Need help with the latest panorama of Mars by Curiosity Rover

[Sam Lowry]

Hello people,

I'm a newbie so pls don't be too hard on my question.

I guess you have all seen the great panorama of Mars mastered from photos made by Curiosity. http://mars.nasa.gov/multimedia/interactives/billionpixel/index.cfm?image=PIA16918&view=pano

As you can see from the pic below there is a kind of object above the mountain to the right. NASA doesn't explain it there, so I ask those members who are good at image reading, what kind of defect is that. Just want to understand it for my further studies.

P.S. I ain't no aficionado of conspiracy, aliens etc. Just want to understand what caused that defect. Thanks to everybody who's gonna answer. Cheers

[bubbagret]

Processing artifact. Look closely and you can see the seam between 2 panels directly below "it".

[Sam Lowry]

Ah, ok. Thank you!

[ugordan]

Most likely a bad pixel in the camera. The cross-like halo is due to the use of a bayer filter for color images.

[Sam Lowry]

Most likely a bad pixel in the camera. The cross-like halo is due to the use of a bayer filter for color images.

Yeah, actually this hallo was the odd thing I wanted to understand. And NASA btw has provided explanations to some artefacts on the panorama, but not to this one hence I've decided to ask. Thank you.