[X] My Assistant

[aldo12xu]

Well, it's literally been months in the making -- on and off, whenever I've had some spare time -- but I finally finished a compilation on the geology of the different rock types that were observed by Opportunity on it's trek from Eagle to Erebus craters. In a way, it was good that Opportunity hadn't moved very far since last November. This way my update is still up to date

So if you have some spare time, have a look. There's a lot of info there, which I hope will serve as a useful guide once we get to see some deeper layers at Victoria.

The link to the write up is on my homepage.

Cheers,
Aldo.

[CosmicRocker]

That reminds me of something I wanted to mention from LPSC. We've heard comments previously from the team that Opportunity was moving up-section as it traversed southward. We could even see for ourselves the south dipping beds at Payson An updated stratigraphic section was shown by John Grotzinger and Scott McLennon in their LPSC presentations, but I couldn't sketch it because it was shown so briefly. It appeared to be an updated version of the one in Grotzinger's Power Point presentation, "The 2004 Mars Exploration Rover Mission-Evidence for Water and Prospects for Life." I borrowed the original schematic section from his presentation which is available at http://www.esi.utexas.edu/outreach/prevlectures.html.

What I was able to notice from my brief glimpses of the updated version was that they had added a short section to the top, apparently because they think what was seen at Erebus was at least somewhat higher stratigraphically than the rocks at Endurance and Eagle. I also noticed that it had another, higher contact labelled as the "Mogollon Contact." The Wellington contact has been described as an interdune deflationary surface possibly controlled by a paleo water table. The Whatanga contact was described by McLennon and Grotzinger as a place where the water table may have remained stable for some time, creating secondary porosity and recrystallization. McLennon went on to suggest that he sees as many as four movements of the paleo-water table, but neither he nor Grotzinger actually mentioned the new Mogollon Contact, so I have no idea what they think it is. I meant to ask about that, but I became sidetracked by other things and forgot to do so.

Since then I have gone back to the Mogollon and Payson Panoramas to try to identify a contact of some kind, but it is not apparent to me.

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