"And it is very interesting to notice that nowhere in the image captions talking about the RATted areas does the word "blue" appear. They refer to the coating as dark, but they do not say, "Holy crayola, look at this blue stuff we found!". Weird."

Well - it ISNT BLUE!!!

It's simpy blue to us amateurs who merge the images because of the way all the images have been 'auto exposed' for being put on the raw images website. It's the same with the 'blue'berries - they're actually grey - and when you have an image with the sundial - you can the greyberries behind it on the ground at Meridiani.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - anyone coming to conclusions based on multi-channel images made from stuff at the raw images section of the JPL website is talking rubbish.

Doug