Rover captures light source on Mars!!

reply to post by Blue Shift

Earlier in the thread, I had an idle thought about transient lunar phenomena. How would one of those incidents appear to a small moon rover's nav-cam?

In the old NASA pdf, they were reported as diffuse clouds of colours or as more distinct pin-points of lights.

ETA - The wiki links are dead. Chronological Catalog of Reported Lunar Events

Kandinsky
reply to post by Blue Shift

 

Earlier in the thread, I had an idle thought about transient lunar phenomena. How would one of those incidents appear to a small moon rover's nav-cam?

In the old NASA pdf, they were reported as diffuse clouds of colours or as more distinct pin-points of lights.

There's that twice within a couple of days thing. Cosmic rays are a lot more frequent than TLPs.

reply to post by Phage

The post wasn't offering explanations, it was answering Blue Shift's query.

Cosmic ray is rightfully high on the list of probable explanations.

Kandinsky
reply to post by Phage

 

The post wasn't offering explanations, it was answering Blue Shift's query.

I understand. I also answered the query. There are possibilities other than cosmic ray strikes.

reply to post by Miniscuzz


star to you my friend good pic. another poster said that something might be trying to attract our attention, hmm, what if it is a they and they are stuck and want help. I am old and sleepy and that thought just occurred to me waiting for more news on that front. Bye.

Phage
reply to post by LordAdef

 

That's why it's plausible to consider the second cam missed the rock reflection. And that's why NASA is also considering rock reflection.

Was the rock moving? Why else would the reflection last less than one second? I think the reflection theory could concievably apply to the first instance, when the area with the "flash" was obscured by the hill, but not the second.

It's clear you advocate the cosmic ray theory, and I respect that. What I don't understand is why you're so reluctant to "at least" consider something else occurred in this case.

I have considered the "light leak" idea, though I thought it odd.

But in fact one picture is a lot smoother than the other (just see the sky's granularity). What's your take on that Phage? It's odd.

It's two different cameras. If you look at other pairs you will see that the slight (to me) difference is consistent between them.

edit on 4/9/2014 by Phage because: (no reason given)

There is a difference in the cameras to answer your questions here is the specs.

The two cameras have different focal lengths and different science color filters. The stereo baseline of the pair is ~24.5 cm. One camera, referred to as the Mastcam-34 (M-34), has a ~34 mm focal length, f/8 lens that illuminates a 15° square field-of-view (FOV), 1200 × 1200 pixels on the 1600 × 1200 pixel detector. The other camera, the Mastcam-100 (M-100), has a ~100 mm focal length, f/10 lens that illuminates a 5.1° square, 1200 × 1200 pixel FOV. Both cameras can focus between 2.1 m (nearest view to the surface) and infinity. The M-100 IFOV is 7.4 × 10^-5 radians, yielding 7.4 cm/pixel scale at 1 km distance and ~150 µm/pixel scale at 2 m distance. The M-34 IFOV is 2.2 × 10^-4 radians, which yields a pixel scale of 450 µm at 2 m distance and 22 cm at 1 km. A strict definition of “in focus” is used for these cameras wherein the optical blur circle is equal to or less than one pixel across.

reply to post by dragonridr

There is a difference in the cameras to answer your questions here is the specs.

You are providing specs for the MastCams.
The images in question are the from the NavCams. The basic specs for the NavCam pairs are the identical but that doesn't mean the performance is the same. Differences could be attributable to dust accumulation on the lenses or, conceivably, in the hardware.

DrMescalito
So does the cosmic ray only affect one camera? why not both?

The stereo baseline (distance between the left and right cameras) is 42cm. That is a huge distance compared to the size of a cosmic ray, which only strikes a tiny fraction of one sensor. Despite the name, cosmic "rays" are mostly just single protons.

Thinking about the reflection theory, I wonder if 42cm lateral shift would be enough for the light to shine in one camera but not the other? It would have to be a very focused reflection.

reply to post by Rob48

I talked about that earlier. A reflection of the Sun from a small mirror (a heliograph) at a distance of half a mile is 25 feet wide.
en.wikipedia.org...

You'd have to get down to less that a hundred yards to make that feasible. A parabolic reflector might change that some but the spread of the beam would still be there.

reply to post by Phage

Do we know what distance from the rover that ridge line is? The navcam specs say that the stereo ranging limit is only 100 metres, but there appears to be notable parallax between the left and right camera views at the distance of the apparent light. It looks to me as if the ridge must be rather close to the camera.



Trying to judge distances on an alien landscape is almost impossible with no reference points. With lots of these rover views I've been amazed just how small the rocks I'm looking at are - what I'd assumed were big boulders were actually only a few inches across!

Apologies if this has already been addressed. I am trying to keep up with this thread while away from home with patchy internet access.

MrPenny

bottleslingguy

MrPennyYou haven't bothered to research any examples that show it can't happen, have you?

really? that's what you're going with?

Yeah. I figure if you're going to ask the same question repeatedly without getting an answer that eventually you'll decide "heck with that, I'll find out myself and impress the beans out of everybody." I'm only encouraging you to check some stuff out.

What's wrong with that?

so you're saying I should begin this journey of looking for something that isn't there with the optimistic hope that I can come back here some day and impress people?

reply to post by Phage


are you still going with cosmic ray? you're not on this reflection kick now are you?

Phage

Kandinsky
reply to post by Phage

 

The post wasn't offering explanations, it was answering Blue Shift's query.

I understand. I also answered the query. There are possibilities other than cosmic ray strikes.

for example????????

reply to post by Kandinsky


I thought we were talking about Mars?

reply to post by bottleslingguy


Yes, I too have the optimistic hope that you can come back here someday and impress people.

Have a great weekend!

Phage
Static discharge. Maybe, but a static charge built up from what and discharging to what?

I'm not sure. You're right in that there's generally not enough water and atmosphere to create the conditions for chemical light generation. One thing we do have, however, is a ground covered in many places with tiny iron spheres. We also have a carbon dioxide wind strong enough to create dust devils. Is there some way for the wind to spin those iron particles around enough to generate an electric charge in an area on the ground? A capacitance reaction? The built-up charge then might be discharged from one area with a lot of particles to an area with fewer particles. High charge to a ground, essentially. Carbon dioxide has zero electrical conductivity, but if we could get enough iron dust suspended in the air, maybe that would create an opportunity for a circuit.

Hmmm...

Kandinsky
Earlier in the thread, I had an idle thought about transient lunar phenomena. How would one of those incidents appear to a small moon rover's nav-cam?

In the old NASA pdf, they were reported as diffuse clouds of colours or as more distinct pin-points of lights.

I understand that the way TLP works is that trapped meteor/asteroid gasses manage after who knows how long to get heated by the sun enough for them to explode out of whatever little pocket they've been stored in. I suppose a similar thing could happen on Mars. We're always hearing about how there's a fair amount of frozen water stuck below the surface. After a long period of erosion, it might be possible for some of this stuff to finally heat up enough from sunlight to blast its way out of the ground. Maybe at that point there would be enough water for there to be an electrical discharge of some kind.

There's not much to work with on Mars that would help create something like this.

freelance_zenarchist
In black & white photography dead pixels will appear white. That's what you're seeing here, missing information in the digital photo, not a light source.

Digital sensors don't take negative pictures, they take positives. Dead pixels will appear black, not white.

Ananake
reply to post by Miniscuzz

 

Made a stereoscopic gif to more easily see its place or lack thereof in 3 dimensions.

imgur.com...

There is clearly a rock formation shielding the light from the second camera.

Rock formation I tell ya.