Curiosity Rover captures mysterious blotch

[ozman]

Space junkies try to explain mysterious image in photo from Mars rover

A mysterious blotch that appeared along the horizon in a photo from the surface of Mars stirred speculation about what it might be, as two hours later it was gone.

One image from the Curiosity rover as it landed on the fourth planet from the sun showed a "faint but distinctive" image on the horizon, the Los Angeles Times reported. However, a subsequent batch of images sent from the unmanned rover two hours later showed no trace of the blotch

http://news.yahoo.co...-190419541.html.

Edited August 9, 2012 by ozman

[Wickian]

It might have just been some kind of dust cloud, unless they discovered a Martian citadel and photoshopped it out.

[Gary Meadows]

Looks like dust cloud meets pixelation.

[Likely Guy]

I remember the Viking 1 landing on Mars in 1976 (also during the Olympics, coincidentally) and it showed a blue sky on Mars.

After it was colour corrected, we now know that not to be true.

[Imaginarynumber1]

Yeah, most likely nothing but dust.

[ZaraKitty]

Conspiracies, conspiracies everywhere.

[CRIPTIC CHAMELEON]

Hmmm very interesting but I'll put myself out on a limb here and go with everybody else its most likely dust. [Or is it ?]

[ThePhantomFlanFlinger]

[Waspie_Dwarf]

The cameras had transparent lens caps. These were covered in a thin layer of dust during landing. The earliest images were taken with these caps still in place. It's probably one of those images and it's probably just out of focus dust.

[questionmark]

The cameras had transparent lens caps. These were covered in a thin layer of dust during landing. The earliest images were taken with these caps still in place. It's probably one of those images and it's probably just out of focus dust.

It is not probable, it is most likely.

[Timothy]

Ooh mars orbs. :/

Edit: Or mars hyrax.

Edited August 10, 2012 by Timonthy

[Karlis]

Mystery Cloud in Mars Rover Landing Photo Solved

NASA has solved the mystery. The weird blob in Curiosity's first photos was actually the huge dust cloud kicked up by the sky crane descent stage that delivered the rover to the Red Planet.

Read more

[Abramelin]

The cameras had transparent lens caps. These were covered in a thin layer of dust during landing. The earliest images were taken with these caps still in place. It's probably one of those images and it's probably just out of focus dust.

I think all the consternation is not about the dust itself, but about the white thing that flies from left to right over the horizon (from 27 secs to 46 secs in the video)

[media=]

[/media]

Is it one of the satellites?

I know those 20 seconds can be 200 seconds or 2000 seconds or longer because the video is nothing but a sequence of photos put together, although I have never seen that sequence of photos on an official (NASA) site.

.

Edited August 23, 2012 by Abramelin

[Abramelin]

"Mystery" solved:

Hi Archimedes,

Nice work showing the bad pixels in the Mastcam images. In answer to your question, the interval between the images is zero. That video only shows one actual MSL Hazcam image. The moving dots have been added later for some reason and are not part of the original rover imagery. There are more than 50 frames of animation in that video, but there weren't nearly that many Hazcam images taken on Sol 0. All of the Sol 0 raw images can be found here:

http://mars.jpl.nasa...imedia/raw/?s=0

The image used in the video is this right rear Hazcam image taken at 05:18:38 UTC, just after touchdown:

It's part of a stereo pair. The left image, taken at the same time, is this:

These are both roughly 2x enlargements of the originals. The dark cloud on the horizon in the center of each image is thought to be the impact plume of the descent stage. That cloud appears in every frame of the YouTube video, but is only present in this one single pair of actual Hazcam images. The next rear Hazcam image was taken about 45 minutes later and shows no sign of the plume.

P.