There are times, I have to admit, when it feels like an obsession. I want to know!

The forgiveness line was self-deprecating humor, and you don't need forgiving. Notice I don't usually release full-scale versions of the colorized MI? I find them cartoonish too, usually; the Mazatzal image was a rare exception because the color was distributed so broadly and the two cameras were perfectly registered. Everything was lined up on my side.

The first thing that popped into my head when I started seeing the blue was copper, followed by the name "chrysacola", or something like that, one of the samples in a box o'rocks I had as a kid (so long ago that my fuzzy memory is understandable). Or maybe it's magnesium. Or something else....

The irradiation angle is very interesting. If I interpret all the material right, we're talking about transparent or translucent materials if the color goes all the way through. Or maybe Nick's right, it's just a surface layer. That raises the interesting connection with that long-exposure image we were looking at a few days ago, the one that showed lots of noise and streaking on the CCD. I wonder if there's a relatively high level of low-level radiation in the area? I wonder if the APXS can be commanded to sense without irradiating? I wonder about a lot of things...

So many ellipses, so little time....