I appreciate your graciousness; Elton is an impossibly high standard for anyone to be compared to 😜.

I’m glad I could give you those goosebumps. Made my day! 🫶🙏

You rock. Thank you for your professionalism.

And that the USA exists in 4 years. Not saying it won’t, but the chances are disturbingly higher than 0%.

Amen to that. Lemmy.ca admins seem to be doing excellent work. Thank you!

This dude most certainly does not abide.

Like, most of the time I do.

Just not in this particular instance.

Nice pic. I’m a little jealous that you’ve been able to see it yourself, but mostly glad to know some people are getting the chance and taking the opportunity. Cheers! 😀

If you have binoculars you should try using them. It’s not so much about the magnification, but rather the amount of light collected. Basically, the diameter of the objective lens is bigger than your own eyeball lenses/irises, so therefore more light is collected and projected to your retina while using binoculars.

I’m in western Canada right now and have so far not had the right conditions to see it myself. I’m hoping that might change in the next day or two.

I agree wholeheartedly. Maybe there’s an alternative funding model for authors, and artists generally, that could be imagined and built. I’d be surprised if there’s not already some great ideas floating out there; but if there are, I don’t know them.

Considering the actual post here, plus just decent manners, if you like a book, and you’re able, it’s worth considering supporting the author of said book.

That being said, you should seriously consider going to your search engine of choice and searching for an archive by a person named Anna: Anna’s Archive if you will. You might find something helpful and interesting.

I’m not a geologist but I’ve read up on it a fair bit.

This Mars photo appears to be sandstone.

On earth sandstone is usually associated with ancient rivers, lake shores, and sea shores. But also sand dune fields.

The thing with sandstone though, is it’s not just sand. Rather, it’s sand plus time plus pressure plus cementation.

Now, the time part is obvious. What’s sandstone now was sand a long ass time ago (usually).

Pressure? That’s a little harder to understand for me here. Has mars ever had tectonic stuff going on to bury it (and hence have pressure applied), followed by erosion and uplift? Or am I incorrect and pressure is not a necessary condition? Maybe sandstone without pressure is a thing it’s just weaker and/or less dense? Maybe layers of volcanic basalt or something could have a similar effect? I don’t know and would love to have someone more knowledgeable fill this part out.

Cementation? This part, I’m nearly certain, REQUIRES water. On earth anyway, this happens when ground water absorbs chemicals from other rock/stuff (for example carbonates from sea shells, but there’s lots of other chemicals that can do this), then flows through the beds of buried sand, and some of those chemicals are deposited along with magical chemistry stuff happening, and your sand becomes sand stone.

So I don’t 100% know that the short answer to your question is “yes”, but I’m leaning towards a solid “yeah, probably, but I’m not a real geologist and Mars isn’t a real Earth so I dunno”.