Oppy has moved in to position to examine the festoon cross beds.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...KSP1214L0M1.JPG

A bit off topic but what can this be?...

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...KCP2666R8M1.JPG

Whoa.

Maybe Oppy had a bright idea and then promptly forgot what it was.

(why it dangerous for amateurs to attempt comedy and lurkers should remain lurkers -- all in one short post! )

-- Pertinax

http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/merweb/..._transit_R8.rml


That's the sequence the image is from - but it's not presenting itself as a sub-frame, it's a partial downlink of a full frame. Not sure what's going on really.

Doug

As a point of reference, here is a FHazcam showing where we were and where we are.

I noticed the Navam images posted on Exploratorium on 1/20/06 had a soft, overcompressed appearance. Hope there is not a connection with the strange Pancams.

--Bill

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...KSP2957M2M1.JPG

O.K. Festoon MIs coming down! Stitchers, Man your sewing machines!

The MIs are mostly unfocussed. I hope they didn't bend the arm...

here is a link to an excellent MI stich by hortonheardawho.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hortonheardawho/89032198/

Say three times quickly:

How many tunes would a Festoon fife if a Festoon could fife tunes?

That title sounds like a 1970s spy movie.

Nah. I thought it was funny.


I saw those navcams this morning too, and was planning to ask here if anyone had an explanation.


It seems to me that many of the MIs taken since that motor developed a problem have been poorly focused. Could it be that it is now harder to position the MI accurately within the field of view of that camera?

Hmmm. They're also from the adjacent rock slab, not the one originally spotlighted for festoon features. I don't think they're as clear in this slab.

I thought it sounded like the title of a Robert Ludlum novel when I wrote it.

I wouldn't think so. The stalled motor is in the first "shoulder" joint, which is an azimuth motion. The other two "elbow" joints and the wrist joint serve to position the camera fore-and-aft and up-down (the "focus" motion). We'll see...

--Bill

Actually that's not new. MI's have been out of focus quite frequently. I have observed that they often "bracket" the focus due to the narrow depth of field in the MI camera, most likely to capture peripheral details where there is substantial variation in relief such as in RAT holes.

Yes, and so far the ones returned are mostly "one offs". Perhaps they are just the quick previews of more to come from a "bracketed" set from each area of interest?

Airbag

Thanks for that. I was hoping to find something to give me a quick and close-up look at these beds. I don't know if the hosting site modified the dimensions of that image, or if something else is the cause, but something looked curious to me. I think it has been streched in the X dimension. The spherical concretions are elliptical, and other features are wider than they are tall in the pancam. A comparison pancam of the area is here: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pre.../20060106a.html
Attached, is an Autostiched version. Some of the input images are poorly focused, accounting for the fuzzy areas.

I was a bit surprised that they went for this area, too. Especially after they highlighted the 'other area' with a 2x enlargement. Go figure. I've been staring at this MI mosaic for a long time, and I still wonder what it is that they find so interesting here. Not to suggest that all rocks aren't interesting, but ... hey, give us a clue.

Yes. MI sets have often contained many 'less than optimally focused' images. But I think they use slices from those to create 3D models. These are mostly "one-ofs." We should soon see if there will be more MIs of this area, or if they move the arm to another area, or if they move the rover to a new area.

You've gotta love the nomenclature on the MER website, though. This is "Lower Overgaard" , so apparently the real target, above to the right, will be "Upper Overgaard". (If they'd had real class, it would have been "Under Overgaard" and "Over Overgaard") (What the hell is Overgaard , anyway? Sounds like a secret ingredient in a deoderant.)

>What the hell is Overgaard , anyway?

When in the dark, Google. In this context, think AZ and not Norse.

--Bill

O.K. Bill, I Googled....and I'm still in the dark. What does either the AZ or the Norse 'answers' have to do with this particular collection of flagstones?
Did some JPL person's mom lose her festoons in Overgaard, Arizona?

Different Rover sites have "theme" name designation names. The previous site on the Erebus rim had Greek names-- Olympia, for example. The next/current site has a Arizone there-- Mogollon Rim, Payson, Williams, etc.

I may have given a geeky answer to a joking comment...

--Bill

Geeez, we better get out of here soon! Arizona doesn't have that many towns!
(Why Arizona towns and not Hawaii towns? What do they have against Hawaii?)

Memo to Steverino requesting flagstone named Kaneohe :

Quite a few team members hail from that neck of the woods.

Elementary, my dear Watson!

I suppose there is still Tombstone, AZ. Trouble is all these slabs look like tombstones.
I'm Sorry! I'M SORRY! When we get moving again I'll be scientific.

It's not just Arizona towns, but central Arizona towns that are near Mogollon Rim. (Arizona's second-grandest but much lesser known natural wonder.) In that context, Tombstone does not fit. Instead, be looking for Heber, Show Low, Pine, and Strawberry.

Dear me! I hate to add yet one more note of frustration about our beloved Oppie's lethargy of late. The volume of these moans is already substantial, many of us having contributed more than once. And, of course , nothing much is to be gained by expending more bandwidth. Still I am concerned about what's happening out at Overgaard (Lower or Upper), and I would be grateful if anyone "in the know" could reassure me that we aren't facing more "problems".

