QUESTION:
The image from the orbiter shows defined parallel lines west of Really Far
Knob and a general pattern about the photo generally showing a SW to NE
pattern. This includes sharper streaks of color and some craters in a
similar pattern.

Specificly, what are the tight pattern of parallel lines left (west) of
Really Far Knob? And on the NE/SW pattern?

ANSWER from Mary Urquhart on August 26, 1997:
This is a good question.  There certainly are well defined parallel lines
immediately west of the "Really Far Knob" in the Viking orbiter mosaic of
Pathfinder's landing site.  Those features are image artifacts (not really
there) from the original Viking 1 image 003A54 on mosaic 4985 that was taken
with the visible camera B.  What you are really seeing there is distortion
of the image, and it is very apparent in several other images as well.  On
the full image (003A54), the lineations go across the entire width of image
but do not appear on other images which overlap that same region.

Lining up with streaks of color which are in some cases flow features is
just a coincidence.  In case you are interested, you can see the original
images (although they have very little contrast and you really need a
program like XV on a Unix system or Photoshop on a Mac to look at them with
more contrast to make features apparent) at the Planetary Data System Mars
Geoscience Navigator at http://wundow.wustl.edu/marsnav/

You'll probably want the full image and not the browse image which is very
compressed.

Mary Urquhart                                    
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics  
University of Colorado at Boulder