Rover OPPORTUNITY microscopic image . . . Martian soil . . . feel free to speculate

NASA - JPL ^ | 02-03-2004 | NASA/JPL

[Phil V.]

Microscopic Imager Non-linearized Full frame EDR aquired on Sol 10 of Opportunity's mission to Meridiani Planum at approximately 11:26:27 Mars local solar time, Microscopic Imager dust cover commanded to be OPEN. NASA/JPL/Cornell/USGS

What's with the roundish grains?

1) Pyroclastic/volcanic origin

2) fungus colony

3) beach sand

4) Aldrin's golf ball

5) corrupt data

view larger image

[Rocky]

Fur balls from Socks the Cat?

[Professional Engineer]

I keep hearing how great and wonderful it is that the rovers are there. They can just zip here, there and yonder, and do all these wonderful expiriments.

Instead, they just sit and look around. C'mon guys "kick the tires, and light the fires!"

I'm curious as well about the outcropings. I wonder what those layers are going to look like close up. It ought to be very interesting. If the rover ever gets the command to go.

[Kirkwood]

What is the magnification? Can't make heads or tails out of this without a image scale reference mark.

[skinkinthegrass]

snake eyes! :)

[Brett66]

The pic's scale is much larger than the pic in post #17. If these were diatoms, then they would be Godzilla-sized diatoms. What's the size variation on diatoms?

[Phil V.]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1071006/posts?page=46#46

[Brett66]

In all of the stories I've seen, they describe that pic as a close-up of a "coin-sized" patch.

[doc30]

Anybody know what the bacground is? If it is the surrounding soil, then is is very interesting that there is an apparent bimodal distribution: the large particles easilty recognized in the image, but also the smaller grains that make up the soil in the backgrouns. Why no particles of intermediate size?

[tet68]

Jeez, that is absolutely astounding in the big 877kb version!

[Mike Darancette]

Shells?

[Phil V.]

At a simialr stage in Spirit's reporting JPL/NASA created a 3-D image of the microscopic pic. It was truely interesting. The "soil" was vertically "stacked" . . . sorta like iron filings on a magnet . . .

[ChadGore]

[Erasmus]

Just below center: The skull of an embryonic E.T.

[Phil V.]

NO.


Clearly a pelvis.

[phalynx]

Gosh, the 2nd from the top on the right looks like a tiny mask. It COULD be the little baby brother of the face on mars...... We must leave at once. Soon there will be 2.

[Phil V.]

Here's a "moving" picture . . .

[Wacka]

The stacking may be size sorting like rocks, etc in a box.
Put a variety of different sized particles in a cotainer. Shake for a while, The largest particles migrate to the top. This is due to the smaller particles falling between the larger ones towards the bottom.

[Ophiucus]

With the little dimple in it it sure looks biological to me, bacterial or a spore.

Martian (achoo!) pollen?

Either way, very cool and intriguing.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!