Starship Asterisk*

owlice wrote:Mirrored here.

nstahl wrote:... I see Phobos's orbit is within about 1 degree of Mars's equator so I guess one might hope the damage would be restricted to equatorial regions. ... I hope they show good sense in placing the giant air factories.

owlice wrote:APOD is back online. (Yay!)

Tara_Li wrote:Looking at the full image - in the area around pixel location 1997,1652 - there's something curious, at least to my eye. Zoomed in, it's about 5 pixels (35 ish meters) across, and very sharply demarked. The obvious answer is that it's a small upthrust of some kind, or a large loose boulder - but to my eye, it *LOOKS* almost as though it's above the surface. It would be awesome to have caught a meteor coming in before it struck, or a bouncing rock from ejecta.

Wadsworth wrote:

Tara_Li wrote:Looking at the full image - in the area around pixel location 1997,1652 - there's something curious, at least to my eye. Zoomed in, it's about 5 pixels (35 ish meters) across, and very sharply demarked. The obvious answer is that it's a small upthrust of some kind, or a large loose boulder - but to my eye, it *LOOKS* almost as though it's above the surface. It would be awesome to have caught a meteor coming in before it struck, or a bouncing rock from ejecta.

As you stated, it is most likely just a loose bolder or somthing similar. There are several more closer to the edge at 968,581 and 905,605 and 749,647 etc.. Because of their relative location to the light source, you can see the nice spikey shadows they create.

keir wrote:The striations running across the moon appear in many instances to be joining lines of impact crators.
This especially noticable top right. Also perhaps emanating from the mjar right crator.
Could this be like an "atmospheric" erosion where the atmosphere is something really erosive like vapourized rock. The whole moon seems to have been smoothed over as though sandblasted. The craters may be acting as an aerodynamic channeller of the "wind". Could the whole moon have passed through something gassesous?

Tara_Li wrote:

Wadsworth wrote:

Tara_Li wrote:Looking at the full image - in the area around pixel location 1997,1652 - there's something curious, at least to my eye. Zoomed in, it's about 5 pixels (35 ish meters) across, and very sharply demarked. The obvious answer is that it's a small upthrust of some kind, or a large loose boulder - but to my eye, it *LOOKS* almost as though it's above the surface. It would be awesome to have caught a meteor coming in before it struck, or a bouncing rock from ejecta.

As you stated, it is most likely just a loose bolder or somthing similar. There are several more closer to the edge at 968,581 and 905,605 and 749,647 etc.. Because of their relative location to the light source, you can see the nice spikey shadows they create.

Indeed - I see the spires you mention. I find it somewhat odd, though, that there are so few of them - especially in this part of the image. There's something similar, but much smaller, around 2527,1776 - but it just doesn't give the same feel of being away from the surface.

BDanielMayfield wrote:I'm trying to find what ya'll are discussing, but were are the numbers (pixel coordinates?) you're using?

Bruce

rstevenson wrote:It's possible to see a lot given just a few pixels. Or rather, it's possible to imagine a lot given just a few pixels.

Arty_Fact.jpg

Rob

Tara_Li wrote: Indeed - I see the spires you mention. I find it somewhat odd, though, that there are so few of them - especially in this part of the image. There's something similar, but much smaller, around 2527,1776 - but it just doesn't give the same feel of being away from the surface.

BDanielMayfield wrote:

keir wrote:The striations running across the moon appear in many instances to be joining lines of impact crators.
This especially noticable top right. Also perhaps emanating from the mjar right crator.
Could this be like an "atmospheric" erosion where the atmosphere is something really erosive like vapourized rock. The whole moon seems to have been smoothed over as though sandblasted. The craters may be acting as an aerodynamic channeller of the "wind". Could the whole moon have passed through something gassesous?

I wondered about these crater chains too. The link in the Explanation “stunning color image” links to a description of another Phobos photo on a JPL website. From it I quote:

“A series of troughs and crater chains is obvious on other parts of the moon. Although many appear radial to Stickney in this image, recent studies from the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter indicate that they are not related to Stickney. Instead, they may have formed when material ejected from impacts on Mars later collided with Phobos.”

Therefore it seems that these crater chains were caused by straffing from shrapnel blasted off Mars during a period of heavy bombardment from space. Truly a fearful time.

Bruce

A few years ago, while visiting or, rather, rummaging about Notre-Dame, the author of this book found, in an obscure nook of one of the towers, the following word, engraved by hand upon the wall:—

~ἈNΆГKH~

These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic caligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the author deeply.