Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Digital Mirage

re: Digital Mirage
excentryk — (archived)

If the candidate skylights are 'digital mirages' from a mis-interpretation of saturated pixels, then I think we shouldn't see the same phenomen in MOC, THEMIS and HiRise images (as well as CRISM). Saturated pixels are given special values regardless of how they are displayed on screen. I don't have the raw data from HiRise, but in THEMIS (V18315002) you can see there are no under or oversaturated pixels corresponding to this feature.

If this was actually a bright object, then it either must be oriented so that sunlight is reflected directly to the spacecraft, or it must have an intrinsic albedo much higher than anything else in the region. The lack of slopes, consistency of multiple observations, and diurnal thermal behaviors (discussed in the paper) all indicate that neither of these is true. These features are indeed dark.

Some people have mentioned that we should explore these features asap. I'd like to agree because these are fascinating, but every successful mission to land on Mars did so at elevations lower than zero (below the global mean). These possible caves are all located at high elevations where the atmosphere is too thin to allow incoming craft to slow down or maneuver.

MOLA probably didn't have sufficient resolution to detect these features unless it had the good fortune to hit one precisely (MOLA footprints are about the same size as these features)

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (78 posts)