Home, Sweet Home, Dream becomes Reality Options

[Shaka]

After the positive response to my McMurdo 3D colour pan, i've gone back and done the same for Gibson:

James

This I can see. Hurrah! At a variety of resolutions I succeed. Even at the maximum, if I start at the bottom and traverse gradually upward, I keep the 3D effect for at least half the image height. When I start to lose it, I dash back down to one of the prominent 'iceberg' rocks to clear my vision. Down there all sorts of eroded remnants try to poke my eye out! It's like one of those dreams where you go from seeing clearly to missing the essentials, in spite of yourself. I really think cognitive psychologists should study the anaglyph effect.

[dilo]

Absolutely great anaglyph, james! ...can I take a rock for me?

[jamescanvin]

This I can see. Hurrah! At a variety of resolutions I succeed. Even at the maximum, if I start at the bottom and traverse gradually upward, I keep the 3D effect for at least half the image height. When I start to lose it, I dash back down to one of the prominent 'iceberg' rocks to clear my vision.

Good to hear you can see it Shaka.

Same with me, going back to a prominant rock if I loose it, and after a while I was able to see all the way across to McCool hill, a great view.

Absolutely great anaglyph, james! ...can I take a rock for me?

If you manage to grab one let us know how you did it, I've been trying all afternoon but they seem just out of reach!

[Shaka]

O.K. It may be a faux pas to exhume a thread this old, but it seemed the one to announce the first formal presentation I have seen of the analysis of our beloved Home Plate - this one by Natalie Cabrol all by herself.
Sedimentology of Home Plate at Gusev Crater, Mars was presented at the recent AGU Fall Meeting. LINK

I can't help but notice that the author is still treading carefully around the issue of HP's origin, be it volcanic or impact related. Can there be differences of opinion in the MER team? One wonders if further decisions will await 2007 visits.

EDIT: Yes, I posted too soon. More presentations re Home Plate accompanied Cabrol's at the AGU meeting. To whit: Schmidt etal and: Aharonson et al
These favor the volcanic source, and suggest stuff came out right in the middle of HP!
How cool is that?

[CosmicRocker]

No, I think it is a good time to resurrect a HP thread. A recent Leonard David piece on space.com contained some comments suggesting there is still significant debate over the origin of the feature. Those were insightful abstracts for those of us who don't have access to the complete papers.

I've been keeping up a sketch map of Spirit observations of strike and dip, and it agrees nicely with the published structural analysis of HP. That's not terribly surprising, since the dips in the area were intuitively obvious to the most casual rover. The central theme of the many HP origin hypotheses seems to be the observations of the centrally radial dips. Unfortunately, such observations can be used to support several different hypotheses. I'm really looking forward to the "short" trip back to that wonderful place.

[ustrax]

I'm really looking forward to the "short" trip back to that wonderful place.

Maybe it won't be even that "short"...
The HP campaign will be long and there's Tyrone, where Spirit got stuck but where she'll return, perharps before HP, it's a much desired target...according to Jim Bell:
"Besides HP, there's also those thick, salty Tyrone soils that we have to figure out as well. Those could represent the most interesting "water" story yet for Gusev, depending on what they show."

[atomoid]

the Schmidt paper abstract describes a "...rock textures including a bomb sag at Home Plate that indicate it formed as the result of a phreatomagmatic volcanic eruption".

somehow in all the excitement i missed the images of that bomb sag, can anyone point to a picture? thanks!

[tglotch]

Here's a picture of the bomb sag, if that is what it is:

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/press/s...D-A807R1_br.jpg

It is in the lower right hand corner of the image with the curved bedding underneath it.

[jamescanvin]

And in context, it's at the bottom of the Gibson Pan:



James

[Gray]

Regarding the purported bomb sag: Is the cobble that we see in the middle of the sag regarded as the volcanic bomb that produced the sag or is it just a rock from higher up in the cliff that happend to get stuck on the drooping layer?

[tglotch]

The bomb sag hypothesis is that the rock is actually a volcanic bomb that landed in some squishy sediments, producing soft-sediment deformation.

[Gray]

Thanks for the reply.

Hmm, squishy enough to deform the bedding, but not not squishy enough to disrupt the bedding.

Have the observations of Home Plate been compiled into a longer paper?

[Bob Shaw]

The bomb sag hypothesis is that the rock is actually a volcanic bomb that landed in some squishy sediments, producing soft-sediment deformation.

Hmmm. And then got conveniently tilted 90 degrees... ...I have my doubts about some of this. It seems a bit much to invoke gradualism *and* catastrophism on one site (I remain an acolyte of Arthur Holmes!).


Bob Shaw

[ngunn]

It seems a bit much to invoke gradualism *and* catastrophism on one site (I remain an acolyte of Arthur Holmes!).
Bob Shaw

Surely you mean Sherlock Conan Doyle . . .

[helvick]

No I think there's a good chance that he really means Arthur Holmes