Thanks to RAD calibrated 12 bit .img data and the capabilities of ImageJ, I present the following two blinkers:

From Sol17:



Then from Sol18:



Ok rock guys please explain the dark plume which has shot up from the Sol17 image to make the Sol18 image.............

I'm not a "rock guy", but maybe I would have to be one to understand what you're referring to. I just see two different views of the same rock.

I'm with W.F. Tomba here MicroKid .. don't see what you're referring to. My wife has already called me a "rock-head" but I don't think that's a sufficient qualifier here. :wink:

Check out the blue area in the lower blinker verus the upper blinker. Photos taken one Sol apart.

wow, those make my eyes hurt. um . . . no, I don't know what they are. but I'm an English major, so no one expected me to.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Shadow?

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some intern stagehand must have bumped the rock between the 2 shots or something or maybe he bumped the lighting truss and changed the shadow angles a little bit..

The lighting conditions have changed a lot between the two shots. I'd say, just a play of shadows and different lighting conditions.

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

I agree. Shadow. Just like the shawdow below the blue mark that isn't in the first image.

Shadow, and JPEG artifact that probably makes it look more rectangular than it is.

Does that make me a rock guy? Shadow guy? Or, can I be a JPEG artifact guy? That'd be cool.

What kind of guy are you?

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Al,
The top left quadrant of both image pairs has a lot of vertical stripe artefacts, more prominent in the second pair. Its just some of those.

JOhn

On the first images the shadows fall from L to R in the second set from ahead to behind. They are not comparable. If you have the energy and time to do an image difference from the originals, suitably scaled and balanced you should be able to see all the shadow patterns changing. (I have neither the time nor software for this myself)

I think if you do that you will see it's clearly time to put your 'old friend' to rest.

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What software do you use. My 12 yr old smart grandkid is getting a digital camera and I wonder what is a good software for him to play with?

I would venture to guess that MicroKid uses AdGif, but still hasn't registered it.

Most camera's come with software, but you can pay hundreds of dollars for high end programs like Photoshop, or get image analysis programs for free like ImageJ. I have a Mac, so I swear by GraphicConverter. Not sure what the PC equivalent would be.

ON TOPIC: I vote also for shadow, and MicroKid I must say that I am amazed at the volume of images that you must be sifting through to find these tidbits! I can understand the seepage photos and "water" images from MOC and MGS, but how do you choose one rock and compare it over time out of the thousands that the MERs image?

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"Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts!"
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I'm not. (but if we're using it as gender neutral, definitely books.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Here are xeyed before and after images:





Here are two blinkers made with the before and after right images:



And the left before and after images:



By the way, this is not a jpeg compression effect. The images were made from the original rad corrected 12 bit .img files, converted into lossless 12 bit .png and finally 8 bit .gif for the blinkers. Never got close to jpeg. Know the effects well.

For those who think this may be a shadow, what is casting the shadow? And against what surface?

The dark plume is associated with the object. Notice how it moves / rotates against the background rocks. Notice now it is associated with the object in the xeyed images.

Here is what was left after Oppy ran over Object1:

Would you please stop posting such wide images?

Look, the display on my laptop is 1024 pixels wide. Is that some feeble amount amount in your mind, not worth accomodating? I estimate there are about 180 pixels lost for the left margin, and about 120 for the right margin. That leaves about 720 for an image (until someone quotes it, then it goes off-page again). The wide image you just posted is 1004 pixels. As you must be aware by now, it forces text to flow off the edge of the window, and then us poor people with inadequate displays are forced to scroll back and forth to read.

If you care about your audience, use smaller images. I do, and try to keep them smaller than 500 pixels wide, and frequently try to post only thumbnails in consideration of people who are bandwidth-limited. Could you? Please?

If you create an image that just has to be wide to make whatever your point is, then don't force it down our throats by putting it in-line. Simnply post a link to it.

Pardon me. Then, are all those rectanglar shapes I see just because you've unnecessarily zoomed in so much that we are seeing the shape of the pixels? Whatever it is, it affects the shape of the rocks' non-mysterious shadows.

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Nothing is casting it. It's just a part of the rock's surface that is at a different angle to the sun from the parts around it; thus it reflects less light toward the camera and appears darker. Have you ever taken an art class?

I second the complaint about the wide images. However, the before/after blinkers are indeed edifying. Looking at them, I can see that the feature you're asking about is visible in both the before and after views. I can also see that the light angle shifts dramatically between them. Again, anyone who has taken an introductory drawing class will recognize these changes as lighting effects.

As far as the "roadkill" image goes, you're forgetting how slow these rovers are. Opportunity could never have caused such a splattering effect. Those are rocks.

Here is the last moment before Oppy ran over the object.



The after image is of the object. Not quite what one would expect from Oppy's tyre slowly roling over the object? Maybe is was not ROCK hard?

I'll reduce the wide images.

Why should I believe that all the parts you've circled are actually components of the original object?
Rocks can be very brittle. I have broken rocks with my fingers. But even if it was a Martian toad, I would expect it to be squashed in one place, not scattered around like that.
Thanks.

Look at the first blinker. Then look at the background. Then look at the second image blinker with the plume which extends up from the object and occults the background object as seen in the first blinker.

I think what you see as part of the object is actually the background. You need to reference all 4 blinkers to see that is the object and what is background. The xeyed images help.

Then if this is a rock, don't you find in interesting what the result was when Oppy's type rolled over it? Much have been a very soft rock.