Is there any indication from JPL as to when we may be moving on?

last words on moving from Steve:"Unfortunately, though, it's still going to be a little while before we can get moving again. While we know how to work the arm, we're still figuring out the best way to stow it. "

Too right, Mate. Also not of imbedded blueberries. So the question remains whether the two at lower left settled here from higher strata, now eroded away, or blew in from points North (?) This gets back to the question I've been gnawing at for a while - because I don't know the answer, not because I think I do. The consensus view seems to be "We don't know" and I guess that's fair enough.
We have lots of eolian bedding and at least one layer (the 'festooned' one) indicating submergence. We have lots of concretion bearing layers (with varying concretion sizes/ages?) and some without. We have a kilometer-scale horizontal pattern, which may or may not translate into a meters-scale vertical pattern. On top of that is a poorly-known temporal pattern which might span ten million years or several billion ...sigh
If concretion formation depends on wetting, we could infer that layers above a water table might lack berries, while those below have them. How do we reverse that pattern? With seepage from above? With hematite-rich layers above hematite-poor ones?
Did concretion formation precede the episode (s) of 'festoon' flooding?
What I want for next Christmas is a clear vertical section in the walls of Victoria Crater showing the history of everything , so everything will be clear! (What I will probably get is more questions.)
Happy 2006, guys.

We won't see evidence of layers in this rat hole because they bored straight down onto one layer, rather than across the layers. See atached pancam false color composite.

Shaka: I think you are right to suggest that "We really don't know." For some reason there are few/no well-formed concretions in the bedrock around here. I think a lot of those little dark spots in the MIs may be incipient ones. It may be because we are further south, because we are vertically displaced in the section, because Erebus somehow disrupted the pattern, or for some other reason. I sure don't know, and it's bound to be uncertain until we explore more of this region.

I sure as hell hope we will not have to wait until next Christmas to see the deeper stuff at Victoria. Supposedly this part of the Meridiani stratigraphy is the uppermost part of section that is around 800 meters thick. There is much to be discovered that will put the meager section we have seen into context.

I have a question. You said, "We have lots of eolian bedding..." Can you give us a link to an image of that in the bedrock? I'm not very good at identifying the low-angle eolian bedforms.

Oppy has some armwaving images on exploratorium now. This might be just checking the RAT and unrelated to the IDD engineering issues, but then again, they might be checking the status of the hardware before placing it somewhere on the deck (watch those solar cells!):

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...KCP1938R0M1.JPG

Again very quick image turn around there. That navcam was taken was taken on Mars just 1h 7min before it hit exploratorium. This means that it must have been right before Oppy relayed to Ody on the afternoon pass and then it got lucky with exploratorium's hourly updates at 35 minutes past the hour.

I think that they have the IDD "stowed" and are likely to move soon. This has been a very interesting spot, but I've been looking forward to a close look at The Mogollon Rim area for months now. Finally!!

Here is the latest MI: an image of the sky with the dust cover closed, I'd guess.

<chant>80 meters south</chant>
<repeat>

--Bill

A nice place of layers around Erebus.

Taken with the L7 pancam on Sol 695.

jvandriel

Here is the deckpan from Sol 696.

Taken with the R0 navcam.

jvandriel

Er... hope I haven't misused a term here (I'm a marine biologist, not a geologist). I thought the PIs on Olympus were assuming that the parallel layers that are everywhere around us - including the one just RATted - represented windblown sediments, only the festooned layers having definitely been sculpted by free-standing water. Have I misconstrued?

In order to minimize parallax, I did stitch using only these two forward images (one left and one right):

Gee, I zoomed right past those images in my MMB update today and thought, "just another sky photo." I never even noticed they were MIs of the sky with and without the cover. Good catch.

The pancam tracking site doesn't have anything suggesting an actual move yet, but the sol 698 image described as "RFrhaz_underdeck_ground_SF_loco_pri_56" makes me wonder if they have indeed decided on a stowage configuration and are checking for ground clearance. Purely speculation on my part, since I haven't found a Rosetta Stone for the language they use, but you might be correct, Bill. I'm chanting with you, as I dust off my crystal ball.


Not at all, Shaka. The festoon crossbedding at this scale is the only bedding type that I recognize as clearly a sign of flowing water. I've also seen the parallel beds you mention, some wavy bedding, and some low-angle crossbedding. The parallel and low-angle beds seem to be the ones previously interpreted as eolian sand sheet deposits, but such bedding can also be interpreted as having been formed under water. For example, lake-bottom sediment layers are often quite parallel. I'm just trying to figure out what specific bedding characteristics they are using to conclude that the parallel and low-angle stuff is eolian.

Hehe! "...the PIs on Olympus..." I almost overlooked that.

