Undefined "light" on Mars

[touched]

The light has to be some kind of sensor issue. From the raw images it appears the Curiosiy rover moved some distance, thus the light cannot be an object just reflecting light from the Sun as the geometry would change and one could not expect to see the reflection from the same object again only in the right camera. The most likely cause would seem to be cosmic ray damage where it electrically charged a pixel on the sensor and it bled out when the image was taken, this is luckily not a common event or the cameras would be seeing this all the time.

Hot pixel ?

[majicbar]

Hot pixel ?

Do you recall seeing a picture of the damage to the Apollo helmets from cosmic rays? Cosmic rays moving through a material will drag some of it out and form a cone of some size in electron micrographs. This material will acquire some electric charge as well and can damage CCD's and other chips permanently. Computers can sense when a pixel becomes "hot" and can drop it from the scan in high end processors and I would assume this has happened here, but several frames showed the "hot pixel" before being dropped from the scanning.

[Marvin]

Marvin...I need your help. Prove that skinny bob is real...

I've always wanted a "paul" style little E.T. sorta buddy.

I'll be willing to start it in the debunk thread,(or do it here) I just want your expect analysis on that whole thing...

PanPara, feel free to post anything you would like in the Image Analysis threads... I am sure one of us will find the time to take a look.

Of course it is difficult to approach any analysis of something being “real.” It would be more correct to look for evidence of forgery and try to prove fabrication. If you are only looking for evidence of reality, then the "search" will become exclusively negligent to any evidence of falsehood (especially in the light that you are not looking for that kind of data). But if one cannot prove it to be a fake, it opens up the probability of it being the real deal.


M