Victoria Annulus, Discusions about Victoria's Apron Options

[RNeuhaus]

From today, Oppy will start to head toward the Victoria Crater which is about 500 meters away. The drive would take about one month (that is 15 soles of driven with an average of 33 meters/sol, the other 15 soles would be for other purposes or restrictive soles).

The surface around Victoria Annulus, I seems it won't be as smooth as the way between Eagle and Endurance craters but the surface would have no uniform or parallel wave of sand and dust in small size of ripple. See Phil's Victoria Annulus partial map, Tesheiner's one Victoria Crater picture

Otherwise, the surface might have ripples smaller and alike to the ones of El Dorado, on the skirt south side of Columbia Hill. Besides, the Anuulus has no outcrops except to around of few small mini-craters.

This is a change of morphology of surface around the Victoria Annulus. What does it explain about this developing kind of surface of sand? Its extension is just around the inside of Victoria's ray of ejection. That is coincidence. Around that has no bigger ripples as the outside of Annulus.

The explanation would be that around annulus has smoother rock or outcrop surface, no blocks which had not helped to build ripples by the winds. Other factor, I am not sure, is that the slope from the border of Annulus to crater is positive (going up by few meters), then this might be another factor not to build ripples. I have seen that anywhere in the desert that have a slopes does not have any ripples but only flat surface.

Any debate about why the Victoria Annulus does not look like ripples as the outside of Annulus.

Rodolfo

[Jeff7]

I find it interesting that so many of them seem to have a little point in the center, and generally facing up.

What else caught my eye: One with a hole in it?

[BEHSTeacher]

I find it interesting that so many of them seem to have a little point in the center, and generally facing up.

What else caught my eye: One with a hole in it?

I see 3 with holes in them - so it can't be a camera artifact. Did someone break their necklace here?

[SacramentoBob]

I see 3 with holes in them - so it can't be a camera artifact. Did someone break their necklace here?

We need a geologist to explain what the deal is with these "holy"rocks. What could be causing such perfect little holes? When I noticed just the one at the upper left, I assumed it was a camera artifact. I have to assume that we are looking at something that disolved out of the rock, or was created when the rock formed.
Any ideas? -
Sacramento Bob

[Aldebaran]

We need a geologist to explain what the deal is with these "holy"rocks. What could be causing such perfect little holes? When I noticed just the one at the upper left, I assumed it was a camera artifact. I have to assume that we are looking at something that disolved out of the rock, or was created when the rock formed.
Any ideas? -
Sacramento Bob

I'm not a geologist, but I minored in geology. Others have reported these holes. The best explanation I can find is that the concretions in many cases are associated with a network of dedos-like stalks. When the concretions are worn out of the rock, there is a tendency for these to snap off at the concretion, leaving a small indentation. We have noted the presence of these 'stalks' in several other locations, for example at the feature known as 'Pilbara' by Fram crater on the approach to Endurance. While wind erosion and chemical erosion certainly played a part in producing the stalks, there may be some evidence for a partial network of weakly indurated material within the matrix.

This MI image shows an example of such a stalk protruding from a spherule.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P2959M2M1.JPG

Please view the above as a half-baked suggestion rather than a fully baked hypothesis I'm just thinking aloud.

Bill Harris, I like your explanation of 'tektites' for at least some of the pebble-like fragments we have seen amongst the desert pavement. I'm not sure if that's a cut and dried explanation without more data, but it stands to reason that there must be 'tektites' present on Mars somewhere.