You've been reading that Kim Stanley Robinson MARs opera?

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Candidate Cavern Entrance Northeast of Arsia Mons

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Credit NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

This image shows a very dark spot on an otherwise bright dusty lava plain to the northeast of Arsia Mons, one of the four giant Tharsis volcanoes.

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Image1.jpg (41.3 KB, 21 views)

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

Looks like someone poked a finger through a pie crust...

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Wonder how big a cave you could actually have on Mars? The "2 magnitudes greater than Earth" that Robinson used so much in his novels?

They look like the Cenotes in the Yucatan. (sans water of course.)

Good Call.

Here's a Crater Lake...



Here's an altered cut from the JPEG 2000. Gaussian filter in ENVI or levels in photoshop / gimp...



I don't know the details about MRO, but that must be noise from it's electronics in there.

More interestingly there is a "zone" free of noise around the edge. A less dark area ? The "slope" under some liquid ?

At least more evidence for this NOT being a Cave IMO, but standing liquid (notice I did'nt say water, I have no evidence for it being water).

DJ Barney

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I don't know the why of the noise itself, but I assume the 2 lines seen in it are tile seams because the pic is a composite of multiple subimages (maybe done here on earth in postprocessing, maybe already onboard because it uses multiple sweeps to take an image, I don't know the details).

At least it's an interesting image. Can it be an icy layer on the bottom? That would explain it being flat. The blackness (if it has anything to do with true colours!) may be due to dirt or something?

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I saw a talk by the MRO team a few weeks back when they had a greatly enhanced version of this image (or a different image) and you could actually see a rubbly slope leading down underground.

On the maximum size issue, I would assume that cave on Mars could be three times the wifdth of an equivalent cave on Earth before it collapsed.

How close are the rovers to the caves?
But seriously that would be cool to see their perspective of the caves!

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Living Large in a Lava Tube :: Astrobiology Magazine.
"Summary (Nov 16, 2004): While the current generation of Mars missions seek out the planet's water history, another line of evidence is also required for life: heat. Active surface volcanoes may not currently exist on Mars, but the red planet has a colorful volcanic past and some enormous lava tubes that may bring polar ice to a liquid bubble."
http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1304.html

Future 'Martians' Could Live in Caves.
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 01:00 pm ET
21 March 2000
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...es_000321.html

Mars Underground: Digging Deep for Life.
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 12:30 pm ET
05 September 2003
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...es_030905.html

BASALTIC CAVES AND LAVA TUBES: ASTROBIOLOGICAL TARGETS ON EARTH AND MARS. Richard J. Léveillé1, Saugata Datta2. Canadian Space Agency, 6767 route de l'Aéroport, St-Hubert, QC, Canada, J3Y 8Y9 (****@space.gc.ca), Georgia College and State University, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Milledgeville, Georgia, USA, 31061 (****@gcsu.edu).
Lunar and Planetary Science XXXVIII (2007) 1446.pdf
http://ilewg.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/l...7/pdf/1446.pdf

Oregon L5 Society
Martian "Ice" Caves.
"Introduction: Ice in Martian lava tube caves would have scientific and developmental value. These natural channels in rock may hold keys to Mars' past as well as potential resources for humanity's future.
Rationale: Terrestrial lava tube caves are natural receptacles for accumulations of water. Often, due to lower temperatures coupled with the superior insulation properties of the surrounding rock, these accumulations are in the form of ice. Historically, ice was mined from some lava tube caves (Fig. 1)."
http://www.oregonl5.org/mist/l5lpi02.html

This last is interesting because it suggests a means by which subsurface ice and/or liquid water could persist in the caves near the equator on Mars. This is important because the surface of Mars near the equator had long been believed to be desiccated, though the GRS readings on Mars Odyssey also has increasingly brought this into question.


c.f.:

Newsgroups: sci.astro, rec.arts.sf.science, alt.sci.planetary, sci.bio.misc
From: rgregorycl...@yahoo.com (Robert Clark)
Date: 2 Jun 2002 16:45:30 -0700
Local: Sun, Jun 2 2002 7:45 pm
Subject: What kind of multicellular life will we find on Mars?
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.b...15d67d7b829c01


Bob Clark

Hi there. any more info about this image ? I'd be interested to see how they got anything more out of this image (if that's the one they were using). Where is the colour imager on this ? The multi spectral detectors ?

DJ Barney

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HiRISE has a red filter across it's full 20k pixel width - and an optional ( and not used very often ) extra of 4000 pixels width in the centre in near IR and a blue-green.

CRISM is a true vis to nIR imaging spectrometer at 12-18m res in several hundred colours.

Doug

Sorry, it was one image in a series in a PPP. One gob-smacking feature after the other. You should have seen the HiRISE image of the recent gully flow! I hope we don't have to wait too long to see these.

Jon

So what is the timetable ?

When will I be able to check the PDS for these images ?

Why is there not a proper release of ancillary info with these images? We get meters per pixel and sun angle, but there does'nt seem to be a clear list like we got with MOC, or still get with THEMIS.

Not that I'm complaining with images of this quality, but you know

DJ Barney

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amazing photos, I hope to see more of these in the near future

All the images I have seen show nice round holes. If these were holes in the roofs of tubes then one would expect some to be elliptical or longer.
May be they are holes made by metor impact in a uniform solid surface overlying a deep layer containing mostly ice. After impact the ice would sublime / melt making the large cave underneath and leaving a round hole.

Andrew

No idea, sorry. There was quite a feeding frenzy round the presenters, as you might imagine. I gave up and had some cheese and orange juice instead.

Jon

They look like sandworm holes to me.

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The legend

I just wanted to bump this thread to ask if anyone ever found these enhanced images that JonClarke mentioned. They still aren't posted on the MRO website.