Looks like Water for me

Hi, unless this is just some kind of optical illusion for me looks like water. Any opinion ?

Mawrth Vallis is one of the oldest valleys on Mars. It was formed in and subsequently covered by layered rocks, from beneath which it is now being exhumed. The rocks surrounding the valley have been observed by the Omega spectrometer aboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft, which found them to include minerals with water bound within their structure. Thus, the Mawrth Vallis region is of keen interest to the team using the mineral-mapping Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The CRISM team requested this image by the orbiter's Context Camera in support of a CRISM observation during orbiter's transition phase testing of instruments. The image is centered near 25.6 degrees north, 19.4 degrees west. photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov

The original images:

mars.jpl.nasa.gov...
Warning! Large pic 29 mb

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Quote Reference.

[edit on 28-10-2006 by sanctum]

It looks like clay.

I think if you were to see a colored image, it would be red, rather than black.

It looks like it is a lake of some liquid, who knows which? The reason I say it's a lake is because there is an outer edge around the entire lake. The more you look at the two pictures the more you realize that the ripples in the two pictures are different. The change in ripples is the best evidence that this is most likely a lake.

I wonder what kind of liquid it is and how deep is the lake?
Does NASA think this is a lake or just some "minerals with water bound within their structure"photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov... and what does that mean?

Great find TC! Keep it up!

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[edit on 28-10-2006 by sanctum]

looks like weathering to me , sorry :



see 2 different weathering patterns adjacent to each other

the crater you show - yes it looks like a crater to me - may have been weathered by both wind and water at some time in the past - but now it is most likley dry as a bone .

great pics of mars though - kkudos for bringing them to ATS attention

You would also have to take into consideration of what would be causing the ripples if it were water. In the second crater, the southern side of the crater looks like it has water flowing in from the edge, but if that were the cause, a river would be needed. Since the ripples will still be there in the next photo, I would place my money on it being hardned clay.

[edit on 28-10-2006 by DJMessiah]

The shadow in the second photo of the crater edge looks to me like the reflection from a wind blown liquid. I'm voting for H2o.

nice find tcgeek!

i take it you guys voting for hardened clay haven't looked at the very large image?

mars.jpl.nasa.gov...

if you look at the top of the picture, you see these ripples all over the place. they're running between hills exactly like how rivers would run around hills on earth:









those are simply screen shots of the giant file posted above.

now, if i told you this was a satellite image of Earth and asked you what the rippling trails were, you would tell me it was a river, but since you guys know it is mars, you're afraid to say what your own two eyes see. IMO, you guys need to start trusting your eyes more than you trust NASA. it's pictures like these that help me believe the pressure on mars is not 6 millibars and it's simply a stat faked by NASA. maybe one day we'll know for sure.

as for the image posted by the OP, i say H2O for sure.


[edit on 28-10-2006 by ChocoTaco369]

I see what you are saying that it looks like a body of water but I believe its just sand dunes. As a mater of fact on the large picture you can even see that the sand is blowing out of the crater 5 o'clock position. Those same patterns of dunes are all over that large 25mb pic...especially up towards the top.


Pie

Originally posted by ThePieMaN
I see what you are saying that it looks like a body of water but I believe its just sand dunes. As a mater of fact on the large picture you can even see that the sand is blowing out of the crater 5 o'clock position. Those same patterns of dunes are all over that large 25mb pic...especially up towards the top.


Pie

i think you're trying too hard. look at the pics i posted above. they're just screen shots of the large image. they don't look like sand dunes to me. not the way they split, wind around hills and reconnect afterwards. there's only one thing i know that does that on earth, and that's a river.

Thats either the remanants of a river ie the actual river bed (with no water in it at all) or it is wind blown sand forming dunes around the base of a hill..

There is no water in your pictures, but i do agree that it could be where water once flowed long ago.

Sand dunes.

WE have ground photos of these.
Taken by opportunity rover.

like this one at Victoria crater:
Victoria dunes


Then another MRO photo.
This one really shows the dunes, creeping down what may have been water channel at one time. It's one of my favorites so far, from MRO
creeping dunes