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In this case the strip (reduced at left) catches two legs of a pond that
partially encircles its home crater's central peak.
The scale of this one, 2.76 meters per pixel, is similar to that of the Keeler shot [#4].
Like both the Keeler and the Lau [#5], we're looking at this scene about 47
earth days after the start of southern spring or about a quarter of the way
between spring and summer.
Among these floaters we again see the nuclei (sometimes multiple), the
surrounding skins, and in some areas some partially resolved branching. Many
floaters show one or more projecting cusps whose azimuths synchronize with those
of their neighbors. Even more intriguing are the many linear and/or arc-shaped
distributions among the smaller ones. They're obviously following some set of
rules in their placement -- a phenomenon not unheard of among non-biological
systems but certainly typical for colonies of living organisms.
Here's a full-size detail of that conspicuous floater grouping followed by two
histogram reassignments. Each of these two leave the black and white extremes
unchanged but bias the medium tones progressively toward the light end. This
process effectively peels back the nuclei to reveal some smaller-scale internal details
and also to emphasize that these nuclei are denser than the skins and that their
surface boundaries are roughly graduated rather than sharp.
Judging by this image's pixel scale, the triangular grouping measures roughly 80
meters (260 feet) on a side and the large floater isolated off to the left of
this group is about 20 meters (65 feet) in diameter.
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Processed source images courtesy of NASA/JPL/Malin
Space Science Systems / Chamberlain photo courtesy
of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents
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