Is that a baby buggy (stroller) on its side?

Thank you, but credit goes to the Lanczos3 smoothing in the FastStone image browser I love good free software. It also let me clip the region of interest, create a new image from it, and enlarge it while applying the Lanczos3 smoothing.

Well, what I thought it was last night when I posted it, was an attempt at humor. As you are now the second person to ask me for an explanation, it is now painfully obvious that it was a dismal failure in that regard. Perhaps it was considered to be in bad taste by some. In my concept of humor bad taste is irrelevant. It wasn't a baby buggy, but rather Dr. Stephen Hawking in his wheel chair, in a rather awkward position. It was simply the only way I could make an image of Hawking conform roughly to the shape of Hawking rock. ...and that is the story of how my brief career as a comedian came to a screeching halt.

CosmicRocker, I didn't think to try to blow the image up and look at it. If I had, I would have laughed my ass off! And I'm sure Stephen Hawking would as well!!!! Why don't you post a bigger image?

Hey cosmic,

Listen, the guy appeared in Star Trek and The Simpons. I'm sure he'd have had a good old chuckle at your pic.

He's not dead yet! For all you know, he's reading this right now.

I had no idea the problem was a lack of recognition caused by the image size. The image looks Ok when I download it on this end. Now, I am more interested in learning more about the graphics problem.

His sense of humor and his appearance in that Simpson's episode were both things I considered before desecrating his image for this purpose. I didn't save a larger version, but I have enough of the pieces that it wouldn't be diffficult to reproduce one if the demand is there. At this point, it might best be left to everyone's imagination. This must be the first example I have ever seen of a poor joke that has gotten more laughs after it's third explanation.

Surely the second example, after the initial explanations of the IAU's hilarious "A planet has to have cleared its area" joke yesterday...

Well, Earth hasn't cleared its area, so we're clearly not living on a planet anymore.

Just to document the official name given to this rock, it was "Bradley." Since it was targeted in all the filters, it must have been important to someone. This is the false color composite, and no, this one is not a joke.

Wonderful, and thanks for pointing it out, I tend to skip over the subsampled images and wouldn't have noticed it. Good to know someone other than the small group here found it of some importance, but I don't understand why they couldn't simply have driven up to it and given it the attention it deserves. I'm guessing that most of the folks in the drive planning meeting wanted to get to Victoria ASAP.

Me too! Oppy was dead-center in Bradley for most of the drive, then altered course on the last Sol. Perhaps she can tiptoe over to Bradley for a closer look whilst the IDD is being evaluated?

"Hawking" was an OK name, but Bradley is more personal...

--Bill

Re the idea that Hawking/Bradley is worth a short look, someone mentioned that its darkness might just be a result of shadowing. However, there are small black rocks everywhere we look in the ejecta field -- surely not all the result of shadowing, which means that, as the biggest such hunk, Hawking/Bradly IS worth a SLIGHT detour. Have we passed it already?

Nope. We're sitting about 25 meters away from it. You could hit it with a rock with no trouble if you were standing there Seems like a good test target for the IDD.

Nah...I bet you'd need to practice a few times to get used to the lower gravity and near-zero air drag.

Andy G