<img alt="marswater.jpg" src="http://www.strangeattractor.co.uk/further/archives/marswater-thumb.jpg" width="300" height="300" />
<br />
This pic is doing the rounds at the moment and purports to be of the Martian surface.<br />
<a href="http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/jpl-images/web/opportunity/pancam/2004-12-19/1P155450047EFF38EVP2557L4M1.JPG" target="new">Click here for a much larger, higher resoultion version (300K).</a> It'll open in a new window.<br />
Does it actually show standing water on Mar's surface, is it sand, or a digital artifact of some kind?

Or maybe it's not Mars at all.  Any thoughts?

Makes a great desktop background anyway.
Update 24.13.04 :
And now the wreckage of what is clearly an artificial object. Perhaps one of the older probes.
<a href="http://www.lyle.org/mars/imagery/1P156949002EFF4075P2357R1M1.JPG.html" target="new">Our very own Beagle?</a>

06.01.05

Tim Chapman has alerted me to this likely explanation:

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity used its navigation camera for this view of the flank piece of the spacecraft's heat shield on the rover's 332nd martian day, or sol (Dec. 29, 2004). The team that designed the descent and landing systems for the rovers is trying to characterize heat-shield performance by examining the wreckage of Opportunity's heat shield.

<a href="http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20050103a.html" target="new">More on the JPL site</a>

And now this...
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Mars 'Car Wash'
24.12.04 More on this from <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6824" target ="new">New Scientist</a>

LONDON (Reuters) - An unexplained phenomenon akin to a space-borne car
wash has boosted the performance of one of the two U.S. rovers probing
the surface of Mars, New Scientist magazine said on Tuesday.
It said something -- or someone -- had regularly cleaned layers of dust
from the solar panels of the Mars Opportunity vehicle while it was
closed down during the Martian night.

The cleaning had boosted the panels' power output close to their maximum
900 watt-hours per day after at one stage dropping to 500 watt-hours
because of the heavy Martian dirt.

By contrast, the power output of the solar panels of Mars Spirit -- on a
different part of the Red Planet -- had dropped to just 400 watt-hours a
day, clogged by the heavy dust.

"These exciting and unexplained cleaning events have kept Opportunity in
really great shape," the magazine quoted NASA rover team leader Jim
Erickson as saying.