Yet more images, including more from the microscope.
Wow! Lots more spheres. A couple that look as perfect as a golf ball, but all the pebbles are quite rounded and pretty similar in size.
One pattern you do see in this and the earlier MI images is that the larger ones are more round. That is the vessicles or pitting is more pronounced the smaller the pebble is. I guess that implies to me that what we are seeing is pitting from weathering of originally larger, rounder objects. It's not obvious to me that a purely volcanic process would do that -- rounded tephra makes some sense, but then shouldn't the larger ones be just as vessicular as the small ones?
I'm not even going to try and guess. They do look awfully round and uniform for tephra, but who knows.
Should be a very interesting press conference on Monday.
Space/Science » in reply to Latest Opportunity raw images
re:Yet more new images (Sol 14) -- SPHERES!