Santa Maria! Options

[Stu]

I'm thinking: big, ancient rock, eroding very, verrrrry slowly... it doesn't have to be as fat with berries as a freshly-baked martian muffin for a lot to accumulate around it. And don't forget the MI field of view is, what, just over 4.5cm across? And a single berry is a decent chunk of that? So we're not going to see an MI image showing berries packed together like ball bearings in a jam jar lid, are we?

That's my entirely unqualified take on it anyway.

Discuss.

[fredk]

As much as I'm eager to get driving again, I'm going to miss views like this:

[djellison]

Maybe I've got spots in my eyes covering the blueberries emerging from the matrix - can I possibly get a consensus of opinion before I rush off to my optician?

There's lots of them in this rock. If you can't see them, you're just not looking. Stu's highlighted a bunch for you. Did you not see them before? Do you see them now? If not - I can't help you.

[Shaka]

Discuss.

A good clear statement of position.

I DO see interesting "structures" in these rocks that would correspond to the location of concretions in the matrix that we have been admiring - off and on - since Eagle Crater. However these dark structures have a very irregular shape to my tired old eyes - one could speculate that they are the 'primordia' or 'seeds' of blueberries consisting of a clump of platy crystals that were going to develop into proper concretions had the process of concretion continued. But I'm not sure that this is the most likely or popular model of berry formation these days, and I am still surprised that there are so few, if any, small concretions in evidence that have a smooth, spherical shape. So what is different about the bedrock on this side of this crater? Obviously, there are scads of berries all over the ground, but from what matrix have they eroded? Other higher layers long eroded away? The free berries around here don't look 'fresh' to me. They look old and worn, like me. I'm eager to hear JPL's discussion of the analyses at the rat-holes. It may prove quite interesting.

My position.

[Stu]

Some really good points in there Shaka. Wish I was qualified to comment on some of them! I'll have to leave that to the more science-savvy people here. But lots of food for thought, thanks.

[Shaka]

I've downloaded your annotated image, Stu; blown it up with Photoshop, and taken a hard look at the 19 objects on the rock you've circled. I have to say that these do not, in general, closely resemble the ready-to-fall concretions we've been seeing on so many other eroded bedrocks at Meridiani. As you pointed out above, they often have a 'flattened' appearance and are generally much smaller and irregular in shape and 'color' than the concretions you have circled alongside the rock. Of the 19 examples there is one that is closest in appearance to a 'blueberry' - in the upper 'row' of circles near the left center, just left of a nearly vertical fracture. I just can't see the others being taken for 'blueberries' if they were to fall down with the others. But the resolution of this picture is barely adequate to characterize such minute objects. Only the MI's give us plentiful resolution for the task. Yes, they are sadly limited in area of coverage, and so we might conclude that we don't have an adequate sample to answer the question clearly. I simply expressed an opinion that blueberries seemed few, if any, in the bedrock matrix on this side of the crater. I asked for others' opinions and hope that some of our professionals in the forum will weigh in, pending an authoritative report from the JPL investigators.

[Stu]

Aye, it's a puzzle, that's to be sure...

Seriously tho, some very thought-provoking ideas there Shaka. It'll be very interesting to see the MI pics of the interior of that deep "cleft" on the left side of RG. Looking forward to those.

[ElkGroveDan]

Looking forward to those.

I'm looking forward to the color MI mosaics appearing on my favorite blog

[SteveM]

There's lots of them in this rock. If you can't see them, you're just not looking. Stu's highlighted a bunch for you. Did you not see them before? Do you see them now? If not - I can't help you.

Maybe I can help with the blueberries. I wanted an objective view, so I enhanced the color of the blues and greens, but not of the reds through yellow. I got this interesting image, which agrees with most (but not all) of Stu's blueberries. Perhaps the ones where we don't agree are covered with red dust.


Steve M

[mhoward]

They're careful to avoid saying too much at this point, but there are some good Opportunity tidbits in the Rovers Update for February at planetary.org, if you care to go looking for clues.

[fredk]

Here are a couple of those tidbits:

Since CRISM detected the hydrated sulfate at Santa Maria, the CRISM team has homed in on Victoria Crater and detected the same signature where the rover had been and found hydrated sulfate. "We've never seen this signature before over Victoria with CRISM, because we never had an oversampled observation where we were taking 6 meter samples alongtrack with 18 meter pixels. So now we've detecting this signature in two places we've been," Arvidson confirmed.

So this says that there actually isn't something unique about Santa Maria, at least as far as the CRISM signature goes.

And nothing too surprising about the upcoming plans:

From Ruiz Garcia, the plans calls for Opportunity to drive another 20 to 30 meters further to the northeast to a chosen waypoint, where it will take some final stereo images of the interior of the crater. The scientists hope to combine all the stereo images the rover took here and create a 3-D map of Santa Maria. "Then we'll start heading for the hills," said Arvidson.

[mhoward]

So this says that there actually isn't something unique about Santa Maria, at least as far as the CRISM signature goes.

Not unique, but that makes it more interesting.

And there's more. Arvidson said CRISM has also detected the same hydrated sulfate signature in a fresh, 2.2 kilometer-diameter crater, dubbed Ada, some 100 kilometers (62.13 miles) to the southeast. "And we see it in the northern part of Meridiani in the valley, so the detection is there. It's real," he underscored.

Ada Crater. I'm trying to figure out where they saw hydrated sulfate at Victoria; I can't find anything about that.

[jasedm]

Didn't want to revive an ancient thread but my wife as I've mentioned before, doesn't wholeheartedly share my interest in space science, and said (as I was looking at Stu's majestic panorama of Santa Maria in post 533 above)

"A billion miles to poke about in a dusty hole in the ground?"

[Stu]

I'm trying to figure out where they saw hydrated sulfate at Victoria; I can't find anything about that.

I took that to mean they'd looked at Victoria after Oppy's visit and detected hydrated sulfates..?

[mhoward]

I took that to mean they'd looked at Victoria after Oppy's visit and detected hydrated sulfates..?

Hmm, could be. Now that I read it again, it's not exactly clear on that point.