WHAT WE DO

JOINRENEWJOIN

  

The Planetary Society Blog

By Emily Lakdawalla




Pretty picture: Opportunity around Concepcion

Feb. 9, 2010 | 09:32 PST | 17:32 UTC
We need your help.
Please donate to support our blog, website, and podcast.
RSS 2.0 News Feed

Here's a neat picture from Opportunity, a panorama composed of its wide-angle, mast-mounted Navcam cameras, showing the crater Concepcion. In this one I particularly like the parallel slices cut through a low dune by Oppy's wheels as she cut over to begin her clockwise circumnavigation of the crater. In front of her are the three cubic ejecta blocks named "Chocolate Hills."

Concepcion crater, Opportunity sol 2147
Click to enlarge >
Concepcion crater, Opportunity sol 2147
On sol 2,147 (February 6, 2010), Opportunity had shifted around the small, fresh crater named Concepcion to check out some of its ejecta blocks. Credit: NASA / JPL / Damien Bouic
Opportunity captured a color view of the rocks from this position. There's a bit of a rind on the leftmost block, which might have been some mineral filling a fracture in the rock before the crater formed. In color, that rind is very clearly revealed to be a map of North and Central America, including Baja California, with a little less distinct mappery of part of Europe, perhaps even Australasia to the right. The martian cartographers need to go study that part of Earth a bit more. (At least that's what I see -- what do you see?)
Chocolate Hills
Click to enlarge >
Chocolate Hills
Opportunity captured this view of the ejecta blocks named "Chocolate Hills" from Concepcion crater on Sol 2147 (February 6, 2010). Credit: NASA / JPL / Cornell / color composite by Stuart Atkinson

Post this page to: del.icio.us Yahoo! MyWeb Digg reddit Furl Blinklist Spurl

Comments

Clear proof that the little red people enjoy a joke.
#1 - Stephen Mackenzie - 02/09/2010 - 09:54
Chocolate Hills Map
I guess the martian cartographers died out when Florida was covered with water many millenia ago
#2 - Rich Stevens - 02/09/2010 - 10:47
Pattern-finding
I have seen better, but it probably depends what you are used to... Clearly South America has not ripened yet.

Cassini managed to find the east coast of Britain on Titan, to my eyes, enhanced by the apparent cloud cover over the rest of the island.

#3 - Jon Wharf - 02/09/2010 - 12:04
engineer
Clearly, the view of earth was obscured by Mars dusty atmosphere. Remember when we thought that there were canals on Mars? I wish we were still going there soon. For the time being we will have to settle for these post cards from the little robot that could. I am bummed for Spirit, perhaps stuck forever. Hopefully she will survive the winter so she can continue to do science up there.

td
#4 - Tony Dinkel - 02/09/2010 - 15:45
engineer
Clearly, the view of earth was obscured by Mars dusty atmosphere. Remember when we thought that there were canals on Mars? I wish we were still going there soon. For the time being we will have to settle for these post cards from the little robot that could. I am bummed for Spirit, perhaps stuck forever. Hopefully she will survive the winter so she can continue to do science up there.

td
#5 - Tony Dinkel - 02/09/2010 - 15:54
Name
E-mail (Will not appear online)
Title
Comment
To prevent automated Bots form spamming, please enter the text you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.



This comment form is powered by GentleSource Comment Script. It can be included in PHP or HTML files and allows visitors to leave comments on the website.


Emily's on Twitter! »

Sign up for email updates!
Email address:
(optional) Your name: