The sol 588 and 589 "strange bright lights" [sic], Using the power of UMSF for good Options

[vikingmars]

Agree scientifically, of course. Too bad, though; great opportunity to place some well-deserved egg on the right faces.

Could some "candidates" be seen from orbit on HiRISE images ? Or are they too small ?

[xflare]

Seriously, the speculation is getting a bit out of hand here. There are better places for this kind of discussion...

Everyone likes solving mysteries

The candidate rock even looks quite bright in that mastcam image.

[monitorlizard]

Something that shiny makes me think of iron-nickel meteorites, which can be essentially pure metal. We already know there are meteorites on Mars. If it isn't too old, it
would not have oxidized the surface yet (which would take much longer on Mars than Earth).

[Ant103]

I can hardly think it's a reflexion from a distant object. The parallax between the two Navcam is too close to have a very bright spot in one, an none in the other.
Let me explain : On Earth, when you are looking to a city in sunlight, sometimes there is a specular reflexion coming from a window or a large panel of bright metal. This reflexion don't disappear if you just moving less than a meter. Or the object that is reflecting the sun have to be a few centimeters large, with a very plane surface (typically : a mirror). I doubt that on Mars such a rock exist : very plane and very reflective in the same time. They can be flat, but not as flat as mirror. Because the surface aspect is certainly not a perfect plane, the light beam could not be so tight. And just because of that, if it was actually a reflexion from a rock, it should have been saw by the TWO camera, not one.

For me it's just a cosmic ray hit, maliciously place by coincidence on a particularly place, but it's just cosmic rays.

[ngunn]

They're shiny [iron meteorites] but rarely have perfectly flat faces. I'd prefer very large single crystals, possibly feldspar, in the unlikely event that these are real landscape features.

[ustrax]

It's baaack...
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b14/ustrax3/nru4.jpg

[jmknapp]

Some basic geometry of the situation using SPICE:

Raw image: NRB_449790582EDR_F0310000NCAM00262M_

Map view

time of shot: sol 589 03:08:07 P.M. LMST (2014 APR 03 10:00:03 UTC) et = 449791270

NRB boresight direction (azimuth, elevation): 298.81° -16.86°

Direction of bright pixels: 286.06° 0.67°

Sun position: 300.33° 31.79°

So the sun position relative to the line from the camera to the bright pixels is 14.27° northward and 31.12° up.



Kind of interesting (coincidence?) that the pixels are within a degree of horizontal.

EDIT: Also, if it is the same object in both images, here's my attempt at triangulation:

[Gerald]

Do the two lines of sight intersect in 3d space?

[centsworth_II]

It seems that the intersection of those two of those lines is in mid air above the bowl of that crater.

[djellison]

That triangulation matches, by my estimation, the tall, thin, bright, shiny feature seen in these Mastcam images a week earlier.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/ms...325E01_DXXX.jpg

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/ms...044E01_DXXX.jpg

It will also be in this image once down linked at full res
http://marsmobile.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multime..._DXXX&s=590

[john_s]

Tall and thin, indeed. Bright and shiny? Not so sure. It looks to me like an rock of unusual shape but ordinary color and brightness, that just happens to have a vertical face oriented to catch the light in that shot.

John

[fredk]

It's baaack...
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b14/ustrax3/nru4.jpg

Hah!

At least the Beacon didn't appear and disappear like... like... you know it's coming... a cosmic ray!

[marswiggle]

After individually rotating and resizing each of those R navcam images, cropping the pair, enlarging 1.5 x, vertically stretching 2 x, and sharpening a bit for good measure, I think I can discern the ridge at 150 m (late edit: probably farther off, 200 m or so) distance in both images as an arched outline at the center. This comparison also works as a crude cross-eyed pair. The bright spots do not seem to be located at or near the ridge, instead being unrelated to it and to each other as well. Don't know how much this helps though.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[elakdawalla]

I'm still having a hard time thinking of the sol 589 one as anything but a cosmic ray hit; it extends several pixels above the horizon, onto the distant hills.

It did occur to me while awake last night (as these things do) that you could make a singularly bright vertical rock face by exposing the planar surface of a gypsum vein. Still, I would expect more than one such feature to show up, and I would expect it to be visible to both eyes, and it should not have that vertical extension. So I just don't like it.

[marsophile]

If the vein was inside a narrow crack between two rocks, then a glint from it would only be visible within a very narrow viewing angle.