Another view from the Google Maps street sweeper

1) That thing is TALL. Must be a camera on a stick or something.

2) Because the garbage cans are out, I can tell the photo was taken on a Thursday morning. Also I can tell it was taken this year, and probably either in the last week of March or the second week in April, since the minivan is there (it was parked at the airport for the first week of April).

Cool

The new Google maps Street View thingy knows about our street!

Looks like Gloria was home when the van (or whatever it is) went by, but I wasn't.

Seemingly bottomless cavern entrance on Mars

From an article on a photo taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft on 07-May-2007:

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This image shows a very dark spot on an otherwise bright dusty lava plain to the northeast of Arsia Mons, one of the four giant Tharsis volcanoes.

This is not an impact crater as it lacks a raised rim or ejecta. What's amazing is that we cannot see any detail in the shadow! The cutout shows this dark spot and a version that is "stretched" to best see the darkest area, yet we still cannot see details except noise (1380x782, 1 MB).

The HiRISE camera is very sensitive and we can see details in almost any shadow on Mars, but not here. We also cannot see the deep walls of the pit. The best interpretation is that this is a collapse pit into a cavern or at least a pit with overhanging walls. We cannot see the walls because they are either perfectly vertical and extremely dark or, more likely, overhanging.

The pit must be very deep to prevent detection of the floor from skylight, which is quite bright on Mars.

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Maybe it's a wormhole that connects up with the Guatemalan sinkhole?

Ideal Memorial Day

Doctor Thorne & Corona
Originally uploaded by thane