about 47 centimeters (18.5 inches) long. Opportunity had driven 28.5 meters (94 feet) that sol to approach the rock after it had been detected in images taken after a drive two sols earlier.

Opportunity has driven about 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) since it finished studying the meteorite called "Block Island" on Sept. 11, 2009.

Hi res image and caption source: www.nasa.gov...

But here's the thing ...

If you look at the top of the picture just over the horizon you see this:



(cropped and enlarged for display)

Other than something on the lens I cannot think of what else it could be. I am not an image expert so I don't know why there heavy pixelation around the object. Does that at least confirm that it's at a distance?

Also I was thinking it could be a dust devil, but I have seen others on other pics and at a distance they are very faint to the eye and often need color adjustment to be seen. This to my untrained eye looks more defined.

Experts, some help please.

Edit to add other pictures from the same shoot (courtesy of Deaf Alien) for comparison: marsrovers.nasa.gov...

The "object" isn't there in the other pictures


[edit on 3 Oct 2009 by schrodingers dog]

Maybe it is some dust on the lens. As you can see, the solar panels are covered by lots of dust.

I found one as well when editing a video on water on mars

it is at the beginning of the vid


great find by you also SD
star and flag

Thanks

Ocker

I did some enhancing on the image. Not much better i'm afraid but it's a bit cleaner.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/0de92d4062b0e10b.jpg[/atsimg]


It looks a lot like a couple of dustdevils, under the black smudge.

[edit on 3-10-2009 by 2Faced]

Here's an animation of the L and R pictures. I wonder how long apart? That is the question. Maybe Artmap or Zorgon can answer?

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/ec4b78bbdea5.gif[/atsimg]

Edit to add: maybe Phage can answer?

[edit on 3-10-2009 by Deaf Alien]

Pixel anomaly from a gamma ray passing through the CCD unit while the camera was working would look like that.
It looks to be only two pixels

Remember that mar has little atmosphere and No magnetic field to stop solar radiation like gamma rays, x-rays, neutron and cosmic radiation.

The question is did the camera show the same anomaly on any other photo before or after.

[edit on 3-10-2009 by ANNED]

Well i dunno about the anomaly, it is indeed very interesting. I dunno i think the picture itself is cool. I did think the surface showing under the sand was interesting, looks like paving stone arches.

Take it easy people

reply to post by Deaf Alien


The "Left Eye" and "Right Eye" pictures are taken at the exact same time.

The time the pictures were taken is in the file names. Characters 3 through 11 is the time the picture was taken. This is the number of seconds since January 1, 2000 (this is a common method used by computer programs to create unique time stamps, and is called the "J2000.0" system).

The file name for the left eye image is 1N307687655EFFA7ARP1943L0M1.jpg.
The file name for the right eye image is 1N307687655EFFA7ARP1943R0M1.jpg.
Therefore both images were taken at the exact same moment -- 307,687,655 seconds after January 1, 2000 -- which equates to the images being taken sometime around September of 2009.

Therefore, it's most likely dust on the navigation camera's "left eye" lens.


[edit on 10/3/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

I found the same thing and came here to post about it when I saw your post.
Do you know where we can get (if we can) the raw images with no JPG compression ? There is a lot of 'pixelation' around the object which I suppose must be coming fom jpg compression.



Also, is there a place where we can get all raw images from the rovers ? Perhaps we should make a lobby asking NASA to post all raw photos in a webserver index page (like starbase.jpl.nasa.gov...) as they come from the rovers in real time... =)