File:Mars Close-up of a Conglomerate at Bimbe (27962889884).jpg

A four-frame mosaic of an exposed and very weathered conglomerate / breccia block on the southern edge of the 'Bimbe' blocky deposits that are located to the Northeast of the Murray Buttes in Gale crater on the planet Mars.

This weathered conglomerate / breccia contains many clasts that are more weathering-resistant than the matrix - with one nice exception: the yellowish-orangish clast, which appears to be a soft, finely laminated / cross-bedded sedimentary rock of fine sand or coarse silt. This tells us much about the geology of the time when the conglomerate formed.

Using an onboard focusing process, Curiosity used its 'Mars Hand Lens Imager' (MAHLI) to merge eight images previously taken by the camera to create 4 separate focus stacked frames. The MAHLI camera is located on the turret at the end of the rover's two meter long robotic arm, this allows Curiosity to place the camera very close to targets in order to obtain these extreme close-up images.

Curiosity performed the focus merge on July 26, 2016, Sol 1411 of Curiosity's Mission. However, it used the 32 base images that were acquired two sols earlier (Sol 1409). The focus motor count position reported by the camera has been used to create the scale added to the base of the image.

I assembled the 4 Focus-stacked (overlapping) images into this mosaic using Image Composite Editor created by Microsoft Research, the resulting mosaic was marginally cropped and sharpened after stitching. There are a number of minor vertical light streaks noticeable on the darker sections of the mosaic, these are thought to be a result of the long exposure times with this camera in low lighting conditions, combined with a slight degradation of the camera CCD.

Credit to Gerald @ UMSF who provided his interpretation of the conglomerate.