Surface Appearance
The Mars Pathfinder found its landing site to contain a great deal of rocks. Analysis shows the area to have a greater density of rocks than 90% of Mars. Some of the rocks leaned against each other in a manner geologists term imbricated. It is believed strong flood waters in the past pushed the rocks around to face away from the flow. Some pebbles were rounded, perhaps from being tumbled in a stream. Some rocks have holes on their surfaces that seem to have been fluted by wind action. Small sand dunes are present. Parts of the ground are crusty, maybe due to cementing by a fluid containing minerals. In general the rocks show a dark gray color with patches of red dust or weathered appearance on their surfaces. Dust covers the lower 5–7 cm of some rocks, so they may have once been buried, but have now become exhumed. Three knobs, one large crater, and two small craters were visible on the horizon.
Read more about this topic: Oxia Palus Quadrangle
Famous quotes containing the words surface and/or appearance:
“I have passed down the river before sunrise on a summer morning, between fields of lilies still shut in sleep; and when, at length, the flakes of sunlight from over the bank fell on the surface of the water, whole fields of white blossoms seemed to flash open before me, as I floated along, like the unfolding of a banner, so sensible is this flower to the influence of the sun’s rays.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The aim of science is to apprehend this purely intelligible world as a thing in itself, an object which is what it is independently of all thinking, and thus antithetical to the sensible world.... The world of thought is the universal, the timeless and spaceless, the absolutely necessary, whereas the world of sense is the contingent, the changing and moving appearance which somehow indicates or symbolizes it.”
—R.G. (Robin George)