We started seeing the first MI images of the slab adjacent (below and to the left) of the slab noted for pontoon... dammit, why can't I remember that word...FESTOON bedding on January 20, when 14 images arrived at Exploratorium. On the 22nd 35 more images appeared, and today (25th) 12 more have appeared. But they are ALL of the same slab and were ALL taken over a 90 minute period 5+ days ago! I can't see any evidence that any more MIs have been taken of anything since!
What ARE we doing? Are we stuck again? Are we doing 4-day long mini-TES analyses? At this rate I am concerned that I might not see Mogollon Rim in my lifetime!
(insert emoticon for banging head on keyboard)

Any ideas why Oppy is taking almost the same pic of the festoons over and over? Are these for some super rez attempt?
Pancam
Pancam
Pancam
Pancam

There's more but you get the idea -

There's probably a corner of a book resting on the edge of someone's keyboard at JPL.

Thanx, Dan, and please keep it up! A steady stream of humor might just prevent me from crying in public. Of course, if the recent pictures were of poltroo.!...FESTOONS, I would be jolly! Oppy has lots of filters in her quiver, and should have the chance to shoot them all.
But are we really looking at......(wait for it.)...Festoon Bedding on this particular slab? I'm not at all sure! I don't see the T's Emily informed us about. Can you ,Emily?

Ahhh me. The tribulations of an addict. From the last gasp of MER...to the first touchdown of MSL...eternity...
Enroll me in the first chapter of Marsaholics Anonymous.




.

According to the data tracking web, more MIs are planned for today (sol 714) and tomorrow.

Hmm -
More L6 shimmying Pancam goodness - did I miss the memo about this technique? Oppy seems to be imaging the surrounding detail in this manner - is this for a parallax thing or a super rez composition? It looks intentional... I made a QuickTime movie to show the effect:

QuickTime File

EDIT - File is much smaller and should stream now - sorry about that

More "super res" I'd say. I did play around with those most recent sets of images (6 sets of nominally 16 images each) but I was not satsified that I could really do anything better than reduce the image and jpg noise by stacking the images (which of course is the whole point of stacking when used with low signal/noise astronomical images.)

I'll have to experiment a bit more with "drizzling", but early attempts created too many image artifacts. I'm using the (free) RegiStax software, so feel free to join in :-)

The key to using that software seems to be in disabling the wavelet filtering, which I was only able to do by selecting Gaussian (I think) and then setting all the filter params to 0...but there must be a better way?!

Airbag

It's super resolution imaging. It's hard to make it worth-while when you use the JPG's - but if you have the RAD's it's quite a 'profitable' exercise. They did it back at Bonneville with Spirit looking at the old Heatshield - and I barely got any results using the JPGs -but using RAD it was much much better

Doug

Can you show these super-res images of heat shield, Doug?
(I obtained poor results with old jpegs, I recall)

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...7&hl=heatshield

Whew, I'd forgotten the tremendous results that you got from stacking those heatshield images. The images of these crossbeds ought to be fantastic when stacked, especially with the low-incidence lighting they used.

--Bill

Did they have to retake ALL the MI shots? Some of the earlier ones did appear a little out of focus.

Here is an odd Blueberry.
Not the 'half-berry' but the little one next to it. odd because it looks as if its erupted, its not as round as most but its got a strikingly blueberry-like 'top' to it, harking back to the blueberry 'stem' idea raised almost two years ago (!). Strange that its got so much textural contrast between the hemisphere, like Mars itself. well, it looks almost like a strawberry from this angle, guess we need a better look from a different angle...

I may be wrong, but I'm guessing they are doing it on purpose, so they can create a 3D model of the outcrop.

Finally, a panorama of Upper Overgaard.

"Science team members next plan to adjust the rover's position slightly to conduct microscopic analysis of another target area, nicknamed "Upper Overgaard."

Edited to add, "Fasten your seatbelts."

Atomoid's odd blueberry is obviously a blueberry flavored yogurt-coated-rasin.

:-P

Tried to make a superres from one Sol712 sequence... results still below my expectations, but some fine detail are more clear:
Click to view attachment
This is anaglyph from collapsed outcrop (Sol713):
Click to view attachment

Here is a mosaic taken with the MI camera on Sol 708, Sol 714 and Sol 715.

jvandriel

Lovely! Now, is anyone prepared to point out convincing festoon cross-bedding in this view? I'm not.

I'm not convinced by the cross-bedding interpretation, never have been. The only think I ever thought looked like it was the 'unconformity' in Endurance. Maybe aeolian cross-bedding cemented by minerals precipitated out of ground water. This - for the most part it looks like parallel bedding exposed on an irregular surface.

Phil

Phil:

I don't see it either. It looked as much about erosion as anything...

...still, worth a look - though perhaps not so much as a look as it has had!

Bob Shaw

Yep. The erosion is preferential along cracks which cause angular points in the bedding. Reminds me of topographic maps of the southwest: eroded canyons with the contour lines (which are by definition parallel to each other) creating points and waves and T-shapes against the canyon floor.

You really have to look at the rocks from the side to see if any of the beds bend up to form little hats.

Scott

The rocks remind me of this:

I don't know. These things appear very differently depending on the directions in which they are sliced. I'm guessing (hoping) that the little bump forward we saw today means they will soon start a new campaign of MIs on Upper Overgaard. I thought the pancams of the plan view on the upper/over section of Overgaard were convincing, if the smiles elsewhere were not.

Where do you think Bellemont and Roosevelt are? They are the rovers next targets...perhaps they are the targets seen in alot of the super res imaging done lately. It looks like we'll be here for along time yet.