Geomorphology of Gale Crater, Rock on! |
Geomorphology of Gale Crater, Rock on! |
Sep 26 2012, 10:22 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3516 Joined: 4-November 05 From: North Wales Member No.: 542 |
I'd like a discussion thread about the geology detatched from the time limits of current MSL threads. We had a 'Geomorphology of Cape York' thread that attracted a lot of interesting posts. How about 'Geomorphology of Gale Crater'? I have one or two ideas but many more questions, and I'd like to post them in a longer-running thread away from the day to day imaging discussion. Any other takers?
For starters, does anybody have a contour map of this place like the one at Meridiani with 5m intervals? ADMIN: You have your wishes fulfilled on UMSF (sometimes) |
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Guest_Actionman_* |
Nov 30 2012, 05:54 PM
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Guests |
In this GIF from the above Mr. Anderson and James F. Bell paper they illustrate their view of the basal layer with the possibility of some of which maybe exposed. The examination of any of this is mandatory NMHO. More over I don't think it will be visible. Out of sight out of mind, apparently.
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Nov 30 2012, 06:16 PM
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
they illustrate their view of the basal layer with the possibility of some of which maybe exposed. The examination of any of this is mandatory NMHO. More over I don't think it will be visible. Out of sight out of mind, apparently. You know that Basal and Basalt are not the same thing, right? Not visible? They've already seen it (and attempted to characterise it) from orbit! From Page 105-106 of their paper ( for those unfamiliar - it's available here - http://www.marsjournal.org/contents/2010/0004/ ) "Light-toned basal unit The light-toned basal unit is distinguished from the crater floor units by a sharp drop of ~10 m (Figure 34a). The light-toned basal unit has a CTX albedo of up to 0.20, and is primarily composed of fractured rock that in some locations has a subtle texture suggestive of layering (Figure 39b). It has a moderate thermal inertia ranging from roughly 500-540 J m-2 K-1 s-1/2. Mesas of mound- skirting unit are common on top of the light-toned basal unit (Figure 34b), and much of the basal unit is covered by dark-toned mafic dunes. The light-toned basal unit slopes upward in a series of poorly-defined fractured, light-toned layers to form the northwestern side of the light-toned ridge unit (Figure 36a). Dark-toned basal unit The dark-toned basal unit (Figure 39) has a higher thermal inertia (~780 J m-2 K-1 s-1/2) than the light-toned basal unit. It has an albedo of 0.15-0.16 and occurs to the southwest of the landing ellipse and the light-toned basal unit. The transition between the light and dark-toned basal units (Figure 40) is sharp and the dark-toned basal unit appears to be topographically lower than the light-toned basal unit. This suggests that it is either stratigraphically lower or that the dark-toned unit is younger and fills a depression that had been eroded into the light-toned basal unit." Plus - the paper goes on explicitly define a location to visit to help in characterizing it is an important stop on any MSL traverse. |
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