There are two Spirit images taken at about 3 seconds apart that show one thing different.

Image 1: http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/...B7P1561L0M1.JPG
Image 2: http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/...B7P1561L0M1.JPG

There's a little spot of light (or something) right in the middle. A cropped image animation of the two is: http://icez.org:81/pics/misc/shiftrock.gif

A few others and me have considered the following:

• Sun-Spirit-Land angle (very improbable since the images are taken so close apart and does not move)
• Micro-meteor and a little luck?
• Camera bugs

What's your opinion?

Lost Martian signaling for help!

wacky how did you spot this?

A good find I had to use my Rupert annual 'spot the difference' skill to find it before looking at the animation.
I'm afraid I have no good explanation for it. which is good.
Roy F

Camera noise - I spotted that with MMB when images came down earlier today and it's a classic spec of odd camera noise, not unusual.

Doug

Interesting. If this is camera noise, would there be examples of it in the 3 year's worth of images that have come down. Did anyone see anything similar up to now?



Michiel

"Did anyone see anything similar up to now?"

Probably a thousand times, but I couldn't find one for you - it's just one of those things you notice when the images are coming down the pipe into MMB.

I'd recommend reading
http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/Bell_Pancam_InFlight.pdf

and the other Pancam operation papers here :
http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_ins...blications.html

Doug