They are being very,very careful on this unlatched stowage of the IDD. The device is designed marginally for a 90 day service life and the joint motor geartrains are working at their design limits. Holding the IDD in place with geartain and motor drag is risky since the geartrain could fail and jam, making the IDD non-functional, or worse, incapacitating the Rover. The Opster would not be happy as a sessile critter.

It'll be slow going, I'm sure. Drive a few meters, evaluate, drive a few meters, reposition. Repeat.

I tend to think of it as "the PIs on Mt Ithaca"...

--Bill

Dilo,

that is your secret.

Taking a left and right one image and stitch them.

I have done it now myself and indeed the result is much better. No distortion.

Thanks for the advice.

jvandriel

During her stay at Erebus, Opportunity has made a lot of partial and complete

panoramas from the surrounding.

Here is a complete 360 degree pancam L1 panoramic view taken on Sol 685, 686 and

687.

The original one is 38.3 MB and consist of 81 images.

jvandriel

You're welcome... I didn't make geometric calculation, but result depends from camera elevation and seems to function pretty well for self portrait images; however can be applied only to a couple of images at time...
(hey, you last Erebus panorama is amazingly huge, I suggest to increase luminosity uniformity)

I'm guessing this is a shot of the IDD in the process of "unstowing" after taking those MI's (40mins later) and not the actual "stowed" position .

Click to view attachment

Brightened version of this

I think they were taking flat fields for the microscopic imager at that time. Flat fields are used for calibration and are taken of evenly lighted surface (the sky in this case). The resultant MI images are here (showing a speck of dust or something in the middle, which can be reduced out in future images with these flatfields):
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...ger/2006-01-09/

An old topic here, but we finally received the missing frame in this series (sol 687!), and I finally compiled the series into an animation. The result is here. (I recommend rightclicking on the animation and saving so you can view at 100%.) The frames were shot about a minute apart, so the animation spans about half an hour. I believe this shows earthrise at Meridiani, with Jupiter visible to the left in the last few frames. We also see the movement of the clouds. To my recollection this is the nicest cloud movie from either rover.

quote: "rightclick is disabled. Direct linking to media is not permitted, doing so will result in a ban and removal of all media. Please link to the media page provided.

The file does not show up in Windows Temporary Files after being viewed.

I can view the animated gif but now download it, so I'd recommend telling putfile.com where to "put it".

Uh.. correction.. I'm not sure why I thought that was an amimated gif, but I found a8-1516275532[1].avi in one of my tempory files subdirectories and that's the movie.. thanks, it's really neat!

Viewing the page source will help in finding the file, but given the warning about direct linking, downloading via that route may not be the best.


For what its worth...

-- Pertinax

Not old at all! Thanks for the gorgeous video. The presence of clouds during the current Summer season hasn't been officially announced, but I've been informed by a science team member they have been seen at night. This site may have been the first source to acknowledge their existence. Kudos!
I was also told theoretical modeling suggests they should also appear during the day, but they have been difficult to detect because they are so thin.
My view is that since frosts on the rover were observed to correspond to clouds over Meridiani during the Winter, likewise water/ice deposition should also occur during the current Summer season. However, since the temperatures on the surface during the Summer exceed melting during the daytime, this deposited water/ice may appear as liquid.



- Bob

that is a nice sequence, even though its a bit noisy (more than just compression?)
heres the link since the page makes it difficult to save the file:
http://x600.putfile.com/videos/a8-1516275532.avi

Thanks for the link, though I think putfile doesn't allow direct linking and your link may die soon!

Anyway, I also made a lossless animated gif from the original jpegs which looks cleaner than this avi, but it's 3MB and I don't know where I can post it without paying for an account. Any ideas?

Great work fredk. I think you're right about this being the best cloud movie yet.
I tried using a method similar to the dust devil enhancement difference image technique, to get a little more detail out of the clouds, with mixed results. I'm not happy with the lack of detail in the upper right and lower right corner (two separate, stubborn problems related to the technique)...so this may be updated if/when I get the issues worked out. Click on the image below for the gif movie (3.6 meg)

Yikes, that's stunning, slinted! I understand the dust devil difference technique, but here the entire frame is changing - what do you difference in this case?

Very excellent slinted. Do you think those streaks are meteorites?

- Bob

Excellent movie. Almost looks like the cirrus that proceeds a thunderstorm.

I think it the same as the above that a movie above the sky is a very good investigation tool about the Martian atmosphere. Perhaps, its resolution is not good in spite of the fact that the PANCAM has a resolution of 1024x1024 that is great enough to take pictures. Why not good resolution on the skies?

Rodolfo

It's better to use Navcam for dust devil or cloud hunting because of it's wider field of view.

