From the pancam site, it looks like an MI mosaic, then the Mossbauer onto the sand, with some next-drive-direction-Pancam imaging ( one assumes slightly left of straight toward HP)

Doug

Maybe there will be time to visit Allegheny...who knows?...The descent from El Dorado seems easy...

Now looking at some oldies...
Is it possible that sight we have now from the Ultreya area and the El Dorado dunes might not be permanent but seasonal?

http://www.zippyvideos.com/5077374292903756/u-ed/

This criteria for naming places in Ultreya is just being a mystic delight...
There is somewhere there a target called Seven Cities...
(706 11:41:12 p2534.15. 1 0 0 0 0 13 13 pancam_Seven_Cities_L234567Rall)
Utopias? I believe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilia

'A Portuguese legend tells how the island was settled by the Archbishop of Porto accompanied by six bishops and their parishioners in either 714 or 734 in the face of the Moorish conquest of Iberia. The archbishop and bishops each founded a city, known as Aira, Anhuib, Ansalli, Ansesseli, Ansodi, Ansolli and Con. A similar Spanish tradition claims that these bishops were all Spanish. The Irish also have the very same tradition, which they ascribe to St Brendan, a real Irish saint to whom many such mythical feats are attributed.'

Now...This are great names to seed around the area...

7 Cities, linked to a country of discoverers by legend on the 707th Spirit Sol...
What an experience for a guy from that same country who's birthday is on the 7th day of the 7th month, for my own sake I'm glad I'm not a numerologist...

Oh...One more...:

In Brief:

Marcos de Niza was the first explorer to report the Seven Cities of Cibola, and his report launched the Coronado expedition.

Marcos de Niza was a priest who was sent north from Mexico City by Viceroy Mendoza in 1538-39 to search for wealthy cities that were rumored to be somewhere north of the frontier of New Spain. In early 1539 he left the frontier at Compostela and journeyed north into the unknown for several months. In the summer of 1539 he returned and wrote a report saying he had discovered the cities – in a province called Cibola (the present-day native American pueblo of Zuni, New Mexico). He said he reached the first city and saw it from a distance, but because his companion had been killed there, he returned without entering it.

Most popular writers claim Marcos reported gold in Cibola, but his original report says nothing about gold. Nonetheless, conquistadors in Mexico city were exited by his news and assumed Cibola would be as wealthy as the conquered Aztec empire. Marcos led Coronado's army back to Cibola the next year, in 1540, but he became the scapegoat when Cibola turned out to have no gold, and the soldiers said he was a liar.

The big mystery about Marcos is whether he told the truth. Historians have argued for centuries about whether Marcos – a priest with a good reputation – simply interviewed some natives near the present border, and turned back without seeing Cibola. Also at issue: did he promote the rumors that Cibola was full of gold? Several prominent 20th century historians concluded Marcos did not have time to reach Cibola in 1539. They said he made up a fraudulent report as part of a conspiracy with Viceroy Mendoza to encourage the conquest of the north. Other historians have defended him.'

http://www.psi.edu/coronado/journeyofmarcosdeniza.html

Compostela...Ultreya and a fool had to appear somehow...

No, no, no. Not that horsepucky.


By vortex I meant a persistent swirl or eddy in the airflow caused by orographic effects.

--Bill

It looks like you didn't receive this for Xmas...
http://www.arts.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main..../06/bomain.html

I've never found Brazilian beer here in Spain.

OT = Off Topic. Anything that is not related to the thread.

I'm a bit lost here...Are we already at the basin? Or beyond El Dorado?...:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/pancam/2005-12-29/

I don't think they moved Just scanning the features to the south between current position and Home Plate but left and short of it.

Yes, South, but the features look really close to have been taken from the same location...Maybe a mega-panorama from there is on the way...

Very coarse grained stuff...

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/mi...00P2937M2M1.JPG

Doug

No, they haven't moved, they're just looking south(ish), as Burmese said.

Will fine grain sands be underneath? Great sandbox for kids to play in but not for rovers...

I am not a geologist; but, the sharp El Dorado boundry demarkation and elevation bothers me. This looks to me more like a deposit from the weathering of a large central mass "crumbling" and flowing down and outward. Since there appear to be numerous similar deposits in the area (all on the southerly sides of local bluffs), could these have resulted from a relatively recent low elevation southerly desentigrating meteor(?) strike with large exposed chunks of this distinct material weathering into these "piles"? If the weathered particles were too coarse/heavy to be picked up by the prevailing winds, the localization and demarkation would persist and if relatively recent, the deposits would not yet be covered by the local dust. If not of meteoric origin, the masses could have been present in the hills and recently weathered out with the same result. Make any sense? Perhaps compositional analysis will tell.

Greg

I am, and the morphology of this spot is bothersome. I can believe in wind deposition, but the boundary is remarkably sharp, and the material is being deposited on a slope and seems to be moving downslope. I'm leaning more and more in the direction of the source of dark sand being at the head of the slope.

"I think that the answer will be complex. Is this area the result of selective winnowing or deposition of the dark sand because of a unique wind pattern caused by orographic effects, or is it caused because the source material for the sand is _at_ this location, or both? We need MIs of the sand, and minerology."

Looking at the first MIs of the dark sand today, my first impression is that it looks very similar to the last MIs Spirit did at the dark rock at Comanche Spur. Are deeply weathered and crumbling outcrops of this material present at El Dorado, with the dark sand winnowed and concentrated by unique aeolian conditions?

This is indeed an odd area.

--Bill

Here is a 1x2 mosaic of two of the MI images from Spirit today. I think that I have it oriented correctly, although I have no idea exactly where this spot is located in today's hazcam view.

The upper part of this pan is the undisturbed ripple surface, the dark slope is the cut from the rover wheel and the material in the lower part is sand churned by the wheel.

--Bill