APOD: Ancient Ogunquit Beach on Mars (2017 May 08)

[APOD Robot]

Ancient Ogunquit Beach on Mars

Explanation: This was once a beach -- on ancient Mars. The featured 360-degree panorama, horizontally compressed, was taken by the robotic Curiosity rover currently exploring the red planet. Named Ogunquit Beach after its terrestrial counterpart, evidence shows that at times long ago the area was underwater, while at other times it was at the edge of an ancient lake. The light peak in the central background is the top of Mount Sharp, the central feature in Gale Crater where Curiosity has been deployed. Curiosity is slowly ascending Mount Sharp. Portions of the dark sands in the foreground have been scooped up for analysis. The light colored bedrock is composed of sediment that likely settled at the bottom of the now-dried lakebed. The featured panorama (interactive version here) was created from over 100 images acquired in late March and seemingly signed by the rover on the lower left. Currently, Curiosity is carefully crossing deep megaripples of dark sands on its way to explore Vera Rubin Ridge.

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[brojo]

I like how they blacked out certain parts of the picture.
Top secret tech?

[Chris Peterson]

I like how they blacked out certain parts of the picture.
Top secret tech?

I expect they didn't feel the need to waste time and bandwidth on imagery of the rover itself. Also, the rover is so close to the camera that it doesn't mosaic well, leading to ugly seam lines and strange distortion.

[Ann]

The horizontally compressed image makes me slightly queasy. Good thing the enlarged picture is not compressed.

That dark sand, with its waves and ripples, looks eerily like a very dark sea.

Ann

[Nitpicker]

Lots of interesting rock formations to be seen.

[NCTom]

Determining if the distant mesas were water or wind cut might help determine when the lake disappeared. Here's hoping Curiosity goes there.

[JohnD]

The APoD pic is so distorted as to be incomprehensible. The interactive version is so much better! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3qr9AqZyEI

The sedimentary rock is well seen in the mesa (right on the ApoD pic, almost behind the rover on the interactive) but how has the field it stands in become so broken up? It looks like a ploughed field!

And why is the dark sand so interesting? It must be the product of other strata, moved, mixed and deposited by semi-random wind processes, so much less informative than the local rocks?

John
PS And Ogunquit Beach? Gotta be called something, but it's nothing like! Oguquin is miles of smooth sand. For the quantities of rocks and sand Brighton Beach would be better! http://www.bugbog.com/beaches/british-b ... h-england/ But then the Curiosity team probably doesn't know Brighton.

[neufer]

Ogunquit Beach? Gotta be called something, but it's nothing like! Oguquin is miles of smooth sand. For the quantities of rocks and sand Brighton Beach would be better! http://www.bugbog.com/beaches/british-b ... h-england/ But then the Curiosity team probably doesn't know Brighton.

<<Brighton Beach is an oceanside neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, along the Coney Island peninsula. Brighton Beach is bounded by Coney Island proper at Ocean Parkway to the west, Manhattan Beach at Corbin Place to the east, Sheepshead Bay at the Belt Parkway to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south along the beach and boardwalk. It is known for its high population of Russian-speaking immigrants, and as a summer destination for New York City residents due to its beaches along the Atlantic Ocean and its proximity to the amusement parks in Coney Island.>>

Click to view full size image 1 or image 2

<<Ogunquit (oh-GUN-kwit) is a town in York County, Maine, United States. As of the 2010 census its population was 892. Ogunquit, which means "beautiful place by the sea" in the indigenous Abenaki language, was first a village within Wells, which was settled in 1641. The first sawmill here was established in 1686, and shipbuilding developed along the tidal Ogunquit River. Local shipwrights built schooners, brigs and dories. At what was then called Fish Cove, near the unnavigable Josias River, fishing was a major livelihood. But the cove was unprotected by a headland or breakwater from Atlantic storms, so fishermen had to protect their boats by hauling them ashore each night. With a 3½-mile beach of pale sand and dunes forming a barrier peninsula, connected to the mainland in 1888 by bridge across the Ogunquit River, the village was discovered by artists. It became a popular art colony and tourist area. To accommodate summer crowds, several seaside hotels and inns were built. Marginal Way, a scenic trail, runs along the coast from Perkins Cove to Ogunquit Beach. Part of Stephen King's The Stand, published in 1978, is set in Ogunquit. Ogunquit was named America's Best Coastal Small Town in USA Today's 10 Best Readers' Choice 2016. Ogunquit has become a destination for LGBT tourists, with numerous LGBT-owned and -operated hotels, restaurants, bars, theaters, and other businesses.>>

[starsurfer]

I like how they blacked out certain parts of the picture.
Top secret tech?

It's a conspiracy to hide ancient pyramids built by the reptilians. This one's for the National Enquirer!

[Ann]

The APoD pic is so distorted as to be incomprehensible. The interactive version is so much better! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3qr9AqZyEI

The sedimentary rock is well seen in the mesa (right on the ApoD pic, almost behind the rover on the interactive) but how has the field it stands in become so broken up? It looks like a ploughed field!

