Explanation: On sol 46 (April 6, 2021) the Perseverance rover held out a robotic arm to take its first selfie on Mars. The WATSON camera at the end of the arm was designed to take close-ups of martian rocks and surface details though, and not a quick snap shot of friends and smiling faces. In the end, teamwork and weeks of planning on Mars time was required to program a complex series of exposures and camera motions to include Perseverance and its surroundings. The resulting 62 frames were composed into a detailed mosiac, one of the most complicated Mars rover selfies ever taken. In this version of the selfie, the rover's Mastcam-Z and SuperCam instruments are looking toward WATSON and the end of the rover's outstretched arm. About 4 meters (13 feet) from Perseverance is a robotic companion, the Mars Ingenuity helicopter.
It's interesting to see how much lighter and pinker the rocks are in the Perseverance image compared with the rather dark gray-colored regolith.
On the Earth, this kind of bright splotches on a darker background would normally mean that sunlight had been filtered through foliage.
Ann
What? I may not be keeping up with the latest Mars exploration, but I think so far they have found no foliage on Mars. (At least there is no foliage within the camera's view.) Apparently we can't automatically apply an Earth based scientific explanation to Mars. So what then is your theory of those light, pink splotches on Mars?
I would like to see a mission with many helicopters scanning a vast area for interesting things the rover can visit. Maybe even trips that take several days or weeks. The reasons for many is because of the likelihood of some getting out of service.
What the picture doesn't convey is how cold it is and how deadly the atmosphere is without equipment. If the picture could, I wouldn't be trying to imagine what it would be like to be on Mars by looking at that picture that looks like a desert on Earth.
It's interesting to see how much lighter and pinker the rocks are in the Perseverance image compared with the rather dark gray-colored regolith.
On the Earth, this kind of bright splotches on a darker background would normally mean that sunlight had been filtered through foliage.
Ann
What? I may not be keeping up with the latest Mars exploration, but I think so far they have found no foliage on Mars. (At least there is no foliage within the camera's view.) Apparently we can't automatically apply an Earth based scientific explanation to Mars. So what then is your theory of those light, pink splotches on Mars?
Are they not simply wind-exposed rocky islands in a sea of darker dust?
EDIT: perhaps this is more clearly seen upon clicking on the image and zooming in:
Wind Exposed Pinkish Rock on Mars
-- "To B̬̻̋̚o̞̮̚̚l̘̲̀᷾d̫͓᷅ͩḷ̯᷁ͮȳ͙᷊͠ Go......Beyond The F͇̤i̙̖e̤̟l̡͓d͈̹s̙͚ We Know."{ʲₒʰₙNYᵈₑᵉₚ}
NASA to Brief Early Science Results From Perseverance Mars Rover
TOPICS:JPLMarsMars 2020 Perseverance RoverNASAPlanets
By NASA July 17, 2021
<<NASA will hold a virtual media briefing at 1 p.m. EDT (10 a.m. PDT) Wednesday, July 21, to discuss early science results from the agency’s Perseverance Mars rover and its preparations to collect the first-ever Martian samples for planned return to Earth. The briefing will originate from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission is managed. It will air live on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website and livestream on multiple agency social media platforms, including JPL’s YouTube and Facebook channels.>>
<<During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was erroneously believed that there were "canals" on the planet Mars. These were a network of long straight lines in the equatorial regions from 60° north to 60° south latitude on Mars, observed by astronomers using early low-resolution telescopes without photography. They were first described by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli during the opposition of 1877, and confirmed by later observers. Schiaparelli called these canali ("channels"), which was mis-translated into English as "canals". The Italian word canale (plural canali) can mean "canal", "channel", "duct" or "gully". The first person to use the word canale in connection with Mars was Angelo Secchi in 1858, although he did not see any straight lines and applied the term to large features —for example, he used the name "Canale Atlantico" for what later came to be called Syrtis Major Planum. In 1889, American astronomer Charles A. Young reported that Schiaparelli's canal discovery of 1877 had been confirmed in 1881, though new canals had appeared where there had not been any before, prompting "very important and perplexing" questions as to their origin.
During the favourable opposition of 1892, W. H. Pickering observed numerous small circular black spots occurring at every intersection or starting-point of the "canals". Many of these had been seen by Schiaparelli as larger dark patches, and were termed seas or lakes; but Pickering's observatory was at Arequipa, Peru, about 2400 meters above the sea, and with such atmospheric conditions as were, in his opinion, equal to a doubling of telescopic aperture. They were soon detected by other observers, especially by Lowell. During the oppositions of 1892 and 1894, seasonal color changes were reported. As the polar snows melted the adjacent seas appeared to overflow and spread out as far as the tropics, and were often seen to assume a distinctly green colour. The hypothesis that there was life on Mars originated from seasonal changes observed in surface features, which began to be interpreted as due to seasonal growth of plants (in fact, Martian dust storms are responsible for some of this).
During the 1894 opposition, the idea that Schiaparelli's canali were really irrigation canals made by intelligent beings was first hinted at, and then adopted as the only intelligible explanation, by American astronomer Percival Lowell and a few others. The visible seasonal melting of Mars polar icecaps fueled speculation that an advanced alien race indigenous to Mars built canals to transport the water to drier equatorial regions. Newspaper and magazine articles about Martian canals and "Martians" captured the public imagination. Lowell published his views in three books: Mars (1895), Mars and Its Canals (1906), and Mars As the Abode of Life (1908). He remained a strong proponent for the rest of his life of the idea that the canals were built for irrigation by an intelligent civilization, going much further than Schiaparelli, who for his part considered much of the detail on Lowell's drawings to be imaginary. Some observers drew maps in which dozens if not hundreds of canals were shown with an elaborate nomenclature for all of them.>>
Perseverance Selfie with Ingenuity
