The rocks of Spirit Point

Some more colour filtered pancam images came back today, allowing me to make another couple of “colourised portraits” of rocks close to Oppy…

That’s *most* of Tisdale 3, and here’s the distinctly odd-looking Tisdale 5…

I must be honest, it’s a bit frustrating – and disappointing – that these beautiful, gnarled, warped, splashed-with-god-knows-what rocks don’t have their own names, and are just being grouped together as “Tisdales”. There’s probably a very sound scientific reason for that – maybe the MER team geologists suspect some kind of commonality between them, and want to make their discussions and comparisons as simple as possible – but it seems a shame to not give each one its own, individual name, especially when they all look so fascinating.

I’ve been absolutely blown away by the beauty and variety of the rocks Oppy has seen since she rolled up onto Cape York and trundled towards Odyssey Crater. She really is in a very special place, I think, and there must be a huge amount to be learned about the history of this part of Mars, and about Mars itself, from this spectacular “rock garden” Oppy is working her way through. There must be countless geologists looking at these pictures wishing they were there instead of Oppy, kneeling down beside these big rocks, looking at them closely, seeing the way the light strikes and bounces off them, running their fingertips over them in search of veins of minerals and other surface features…. Aaah, one day, one day. But for now, Oppy is our geologist, our presence on Mars, and she’s doing us proud. So, to celebrate her continuing adventure, and to give us all a handy reference guide, I’ve made this ‘poster’ showing “The Rocks of Spirit Point”. Please note: these are just *my* colourisations, my take on the rocks. Yes, I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible, and I think – in some cases! – I’ve done a pretty passable job, but this is just for fun, I’m not claiming it’s anything more than that, ok? And the rocks aren’t shown to scale, either. So, with all that in mind, I hope some of you enjoy this next pic…

…and more to come.

And that, my friends, is why I’ve been in love with MArs since I was *this* high… 🙂