This magnified look at the martian soil near the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's landing site, Meridiani Planum, shows coarse grains sprinkled over a fine layer of sand. The image was captured on the 10th day, or sol, of the rover's mission by its microscopic imager, located on the instrument deployment device, or "arm." Scientists are intrigued by the spherical rocks, which can be formed by a variety of geologic processes, including cooling of molten lava droplets and accretion of concentric layers of material around a particle or "seed."

The examined patch of soil is 3 centimeters (1.2 inches) across. The circular grain in the lower left corner is approximately 3 millimeters (.12 inches) across, or about the size of a sunflower seed.

This stretched color composite was obtained by merging images acquired with the orange-tinted dust cover in both its open and closed positions. The varying hints of orange suggest differences in mineral composition. The blue tint at the lower right corner is a tag used by scientists to indicate that the dust cover is closed
This map of a portion of the small crater currently encircling the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows where crystalline hematite resides. Red and orange patches indicate high levels of the iron-bearing mineral, while blue and green denote low levels. The northeastern rock outcropping lining the rim of the crater does not appear to contain much hematite. Also lacking hematite are the rover's airbag bounce marks. This image consists of data from Opportunity's miniature thermal emission spectrometer superimposed on an image taken by the rover's panoramic camera.

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