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We have another Martian Mystery Object — this one a thing that looks suspiciously like a hunk of metal. Curiosity detected it, through a high-res image taken from its Mastcam, on Sol 173 (January 30 in Earth days). Universe Today calls the object “a small metallic-looking protuberance” — it resembles a thick, bent nail, sticking out of the Martian surface — and it is visible in part because it projects a tiny little shadow on the rock below.

More: Um, What’s This Weird Hunk of Metal We Just Found on Mars? - Megan Garber - the Atlantic

For the heck of it, and because it’s a slow news day, I imported the original full-sized photo into Fireworks CS6, clipped out the metallic object, zoomed way in using the Bicubic smoothing algorithm, and here’s the result:

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