New images at Exploratorium this afternoon. Some Nav- and Pancam of the drive onto the outcrop. But importantly, she did a RAT and made a series of MI images...

--Bill

The RAT hole autostitched - no bluberries as we know them - just as Squyres said earlier.

This is getting interesting. Like, what are the dark inclusions? Same stuff as the cobbles?

They should put the micro-micro-imager on those dark globs and see what they are exactly.. oh, wait. Can I fly to Mars yet?

There were the same dark spots from Eagle and Endurance, but those were similarly larger than these ones, as it would seem relatively the same size as the bloobs one the surface are, (im assuming the dark spots are sawed-off blueberries). the bloobs are so much smaller (and irregular) as we go south...

Those look like Captain Crunch Frosted Miniberries to me. Well, forget the frosted part.

The irregular miniberries are back, so what does that mean? It would be odd for them to appear again further up-section.

Here is an Autostitch mosaic of the pre-RAT area. It appears to me that the concretions are preferentially aligned with the bedding planes.

edited to add: The bedding plane alignment is most apparent in the image pair Bill posted above. Also, we aren't at Mogollon yet, are we?

All around baby-blueberries here?

Tried to match your two MI pans in a GIF:
(1,02 MB / 4s per frame) http://www.greuti.ch/oppy/ratmogo.gif

It's difficult because the course of the crack isn't exact the same already in few millimetres depth.

Not yet.
Let me take this opportunity to remind this:



Somebody else wants to propose a sol?

I'll say 643......

....by the way the total drive distance, according to the latest STATUS REPORT is 3.99 miles.

You're right. We ain't there yet. Ole Bill jumped the gun. What can I say? I was giddy about getting to this side of Erebus and pulling out the handlens and rock hammer...

We can discuss the strat- and lith- of this area in the context of tying what we saw at Eagle/Endurance, and at the Erebus Highway, and what we _might_ have seen at the Fourlane as we approach Mogollon. If Doug wants to (or can) rename this "Erebus MI's", fine; otherwise, we can use this as a pre-Mogollon discussion.

This outcrop (have it been named yet?) impresses me as similar to what we saw at the Fourlane: bedded and with less-visible blueberries. It is like the outcrops at the Erebus Highway in that a RAT shows smaller and less spherical blueberries and ghost-berries.

We (Aldo??) need to compile a list of the sites and lithologies we've see this far, much like was done for the Columbia Hills. I'm losing track of the players...

We need a close look at those cobble lag deposits while we're here...

I'm attaching an overview image of the zones we've seen recently.

--Bill

An update from the MER/JPL site:

"Sols 633 and 634 (Nov. 4 and 5, 2005): The two-sol plan is to kick off the robotic arm campaign at Olympia. The plan includes grinding a target called "Kalavrita" with the rock abrasion tool, inspecting the target with the microscopic imager both before and after the grind, and using the panoramic camera to take images for a mosaic. Output from the solar panels on sol 633 was 528 watt hours."


Kavalrita is a city in Greece, as Olympia is a mountain in Greece. Clearly, we ain't in Colorado, yet.

--Bill

Actually, Olympia is the place where the ancient olympic tooks place. The mountain that housed the gods is Olympus.

Did anyone bring a hammer and chisel? I really want to split open those layers...

Aside from which, Oppy's RAT still seems to be going great.

That's on my "to do" list, Bill, but I'll be moving it up in priority! Hopefully before the end of the month I'll have something.

Those MI's are really interesting. It looks like there are two types of spherules: The larger, lighter toned ones similar to what was seen at Eagle and Endurance and the smaller, darker more irregular shaped ones. They both seem to crosscut bedding planes without deforming them, so they must both be products of post deposition diagenesis.

Indeed, these latest RAT MI's are interesting. We see subtle yet profound changes in the lithology (blueberries) and the character of the evaporite. I keep planning to sit back and go through the differences between what we've seen at Eagle, Endurance and Erebus (and misc points in between). I believe that we've moved down in the stratigraphic section and could also be looking at lateral (facies) changes. It will be interesting to see what we find at the bluff at Mogollon; I believe (and/or hope) that there an underlying dark unit and that might help to define the history of this area. But Oppy can take her time getting there; every rock she looks at on the way is another piece of the puzzle.

--Bill