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Huge Tower (5 Km high) in Hellas Planitia Region on Mars!

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posted on Oct, 24 2011 @ 06:22 PM
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First, the re-projected overhead view. The anomaly is in the center of the circle I've drawn:



Next, a context map showing the one photo I have so far found of the area. The red bounding box show the footprint of the entire photo, and the white bounding box shows the area that I've cropped out (next picture). This data is still the MOLA data, which is the only place the spike appears:



Now comes the area inside the white box in the picture above, to show the continuity from one to the next picture in locationg the area the feature is in. You can't see the anomaly in this picture, but a comparison of the craters will show that it's the right area. The black bounding box shows the area I cropped out of the full resolution (6m per pixel) photo:



Finally, the area in question at the full 6m/pixel resolution of the CTX camera:



If this were an actual feature on the Martian surface, the western half of it should be glaringly apparent at the rightmost edge of this photo, about half way down the edge. I don't see it. I have to conclude then that it's a data artifact in the MOLA data, since that's the only place it appears.

For anyone interested in checking behind me, the CTX photo ID is B18_016839_1481_XN_31S286W .

Edit to add: For the CTX pictures, the sun illuminates the scene from the upper right, going by the shadows in the craters. Looking at the shadows around where the "tower" should be, it becomes apparent that those areas are completely contained depressions, rather than hills or high spots. The area I grew up in was a "karst" area - mostly limestone, in which water had worn out caves over the ages. we had depressions there that looked just like those do, which we called "sinkholes". The cause of them was when a cave would collapse, the ground over it would sink as well, leaving a depression where everything was "up" from inside it. I have to wonder what cause the Martian sinkholes? The only cause I know of is underground water washing the "underground" away until the over ground collapses.

If they were impact craters, they would be round., more or less, instead of highly irregular as they are.





edit on 2011/10/24 by nenothtu because: (no reason given)



posted on Oct, 25 2011 @ 09:24 AM
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reply to post by nenothtu
 


Nice work. The context images can be off by a few km I noticed that the very edge of that image covered the "feature" so unless there is another image that goes over that area 100% I would not completely rule it out. But it is looking more like an artifact, nice work.



posted on Oct, 26 2011 @ 03:24 PM
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reply to post by abeverage
 


Comparing the craters and the "sinkholes" from one image to the other, it appears that the footprint for that photo in that context image is fairly close to dead on. I'm not sure about the discrepancies on Mars, but in data covering the Earth, the particular datum used can throw the results off by several hundred meters from datum to datum. In those cases, you have to match the particular datum you use to the one used in the initial production of the data. The standard now seems to be WGS-84, synonymous with NAD-83, but a lot of USGS data is still using NAD-27, which can throw the results off by about 200 meters. There was a systematic error that threw it off a further 30 meters (the width between one measurement and the next), but that has been largely rectified for Earth.

I'm not sure if there are multiple datums in use for Mars, but I do know that there are at least two different coordinate systems, which can of course throw the results off immensely if not matched when you're actually working with the data. The "datums" are mathematical definitions of the spheroid and origin point used in any given instance, and are independent of the coordinate systems, but applying the same coordinate system to two different datums, of the same planet, can skew the results, so imagine how two or more coordinate systems in combination with two or more datums can wreak havoc if not properly matched.

In this case, I used the MOLA data to find the spike and the location of the photo strips, then compared the features found in the photos themselves with the features in the MOLA data in order to verify that I was looking at the right area, and the accuracy of the photo footprint as shown on the overlay on the MOLA data.

ETA: I couldn't find any photos at all of the entire area of the spike artifact. The one I used in that post was the only one that covered even part of it, then there was a data gap, then two more overlapping photos to the east of the spike, with one being just east of the eastern edge of the spike.







edit on 2011/10/26 by nenothtu because: (no reason given)



posted on Oct, 27 2011 @ 05:34 AM
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reply to post by nenothtu
 


Thank you very much for your effort!

Many stars!

My curiosity is about this, in the right corner of your cropped image CTX.


Compared with this one



posted on Oct, 27 2011 @ 07:52 PM
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reply to post by Arken
 


I noticed the feature you highlight in your first image here. As a matter of fact, it was the landmark I used to place that upper right corner. It has the appearance of a "face" or a "skull", but I think that's just matrixing. Since the illumination comes from the upper left, we can see it is a raised feature, and that it is present inside a "sinkhole" feature due to the lay of the shadows from the illumination. The fact that the highlights are brighter than other highlights indicates that they are a different color, maybe due to weathering uncovering an underlying layer. What color they are is up for grabs, since the image is grayscale. If you look at the larger image, you see a lot more of that brighter color in the terrain to the north of that feature.

I think they are producing some small scale topographic models of Mars from stereo pairs of images currently, and it would be interesting to see if they cover this area in that program - meaning they'll have to take more images of it, at least two from slightly different angles.

The second image you show here, the highlighted feature looks a LOT like a similar "cliff face" feature from the infamous Cydonia City area. I'm not sure what it is beyond a linear ridge-type feature. Being in the shape of an elongated teardrop may indicate that it was shaped by flowing water at some point. If you look closely, you can see a light colored ring of which that feature forms a part. I'd have to say it's on the rim of an ancient, now mostly buried, impact crater.

Do you recall the "bigfoot statuette" or what some were calling "the Little Mermaid statue" that was photographed by one of the rovers? That one still has me perplexed. I hunted down ALL of the original images of it, re-composited them myself to bring out the color and try to clean up details, and I'm still stumped. I went so far as to produce 3-D images from the rover camera when someone said it was "just a shadow", and found that it wasn't. Whatever it is, it's 3 dimensional, of a different color (darker) than the surrounding rock, and does indeed stick up just like a statue. The 3D pictures clearly show it in relief against the background, sticking up from the edge of a drop off at "Home Plate" where that rover wintered. I used the parallax in the two separate views recorded by the rover to not only produce the 3D images, but also to measure the distance to it, and the height. It turns out to have been fairly close to the rover, and only about 3" tall.

It appears as anthropomorphic as it gets, complete with two arms, a head, torso, legs (seated) and even breasts, and it further appears to be made of different material than the surrounding rocks. What it really IS I can't say, and doubt anyone will ever be able to until it comes under closer investigation than what I was able to do from 150 million miles away.




edit on 2011/10/27 by nenothtu because: (no reason given)



posted on Nov, 2 2011 @ 03:03 PM
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Hey i see that the devil tower was in wyoming I see alot of things that related to that lately,check this thread the author oftem mentions Wyoming look at the thread if you want.


www.abovetopsecret.com...



posted on Apr, 13 2013 @ 12:31 PM
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reply to post by Arken
 


I just ran across the video for this while surfing and found your thread when doing an ATS search thinking I could start a thread about it. Already covered but still - Very interesting stuff.



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