Oileán Ruaidh – most beautiful Barsoomian meteorite yet

Some new images have come back from Mars, allowing us to make a realistic(ish) colour view of “Oileán Ruaidh”, the latest iron meteorite to be found by Oppy as she travels across the vast Meridiani Plain. Here’s one of the raws…

Now that’s pretty impressive on its own, but with just a little bit of work you can get to this…

…which shows a lot more detail. Particularly striking and intriguing is the ‘camouflage pattern’ on the meteorite’s surface, made up of light and dark areas.

But when I turned these images into a colour portrait… oh wow, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw appear on my monitor at all…

That’s just stunning, don’t you think? We’ve not seen anything like this on Mars before. I feel quite guilty now about calling this meteorite ugly, because it is starting to look very much like this might be the most beautiful meteorite found on Mars so far…!

Finally for this post, plucked from our “Just a bit of fun!” file, here’s another visualisation of how all these meteorites might look side by side. And *again*, this is just for entertainment, ok? I’m not claiming scientific accuracy of any kind. I just wondered what they’d all look like if they were set out on the steps leading up to my flat… 🙂

How much do you think that little lot would be worth?!?! 🙂

And if you’re wondering what the meteorite at the bottom is, that’s “Allan Hills”, a meteorite found by Oppy’s sister rover, “Spirit, around day 872 of her mission, on the other side of Mars in the shadow of the Columbia Hills.

And FINALLY… one last colour pic of Oilean for today… worked quite hard on this one. It might not be that realistic, but I think it’s pretty. 🙂