Oh, I thought I'd read that he was a friend. This place has such a huge volume of traffic that I tend to skip details in my daily attempt to get 'caught up' each day. This is not to be confused with speed reading. I can't do that, I just make believe I can.

You aren't wasting our time. We're here anyway and I for one love trying to solve a mystery. It's just that most of the mysteries presented here are a bit above my paygrade level of space knowledge. I do know something about making 3d terrain though. So this is one of the few topics I can get my teeth in to.

The problem is I'm not really sure what you're referring too. In the #2 and 5 images, I see the afore mentioned streaking caused by slapping a 2d image on a 3d map and some fuzzy spots. The fuzzy spots get lumped in with the blocky pixels and compression artifacts because, in my opinion, that's what they are. There are some places that appear to be sand filled depressions and, for some reason, the applied overhead shot is knackered. My guess is a poor attempt to stretch a texture in one direction to fit the 3d data. Either that or it's just too small. Maybe they will redo it with a better texture some day. Though it's my impression that ESA just says 'Here, take this. We have given you this. Worship us.' In this case the 2d image would probably be more valuable. The 3d work is just for ooo ahhh effect.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel