[X] My Assistant

[Steve G]

Tricky to line up the two RAC images but here is my attempt.

[Tman]

Wow, looks like near the "ice" already!

[ugordan]

If that's ice, it looks awfully easy to scrape off, no? Makes me rethink the whole exposed-ice-under-the-lander idea.

[djellison]

Looks like a small dry powdery deposit of some sort to me - ice isn't whiter than white like that.

Doug

[eeergo]

I don't know, the color in the images is quite lighter than the official releases, maybe it isn't so white after all... and that blueish/blackish rim surrounding the white patch looks like dirty ice to my much untrained eye.

I don't think it's so easy to dig, it just looks scraped.

[djellison]

It just reminds me more of the Tyrone / Silica Valley / Paso Robles type desposits at Gusev more than the ice we see under the lander. Then gain, the more I look at it, the more it looks like the top of a 'layer' of some sort, which just has to be the ice. We'll know soon enough - that's the fun with exploration

Doug

[Tman]

Guess the next digging probe should it already prove.
If there is somewhere pure ice, wouldn't it be much deeper in the ground, resulting from higher weight/compression?
The thrusters probably melted that layer slightly.

[ugordan]

It's damn hard to infer color properties from overexposed raw data. Whatever it is, it looks much darker in longer wavelength filters. I'd expect ice to be near uniformly reflective at wavelengths less than 1 micron and to be the brightest stuff in the scene. The filtered images show that there are otherwise grayish rocks that appear brighter in the red spectrum, while at the blue end the stuff is much more reflective (apart from lander deck, it's by far the brightest stuff and it's still overexposed).

If I'd hazard a wild guess, I'd say this stuff might actually turn out blue-greenish in natural color once exposures are adjusted.

[climber]

Guess the next digging probe should it already prove.
If there is somewhere pure ice, wouldn't it be much deeper in the ground, resulting from higher weight/compression?
The thrusters probably melted that layer slightly.

The thruster could also have removed the "white layer" (if this is not ice) and get to the ice then. In this theory, the white layer would have spread all over the place.

[ugordan]

In this theory, the white layer would have spread all over the place.

Why don't we see it, then?

[Guest_Oersted_*]

Occam's Razor says it is ice.

[Ant103]

Hi,

Continue playing with "raw" jpegs

This famous trench and hypothetic ice


An analgyph


A parrallel eyes :


The Phoenix deck :

[Greg Watson]

Here is the trench with some zoom and a bit of resampling (screen shot from Stereo Photo Maker).

There doesn't appear to be any depth to the whitish area, which if it were the top layer of an underground ice layer seems strange. More like something lying on the bottom of the first trench. Ok I know there are no liquids at this temp and pressure but the image is suggestive of a fluid flow that froze??

Yes I do know that is supposed to be impossible but hey this is Mars and this may be the first up close contact with Martian brine / salts / minerals / acid or whatever that blue green stuff its made of.



PS, that strange pattern I noticed on the right lower corner of the first rear dig wall has reduced in size and lost it's whitish core??
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&id=14544

[fredk]

Thanks for the images, all. I see they decided to dump the latest dig onto the smooth track left by the sliding/rolling rock.

Ant, is there any chance you could post the colour parallel eye version at full resolution (or the two separate full-resolution colour frames)? With stereo photomaker, we can view in stereo no matter how large the image. Thanks!

[Ant103]

Yes, I can do that Fredk

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Greg Watson]

Hail Ants,

With respect, you have the left and right eyes reversed. The trench comes out a hill. BTW I like the blinker. Always a goodie and very informative.

Greg