Starship Asterisk*

Clearly the streaks are from a large glass, ridged object reflecting the light given off by the light source at the horizon. Stealth technology at its best, undoubtedly using transparent superconducting materials - I'd be curious to know how far the nearest US air base is from where these images wer...

Derek, Thanks for the clarification. It just seems disingenuous for the HiRise team to put out these images and explanations as if, short of a closer look (in whatever form that would take), this was the best guess they could come up with based on current interplanetary photo technology. Clearly not...

If this were the case, would have thought the HiRISE team would have thought of it already...

One other thing: how steep is the incline at the flank of the volcano where this thing is located? The brighter rim above the black seems to be the same height all way round. If there was an incline here and the black was liquid, I would think we would see a narrowing of the rim on the 'downslope' s...

Why would it have to be oil? Why not some other liquid that could sustain a colloidal dispersion at the typical martian temperature ranges? Opacity is a common feature of these solutions.

I think DaleA has got it, especially with the blackness appearing to encroach on the rim at about "11:30" on the enlarged view from the planetary.org blog. Could not a liquid body also display the same thermal properties - similar to surrounding temps during the day and then warmer than th...