Weirdest Images III

Featured Imagery

Mars Rover Color
Spirit
Opportunity
Calibration
Rover Vision 3d

MEX Color
White Rock (Large)
Hellespont (Large)
Cydonia H0262
Cydonia H1216 (Large)
Cydonia H2872 (Large)
Cydonia H3253 (Large)

Mars Odyssey
MOCC
Color Mars
Cydonia Map

D&M Hi Res
E2100188 R0600469
R0700422 R1102437
Try the highway
Try the West gate
D&M 6m CTX

The Face
The Face on Mars
MRO Face My Way
Huge version
Face it!

Assorted
An Elysium Pyramid
Candor Tetrahedron
MOC by Request!
MER MOC Archives
Phobos

Moon
Apollo Orbital Images
Apollo Over The Moon

I Support
Marsoweb
L ROC
M RO
HiWish
Apollo Image Archive

The 'Ziggurat'

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known".-Carl Sagan

Wasn't it the same late great Carl Sagan that first got us going by mentioning the Elysium Pyramids in his 1980 book "Cosmos?" Did you think perhaps he was joking?
Admittedly, the items he was looking at and calling such are truly huge and surmised to be natural, and in his way he was both actually wondering about it seriously and laughing scornfully at the very idea of it. Those who were fans and adherents knew this trait of his.
Although it's quite another story, some of the items he pointed out may actually be artificial. The area he pointed us to is intriguing in other manners, and as such drew my attention when MGS started taking much better images of Mars for us.

To the left is MOC image M2001848, which is a 5.9 meter per pixel long strip labeled "Cross broad valley between buttes SE of Cerberus" at its MSSS source here;

The feature was first noted by someone looking for analogues to the Face in Cydonia, but I see within something entirely different, something that rings familiar because we have very similar structures left from ages past right here on earth, they are called Ziggurats, and are to be found in the ancient near east. The Babylonians built them extensively. So you may ask, am I claiming Babylonians on Mars? Hardly. I'm calling out a feature that is remarkably similar to items we know were Human built on Earth.
Click the image for an enlarged and enhanced crop of the feature.

I won't go into the internal linear features or the straight walls, or the collapse features or even try to guess at a reasonable guess at an age for this feature, but suffice it to say, it is what one would expect an incredibly old and huge ziggurat to look like. To back this supposition up, I'll forego all that and simply show you some. These are on Earth and babes in comparison.



   Still, even though they are similar with the feature on Mars, the image simply did not show enough of the feature or at enough resolution to do more than give us some food for speculation. As time went on, MSSS opened up its camera and Mars with their public request program. This feature was targeted multiply by different participants including myself, and the returned image which is seen to the right was one that most definitely lived up to my expectations. It is MOC image R18-00336, has a resolution of 3 meters per pixel, and can be found here,

   In it we see that the entire feature is indeed a square, is walled and progressively tiered, and the inner features are much more resolvable. I think this would be a wonderful place to dig; it will definitely be a great place to see via MRO's HiRise camera, and have accordingly targeted it for a closer look. In my opinion it has earned the name I've assigned it.