At 20:46:48 UTC the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) captured this close-up detail of a rock with interesting color characteristics.
The photo was taken from a distance of 16.89 cm with a definition of 0.067 mm/pixel, thus covering an area of 10.74 cm X 7.97 cm.
Rock formed mainly of conglomerates and chalk veins, indicating a sedimentary origin in an aqueous environment.
If we exclude the areas covered by the typical reddish powder, the rock appears to be of a rather pale bluish color, tinged here and there by blue spots without a particular morphological correlation.
It seems logical to deduce that the more intense blue spots are surface features of the rock, as much as the more reddish areas are due to the deposited dust.
But then what creates the blue patches?
To show colors more similar to what the human eye would see, I subjected the image to noise reduction due to Jpeg compression, white balance, and a slight increase in microcontrast and color saturation.
Original image: https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/02611/mhli/2611MH0007990011000463C00_DXXX.jpg
This post has been automatically translated. See the original post here.