At 19:56:17 UTC Mastcam Left captured this decidedly greenish portion of the terrain!
In this case, the rocks seem to be sparsely affected by the greenish coloration, while the ground goes from brown to turquoise with areas that are also yellowish and green.
If we analyze this photo closely, we can see that the greenish material is only present on the surface of this small dune and is not an integral part of the soil that constitutes it. If confirmed, this aspect would indicate that the material producing this coloration is of very recent formation, perhaps even less than a year!
In fact, (red) sandstorms and wind erosion should remove and/or cover said material in a very short time.
Is this therefore a clear indication in favor of the presence of biological activity on Mars?
The original image is a black and white encoding of the Bayer mask that has been converted to color through a process called “debayering” or “demosaicing”. In addition, the photo has undergone noise reduction due to Jpeg compression, white balance and a slight increase in microcontrast and color saturation in order to make the colors more similar to what the human eye would see.
Original image: https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/02602/mcam/2602ML0136760040208244C00_DXXX.jpg
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