Cumbrian Sky

** Welcome to CARNIVAL OF SPACE readers! **

If I'm honest - and I suspect a few people out there in blogland feel the same way - I have to admit that I've been a little disappointed - or maybe frustrated is a better word for it - by many of the photos that have come back from the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera. Don't get me wrong, they're fantastic achievements, and show Mars in more detail than ever before, and I cherish and appreciate each and every single one of them. But I was expecting to be drooling over my keyboard like that slobbering dog, "Hooch", everytime the new images were posted on the HiRISE site, allowing me to explore Mars boulder by boulder, almost hiking across it virtually. I think I expected that I'd be able to roam Mars remotely from the comfort of my chair through the eyes of "The People's Camera", as it was publicised before launch...

But although there have been some genuinely drool-worthy images, I have felt a bit excluded to be totally honest, because my old faithful PC just hasn't got the power or energy or hardware necessary to display the hiRISE pictures in all their glory. It's good enough for everyday tasks - I write my children's books on it, run my astronomical society on it, download MER pictures onto it, etc etc - but it just hasn't got the guts to let me view or zoom in on those huge, memory-munching JPG2 images that taunt me from the right hand side of the HiRISE site everytime I call up a newly released image, and as a (don't laugh) dial-up user I'm unable to access the whistle-and-bells viewing tools others use so much. I even go to my local library and use their wow-speed broadband computers to download the HiRISE jpgs instead of setting them downloading here and going out to do some shopping - or have a vacation - while my computer chugs away...

I'm not blaming the MRO or HiRISE guys for any of that, of course; if I had a better PC I'd be fine, there'd be no problem. But like many people I am going to stick with my trusty Hal Junior until it breaks down, then will replace it with a mode modern machine. And broadband. Until then, I feel like I'm exiled to the sidelines a bit, as I'm sure many other people do, too.

When MRO arrived in Mars orbit I giddily looked forward to exploring Mars on my own, independantly, having the whole planet at my fingertips. I couldn't wait to start tap-tapping away at my keyboard, click-clicking away with my mouse, zooming in on areas of HiRISE images that caught my eye. But that hasn't happened. So, what I tend to do is view "The Best of HiRISE" second-hand, enjoying the crops people on unmannedspaceflight.com and other forums are kind enough to post for People Like Me to enjoy. They've shown me wonders beyond belief, and I'm very grateful. ( I do think that the HiRISE pages could feature a lot more crops of the most interesting images, to let People Like Me without access to Cray Supercomputers enjoy the full potential of the camera, but I know they're busy there. ) But occasionally an image appears on the HiRISE gallery that catches my eye, makes me sit back, crack my knuckles like a concert pianist and then dive into the data-crammed, matrix-like bowels of the internet, despite my technical disabilities, to find out as much about it as I can.

Last week an image appeared on the HiRISE site that has refused to get out of my head ever since. It was this one: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_006754_1790 and it showed what appeared to be, at first glance, some pretty impressive layering in the rocks in an area of the huge crater, Schiaparelli. It looked interesting enough on the Gallery page to merit a closer look, so I set the full size JPG b&w image downloading and headed out to do a bit of shopping. When I came back it was there waiting for me, so I zoomed in on it - and it literally took my breath away. This was as weird a place as I'd ever seen on Mars, with row after row after row of serrated rocky blades jutting into the martian sky at an angle of 45 degrees or maybe more...

But the image was false colour, and although I understand and appreciate how invaluable those images are to real scientists, I have a deep dislike for them... maybe it's the photographer in me, I don't know... so I quickly colourised it, using my secret recipe of altered hues and levels, and this is what I got...

To use an internet term... OMG...

As many of you will know, MRO's HiRISE images are put into various scientific catergories, such as "Sedimentary Processes", "Impact features" etc. But this image surely deserves its own catergory, something along the lines of  "Wow... look at that...!" or even just "Weird, or what?!?!?". After colourising that image I sat and stared at it, and into it, for a long, long time. This was a beautiful, dangerous, hypnotising place, no doubt about it. I was sure I hadn't seen anything quite like it before - and trust me when I say that I spend a LOT of time poring over Mars images! Gazing at it I wondered if others had seen it? If not, they deserved to, it was so special. So, I posted my image onto the UMSF board, and one of its members (thanks Dan!), also thrilled by the terrain, pointed out that it bore a similarity to the Vasquez Rocks, an area outside Los Angeles that has been used in many TV shows and movies...

Aha! Cue light bulb going on above your head...

Looks familiar? It should, because this is the "alien planet" where Captain James T Kirk faced and defeated one of his most famous - and least convincing - enemies...

Remember? "ARENA"? The big guy on the left is a Gorn, a ST:TOS classic alien. And Vasquez Rocks is where that episode (and many others, it seems, along with half of the episodes of teen sci-fi Dawson's Creek "Roswell") was filmed.

So, almost accidentally, HiRISE had shown me the Mars I'd been waiting for, Mars at a more familiar scale, in a more familiar way. I was hooked. This was a place worthy of further exploration. How I wished I could zoom in on that HiRISE image and see this geological wonderland in more detail! But unable to, for all the previously listed and moaned about reasons, I had to beg a favour from another of UMSF's many imagesmiths (thanks Nick!), asking if he could zoom in on and crop the image for me. Very generously, he did, and when I'd colourised it and messed about with the lighting a little, this is what I found myself staring at, dumbfounded, on my monitor...

I mean, come on, look at that... just look at those jagged, serrated rock layers jutting up into the salmon-gued martian sky likeenormous iron filings being lined up by a magnet beneath Mars' crust. This is a place beyond bizarre, a truly strange landscape of sharp, sheer stone blades that would send any sane spacesuit-wearing martian explorer or settler bouncing in the opposite direction as fast as he or she could. Some areas of Mars shown to us by HiRISE - like those psychedelic-looking sediment-sculpted valley floors in Valles Marineris, or the spider-like geysers at the poles - are just too weird, too bizarre for us to grasp. With nothing like them on Earth to compare them to, we're unable to identify with them. But this place, this small part of the floor of the huge Schiaparelli crater, is a place we can actually imagine exploring in person because it calls out  "Look at all those rocks! Wouldn't it be fun clambering over them!" to the child in all of us.

I don't know about you, but I can imagine what it would be like to actually go there and trek around those outcrops and shards, huffing and puffing up and then downslope, pausing every now and again to take a deep breath and drink in the view. Imagine standing on one of those rocky shelves at sunset, looking out across mile after mile of rock blades burning red and gold and copper in the twilight, the low Sun casting long, dagger-sharp shadows across the landscape around you...

Thank you HiRISE. That's the Mars I wanted to see.

Oh, and if the idea of clambering up those rocks makes you faint, how would you fancy trying to go up (or down?!) this Schiaparellian cliff..?

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