Doug

I'm differencing against the same type of image I use for the dust devil movies, a median pixel image of the entire sequence...which is the cause of some of the problems. There was enough cloud movement that most parts of the frame actually have a 'background' upon which the difference image can be constructed, but some parts (like the bottom of the frame) had clouds over most of the sequence, so when those clouds leave that part of the FOV at the end of the sequence, the darkening gets enhanced to complete black. It's mostly a hack, to try to flatfield and detect motion at the same time, which should legitimately done in separate steps. I have no doubt that the RADs that can be made of this sequence will be much cleaner. I look forward greatly to seeing the Cornell/JPL versions as they should reveal much greater detail.

Opportunity is moving again.

Here is the 360 degree panoramic view after moving.

Taken on Sol 707 with the L0 navcam.

jvandriel

A mosaic of 4 images at Erebus.

Taken with the R1 pancam on Sol 706.

jvandriel

Would you just look at those railroad tracks!

Mini-crater chains, anyone?

Bob Shaw

Now, that is, without a doubt, an example of fines sapping into a set of subsurface cracks.

That doesn't necessarily prove that the mini-craters are all evidence of subsurface sapping, but that's what this surely is.

-the other Doug

other Doug:

Yup!

So, we see sapping here, and - to date - no serious claim to mini-craters at Gusev. Either Meridiani had a 'special' airburst, or there's something about Meridiani...

I vote for an endogenous cause...

Bob Shaw

This is a good picture to refresh memory about the forgotten Oppy's position. Now I see many avenues and don't want to bet here. Tere are many of them are possible. Howerver, there are also many interesting places to visit, most of them are in the range of southeast to southwest. The most desired is to approach to Mogollon's rim where there is a tall ripple with black sand or stone.

Rodolfo

I think it is a very soft or small amount of water erosion, perhaps from some kind of subsurface melting of water.

Rodolfo

Looks like rabbit tracks.

RE: sapping vs aeolian funnies

I'll agree with Bob and o'Doug that it does look more and more like sapping. Now to conjure up a mechanism for it. Given that this has the potential for being a karst topography related to the Burns formation, but the thing I have problems with the removal of the sand once it gets into the fractures. In Terran karst, there is flowing water and caverns to transport the material away. On Mars, the fracture is created and fills with sand with nowhere to go.

Hmmm...

--Bill

Bill:

Perhaps voids are created when *something* evaporates which was laid down in the distant past, or as a result of a freeze-thaw mechanism similar to the 'gardening' process which makes rocks move about in winter on Earth (well, where I live, anyway!). Now, what could it be that's freezing, thawing, or evaporating?

And as for Anatolia...

Bob Shaw

What about what could literally be the mother of all cobbles, that big black rocky pile seen in past pancam views of the area? Shouldn't they check that out before heading into Erebus?

Here is a mosaic taken right after Opportunity backed up from the work site on Sol 707. The frames don't match up perfectly in this version due to some MMB limitations, but you sort of get the idea. The three images below represent the same view, just zoomed in to various degrees.

Hey, Mike
Looking at the left most of your images, the thought sprung unbidden into my mind, WOW! What a great SHIRT! Seriously, we could make a fortune on this! (I figure I've earned, oh...say a 20% commission...well, 15 anyway. I'd be ready to order a couple of the first lot - size 20 - short sleeve, V-neck.

It seems JPL wants to look at everything BUT the rock with the festoons. Maybe they're desperate to get more exposures, but so far I've seen little I'd bet my ...er...shirt on.
We need more low sun-angle shots.

LOL... That had kind of registered subconsciously with me, but I quickly discarded the thought. Actually, it *would* make a nice shirt, wouldn't it?

Bob, the "anatolia/sapping" phenomenon may prove to be a major erosional/depositional mechanism in this landform. We have all these puzzle-pieces laying on the table and we're just starting to piece them together.

More as the drama unfolds...

Today I saw a "lookback" view of that mobile hematite dust we observed at the "Hiatus Outcrop" a few tens of Sols ago.

Attached is this Pancam image from today; let me dig in my archives to find earlier images of this feature and I'll work up a collage. But if someone wants to, jump on in.

--Bill

Another mosaic around Erebus.

Taken with the L0 navcam on Sol 709.

jvandriel

It's a great picture, but sapping is not the word I'd use for it. It has connotations of water cutting back into a slope by undermining it. I assume this is just regolith falling into cracks. But what would I call it? Not sure... I think in the past people have spoken of regolith drainage (another bad word for a dry process) - e.g. grooves on Phobos over deep fractures.

Phil

how about micro-sinkholes, or just plain ol' sinkholes.

Agreed, Phil. "Sapping" is not absolutely accurate, but I've heard it used before, and it stuck with me. I honestly dunno what to call it!

Maybe terming it "an anatolia" might work...

--Bill

Bill:

An Anatolia would be another anathema to me!

The fact remains, however, *why* the cracks in the first place?

Karst (but no polje) anyone?

Bob Shaw