And why is the dark sand so interesting? It must be the product of other strata, moved, mixed and deposited by semi-random wind processes, so much less informative than the local rocks?

John
PS And Ogunquit Beach? Gotta be called something, but it's nothing like! Oguquin is miles of smooth sand. For the quantities of rocks and sand Brighton Beach would be better! http://www.bugbog.com/beaches/british-b ... h-england/ But then the Curiosity team probably doesn't know Brighton.

[There once was a photo of a
beach here and a woman in the
lower right corner was topless,
and it offended someone.]

Nice Beach.
Source: Pinterest.

Brighton Beach, eh? Why not. Or Nice Beach, not Nice as in pleasant, but Nice as in the city in France. That fancy beach is all pebbles!

The beach of Ribersborg, Malmö, is pretty nice on a sunny day.

Speaking of sunny, why does the weather look all overcast in today's APOD? Surely it wasn't an unusually cloudy day on Mars when the photos for today's APOD were taken?

Ann

[Chris Peterson]

The APoD pic is so distorted as to be incomprehensible.

Only the main page image, which is often reduced, distorted, or cropped. The actual APOD image itself is not distorted, and can be panned around in any decent image viewer (or even in your browser).

[neufer]

Speaking of sunny, why does the weather look all overcast in today's APOD?
Surely it wasn't an unusually cloudy day on Mars when the photos for today's APOD were taken.

There is almost always blowing dust on dry Mars and the distant edge of Gale Crater is some 75 miles away.

[Ann]

Speaking of sunny, why does the weather look all overcast in today's APOD?
Surely it wasn't an unusually cloudy day on Mars when the photos for today's APOD were taken.

There is almost always blowing dust on dry Mars and the distant edge of Gale Crater is some 75 miles away.

Thanks!

You should have explained that to Ray Bradbury. I can't remember the title of the story, but I'm sure I've read something by him (The Martian Chronicles?) where he wrote that the weather on Mars is really hot, because there are hardly any clouds in the sky, so the weather on Mars is always sunny. (On Venus, by contrast, it's wet and chilly, because the clouds are so thick... I'm sure Bradbury wrote something like that, too.)

Ann

[Chris Peterson]

Speaking of sunny, why does the weather look all overcast in today's APOD?
Surely it wasn't an unusually cloudy day on Mars when the photos for today's APOD were taken.

There is almost always blowing dust on dry Mars and the distant edge of Gale Crater is some 75 miles away.

Thanks!

You should have explained that to Ray Bradbury. I can't remember the title of the story, but I'm sure I've read something by him (The Martian Chronicles?) where he wrote that the weather on Mars is really hot, because there are hardly any clouds in the sky, so the weather on Mars is always sunny. (On Venus, by contrast, it's wet and chilly, because the clouds are so thick... I'm sure Bradbury wrote something like that, too.)

Well, to be fair, there wasn't anybody around in the 1940s to explain that to Bradbury. That was a time when the standard picture of Mars still included canals and writers were influenced by Barsoom.

Bradbury, of course, lived to see the current crop of rovers roaming Mars.

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Curiosity Mars rover completes its second Martian year
May 12, 2016 by Guy Webster

"Mars is much drier than our planet, and in particular Gale Crater, near the equator, is a very dry place on Mars," said Germán Martínez, a Curiosity science-team collaborator from Spain at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

The local atmosphere is clear in winter, dustier in spring and summer, and windy in autumn. Visibility in Gale Crater is as low as 20 miles (30 kilometers) in summer, and as high as 80 miles (130 kilometers) in winter.

[JohnD]

Overcast? It's probably a Bank (national) holiday on Mars and you know what that does to the weather.

Sorry, Chris, I didn't see the 360 version obtainable by clicking on the APoD, but I still think that NASA's interactive version on YouTube is better!

John

[Chris Peterson]

Sorry, Chris, I didn't see the 360 version obtainable by clicking on the APoD, but I still think that NASA's interactive version on YouTube is better!

I think both have their place. The YouTube version is nicely immersive, but low resolution. The full resolution image lets you see the ants.

[Guest]

What are the white streaks on the rocks? Salts? Also you can see white material, perhaps rubbed off the rocks, on the rover's tires.

[MarkBour]

Curiosity is mostly going uphill, it appears. I would just guess that at the lower elevations there was greater chance of finding evidence of ancient life. So, the extended mission is probably not focusing on that any more.

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

What are the white streaks on the rocks? Salts?
Also you can see white material, perhaps rubbed off the rocks, on the rover's tires.

It's Borax to help kill the Martian ants.

http://cdanews.com/2016/12/nasa-finds-b ... habitable/

[Nitpicker]

The full resolution image lets you see the ants.

Nah, no ants to be seen ... they're all heading towards the jelly donut that Opportunity dropped:
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140129.html

[Alex_333]

What an extraordinary picture. Do the colors correspond to what an human eye would see ?

[Chris Peterson]

What an extraordinary picture. Do the colors correspond to what an human eye would see ?

Probably pretty close. It's color balanced for Earth lighting, which is pretty much what our vision normalizes colors to.