Spirit Breaks New Ground! Options

[Tman]

On sol 513 nearby Methuselah Spirit looks westward at his planned new path: http://www.greuti.ch/spirit/spirit_navcam_sol513b.jpg

On sol 514 he left so the well known place finally (I guess):
rear http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/re...00P1312R0M1.JPG and
forward http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...00P1212R0M1.JPG

And shyly he takes a look round the corner: http://www.greuti.ch/spirit/spirit_pancam_sol514.jpg

[Jeff7]

Wow, gained quite some distance there. I've attached a clip of the very nice Sol 513 panorama, with a circle to show where (I think) the rover was sitting on Sol 514. Quite a decent drive.

So when are we going to go visit that distant crater already?
Nothing like another long traverse, and another steep climb while way past warranty.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Tman]

(Windows Media Player) On the road again!

Jeff, I see Spirit on the same distance but a bit more to the right of your circle.

[Nirgal]

Now that's impressive: just a few dozens of meters "around the corner"
and what a *phantastic* view of the sol514 pancam !

unfortunately there seem to be only 2 filters used on opposite cameras (left/right)
such that we can't do a straight-forward color composite...
(question for the stereo/anaglyph-Experts: would it be possible to re-align
left-right pancam frames such that a 2-band color composite could be generated
from the different filter frames ?

[dilo]

Now that's impressive: just a few dozens of meters "around the corner"
and what a *phantastic* view of the sol514 pancam !

Absolutely impressive panorama, and was hidden to us for so many Sols!...
I think to have identified features in the horizon: starting from right to left, we are seeing a large crater rim, a foregroung mountains and a complex of farther reliefs. If I'm correct, in the next days we should see another far mountain, which is in the extreme bottom of MGS image...

I do not know exact satellite image scale, so I cannot calculate distances from these features. Can someone help on this?

[Nix]

It should work yes, I've aligned them countless times for creating an exaggerated stereo effect.
Nico

[dot.dk]

Wrong thread...

This post has been edited by dot.dk: Jun 14 2005, 10:20 PM

[Nix]

Nice dilo. The large dusty crater is Castril Crater or 'Mudsplat Crater' as I call it. It's a real beauty.
Oh about the matching Nirgal, you would need L7 in combination with say R2 instead of R1...no real use otherwise..

[dilo]

Nice dilo. The large dusty crater is Castril Crater or 'Mudsplat Crater' as I call it. It's a real beauty.

Tanks for information, Nico. If you think is a beauty, take a look on this, where vertical scale is exaggerated by 5 and contrast is enhanced:

Note in particular the low "mesas" (or "splats" from crated itself) in front of the crater, not appreciable in original images but confirmed from satellite picture!
Moreover, now I found the real scale for MGS image posted above (about 17 m/pixel). Based on this, the foreground (center) mountain should be 7 Km away while Castril/Mudsplat nearest rim is about 11.5Km far and it's diameter is 1.8Km.
We can estimate also features height, which are, indeed, relatively low (less than 100m, not considering planet curvature)...

[RedSky]

This recent Spirit view has a noticable dark patch on the slope of the far hill. It made me think of two dark patches to the northeast of Spirit on MOC images. They seemed to be similar to the large Ultreya feature to the south.

http://img16.echo.cx/img16/7663/2p17163821...2289r7m1spo.jpg


Does anyone know what direction this Spirit view is? ... and could the dark patches identified in the MOC image be this dark spot on the Spirit image?

Could this be a preview on a small scale of what Ultreya might look like?


RedSky

[Guest_Myran_*]

Hello RedSky!

I do know as little as you about direction, but I had the same thought when I happened upon the very same frame at exploratorium.

[dilo]

Does anyone know what direction this Spirit view is? ... and could the dark patches identified in the MOC image be this dark spot on the Spirit image?

Approximately NNE direction, as showed in following collage; the enlargement of Sol 507 panorama suggests that is probably made of a dark dune field...

I think is really the smallest dark patch visible from satellite (the other two are probably hidden by left/right hills).
Do not know if could this be a small Ultreya version, but they share similar aspect and common orientation referred to topography...
Marco.

[Phil Stooke]

Dilo, I agree with your interpretation of this.

Phil

[Nix]

Nice dilo. What's remarkable about Castril Crater is that it has an apparent thick layer of dust. There is a relatively small area around it where all is coated with dust but to the northeast and west of it are the big dark lobes or dust devil alleys which in these times appear NW-SE oriented on Gusev's floor.
Castril looks like it has never been cleared of its dust-coating. To me it looks like the Ma'adim Vallis entrance mesas to the south of Castril have acted as a windshield and a 'small' dusted area formed directly north of them.
The southern mesas are roughly 20-25 km distant and rise 200-300 meters above the plains. Perhaps on the other hand the dusty area is part of a different geological unit then the areas surrounding it. Mud/debris flows from Ma'adim Vallis might have been redirected around the mesas leaving this area intact.
Anyway I think wind is a big factor to the fact that it still appears so dusty while the DD alleys have shifted in location in recent times.

[Nix]

Themis orbital image

There are different geological units involved for sure but I'd like to hear other interpretations. On another thread maybe since I'm going way off topic here from 'Spirit breaks new ground!"
Nico