Mars Image: TOWER?

Stone tower on Mars?

Found this one today. It appears to be a stone tower. NASA has cropped the image, or pieced the image together almost cutting the tower out. Was this intentional or coincidence? My guess would be the tower is 30 feet wide and possibly 100 feet in height.


The original NASA image is
PSP_007464_1985_rednomap.JP2

The image ares is
X: 18053
Y: 42289

The image was cropped and rotated 180 degrees.

Looks like the oicture is a bit offset, and taken at different times of the day, since the lighting is different as well. s for the tower... looks like a normal hill with the light catching the top. If you move the side up and over a bit so it's matching, it hjust seems to make a fairly normal part of mar's terrain.
What you are tagging as light looks more like lighter soil, than light generated from some sort of tower.

Good day to you sir,
I was wondering if you could provide a link so I may view this image as well as others from the original site. I can't seem to find it on the NASA site.

reply to post by BroonStone


There you go

hirise.lpl.arizona.edu...

reply to post by super70


I wonder how you reached a value for the height, but the width, according to a 27.9 cm/pixel resolution, is something like 2.5 metres (8 feet 4 inches), not the 9 metres (30 feet) you got.

Using the map-projected image (that has possible mis-alignments corrected and is rotated so north is to the top of the image) we can see that the "crop" (that is not a crop but the join line between the strips that make up the image) was corrected, so we can see the "tower".


And if my interpretation of the direction of the light is correct, your idea of that direction is wrong, as I show in the following image, that I have rotated to align it with your image (why did you rotate the image?)

I see you're at it once again.
I wish there were a tower because that would be very exciting.
Alas this is only a hill and a ver unremarkable hill at that.

Keep looking though Im sure you'll find somthing someday.
The trick is to not try so hard, I think that strategy should work well for you.

It reminds me of this "tower" on Mars.

Originally posted by ArMaP
reply to post by super70

 

I wonder how you reached a value for the height, but the width, according to a 27.9 cm/pixel resolution, is something like 2.5 metres (8 feet 4 inches), not the 9 metres (30 feet) you got.

Using the map-projected image (that has possible mis-alignments corrected and is rotated so north is to the top of the image) we can see that the "crop" (that is not a crop but the join line between the strips that make up the image) was corrected, so we can see the "tower".

And if my interpretation of the direction of the light is correct, your idea of that direction is wrong, as I show in the following image, that I have rotated to align it with your image (why did you rotate the image?)

Hello ArMap, I'm glad you took a look because obviously you have great eye for this stuff, and technical knowledge to go with it. I rotatated the image because for me, when the light is coming from the northern area it doesnt make everything look upsidedown, to me anyway. Can you see what I'm talking about, it could very well be a trick of the light and shadows, but this appears to be a cylinder shaped tower, very much like a smoke stack but not hollow. My measurements are a guess, yours are more on point I'm sure. If it is a stone structure, its very intriguing.

Oh and BTW, I came up with my light direction by looking at other stones and their shadows (that were outside of this cropped image)...I'm pretty sure it was acurate.

Originally posted by super70
I rotatated the image because for me, when the light is coming from the northern area it doesnt make everything look upsidedown, to me anyway.

I know what you mean, I have the same problem, sometimes.

My measurements are a guess, yours are more on point I'm sure. If it is a stone structure, its very intriguing.

Oh and BTW, I came up with my light direction by looking at other stones and their shadows (that were outside of this cropped image)...I'm pretty sure it was acurate.

I think I should explain my measurements and light direction.

On the bottom of every page on the HiRISE site there is an "OBSERVATION TOOLBOX" area, with information about the photo.

Using the "Original image scale range" or the "Map projected scale" value (for non map-projected or for map-projected images, respectively) we can know (approximately) the size of any feature.

In this case I counted 9 or 10 pixels for the width of the "tower", so, as I did it with the non map-projected version, that means a 9 or 10 x27.9 cm/pixel, giving a value of 2.51 or 2.79 metres.

The light direction can be known from the "Sub-solar azimuth" value.

The "Sub-solar azimuth" is the angle, clockwise, between a theoretical line from the centre of the photo to its right edge and a line from the centre of the photo to the position of the Sun at the moment the photo was take.

In this case, it would be something like this.