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Mars Surface Anomalies Viewed From Orbit / Afar

The most likely explanation is a jpeg compression artifact caused by a transmission glitch, rather than an albedo feature. I have heard that there is nothing there in other images, although I can't confirm that yet.
 
eburacum said:
The most likely explanation is a jpeg compression artifact caused by a transmission glitch, rather than an albedo feature. I have heard that there is nothing there in other images, although I can't confirm that yet.

Nothing on other images,could have flew away?
 
Ronson8 said:
If there are, they're not likely to release them, strange they haven't debunked it yet.

Why should they bother? If they had to address every 'anomaly' found by people squinting at pixels, they'd have no time for any real work!

Seems this is just another 'face on Mars' thing, just more up to date but suffering from similar pixelation problems.
 
The cause seems to have been a cosmic ray impact on the camera, causing a distinctive linear pattern that is also seen quite commonly in SOHO images.
 
eburacum said:
The cause seems to have been a cosmic ray impact on the camera, causing a distinctive linear pattern that is also seen quite commonly in SOHO images.

SOHO images? Don't get me started... :)
 
eburacum said:
Here's an image of the original data, before jpeg compression blurred it into jagged confusion:
http://www.scienceblogs.de/astrodicticu ... ic-ray.jpg

a single line of white pixels caused by a cosmic ray collision.

Zooming in on that image shows the white streak has a lot more pixellation than the rest of the image - which is odd.
 
I think that is simply because even the image I've linked to is a jpeg - so it has compression artifacts of its own.
 
The video's been removed from that site - do you know of any other link to an image?
 
Nah, that's a load of cack and the bloke is away with the fairies. I especially like the way he keeps repeating the word "walls" as though repetition will make it more believable.

I've seen natural phenomena like that in satellite photos of earth, but I can't remember where.
 
He lost me a bit when he started spotting faces... but it's still interesting anyway.
 
Now there's a headline to scare the crap out of arachnophobics (Although Bowie fans might be happy)


Small Troughs Growing on Mars May Become 'Spiders'

This sequence of three HiRISE images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the growth of a branching network of troughs carved by thawing carbon dioxide over the span of three Martian years. This process may also form larger radially patterned channel features known as Martian "spiders."
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
Full image and caption

These five images from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show different Martian features of progressively greater size and complexity, all thought to result from thawing of seasonal carbon dioxide ice that covers large areas near Mars' south pole during winter.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
Full image and caption
Erosion-carved troughs that grow and branch during multiple Martian years may be infant versions of larger features known as Martian "spiders," which are radially patterned channels found only in the south polar region of Mars.



Researchers using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) report the first detection of cumulative growth, from one Martian spring to another, of channels resulting from the same thawing-carbon-dioxide process believed to form the spider-like features.



The spiders range in size from tens to hundreds of yards (or meters). Multiple channels typically converge at a central pit, resembling the legs and body of a spider. For the past decade, researchers have checked in vain with MRO's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera to see year-to-year changes in them.



"We have seen for the first time these smaller features that survive and extend from year to year, and this is how the larger spiders get started," said Ganna Portyankina of the University of Colorado, Boulder. "These are in sand-dune areas, so we don't know whether they will keep getting bigger or will disappear under moving sand."



Dunes appear to be a factor in how the baby spiders form, but they may also keep many from persisting through the centuries needed to become full-scale spiders. The amount of erosion needed to sculpt a typical spider, at the rate determined from observing active growth of these smaller troughs, would require more than a thousand Martian years. That is according to an estimate by Portyankina and co-authors in a recent paper in the journal Icarus. One Martian year lasts about 1.9 Earth years.



"Much of Mars looks like Utah if you stripped away all vegetation, but 'spiders' are a uniquely Martian landform," said Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona, a co-author of the report.



Carbon-dioxide ice, better known as "dry ice," does not occur naturally on Earth. On Mars, sheets of it cover the ground during winter in areas near both poles, including the south-polar regions with spidery terrain. Dark fans appear in these areas each spring.



Hugh Kieffer of the Space Science Institute in Boulder put those factors together in 2007 to deduce the process linking them: Spring sunshine penetrates the ice to warm the ground underneath, causing some carbon dioxide on the bottom of the sheet to thaw into gas. The trapped gas builds pressure until a crack forms in the ice sheet. Gas erupts out, and gas beneath the ice rushes toward the vent, picking up particles of sand and dust. This erodes the ground and also supplies the geyser with particles that fall back to the surface, downwind, and appear as the dark spring fans.



This explanation has been well accepted, but actually seeing a ground-erosion process that could eventually yield the spider shapes proved elusive. Six years ago, researchers using HiRISE reported small furrows appearing on sand dunes near Mars' north pole at sites where eruptions through dry ice had deposited spring fans. However, those furrows in the far north disappear within a year, apparently refilled with sand.



The newly reported troughs near the south pole are also at spring-fan sites. They have not only persisted and grown through three Mars years so far, but they also formed branches as they extended. The branching pattern resembles the spidery terrain.



"There are dunes where we see these dendritic [or branching] troughs in the south, but in this area, there is less sand than around the north pole," Portyankina said. "I think the sand is what jump starts the process of carving a channel in the ground."



Harder ground lies beneath the sand. Forming a spider may require ground soft enough to be carved, but not so loose that it refills the channels, as in the north. The new research sheds light on how carbon dioxide shapes Mars in unearthly ways.



MRO began orbiting Mars in 2006. "The combination of very high-resolution imaging and the mission's longevity is enabling us to investigate active processes on Mars that produce detectable changes on time spans of seasons or years," said MRO Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "We keep getting surprises about how dynamic Mars is."

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder. JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the MRO Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the orbiter and collaborates with JPL to operate it. For additional information about the project, visit:

http://mars.nasa.gov/mro

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/small-troughs-growing-on-mars-may-become-spiders
 
I'm looking at it and all I can think of is "It's a glyph! That's part of the Stargate!"
Seriously it looks uncannily like the glyph for Scorpius or Monoceros.
 
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What appears to be a train line and train on Mars (awful computerised voiceover):

 
What appears to be a train line and train on Mars (awful computerised voiceover):


My first thought was that the strange dashed line could be the join between two Mars images or data streams, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Could the effect be something similar to this example?

https://www.cnet.com/news/tracks-on-mars-nasa-spots-rolling-stone/

Still very mysterious what forces would set a boulder tumbling and bouncing across the Martian landscape.
Wish we could get a closer and higher-res look at that object that resembles a pair of wheels connected by an axle too.
 
My first thought was that the strange dashed line could be the join between two Mars images or data streams, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Could the effect be something similar to this example?

https://www.cnet.com/news/tracks-on-mars-nasa-spots-rolling-stone/

Still very mysterious what forces would set a boulder tumbling and bouncing across the Martian landscape.
Wish we could get a closer and higher-res look at that object that resembles a pair of wheels connected by an axle too.
That's entirely possible - but look how dead straight the line is.
 
That's entirely possible - but look how dead straight the line is.

what I find interesting is the similarity between this image and the 'rolling' stones on the Moon.

The big question in both cased is 'what would cause an irregular object to continue rolling'

Imagine a, sat, 1 Metre cube of concrete. How do you get it rolling at all ?

Once again, where are the super hi resolution pic's when you need them ?
 
There is another possibility. Suppose that whatever is making the marks is an exploration vehicle from 'some place else'. And it isn't actually rolling.


Do any of you remember the 'walking drag-lines' used in open cast mining ?

They move forward by lifting the superstructure of the machine up and moving it forward on the base, usually tracks. Then the tracks move forward to fit back under the base in it's new position.
 
Wonder if it made a sound as it rolled ?

Possibly not, as sound requires a medium to travel in. But it would have created a vibration.

But there is more to it than that. What shape do you think (going by the tracks) the object would be ?

And how would it start rolling ?

I'll go look and see if I can find my other reference to it. I don't want to duplicate.
 
The atmosphere on Mars is about 0.6% x Earths' so this boulder would have made a very small sound, probably imperceptible to any human that might have been present. I expect that when humans colonise this planet, they'll probably be genetically tweaked to tolerate the conditions in various ways, and sensitive hearing might be one of those tweaks.
 
It's not obvious in that image, but the boulder was rolling down quite a steep slope. I wonder how long it has been there; possibly many millions of years.

cd73cb67-79f4-4c5a-8df4-850fc2260e3c.jpg

The rock is obviously irregular, and has left a series of bumps as it rotated - and there are several other, fainter tracks also going down hill in that region.
 
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