OMG, I _thought_ that the spelling of anaglyph looked odd...

--Bill

no worries -I recall editing a post not long ago that said 'analglyph'. These things happen

Nico

I think it was worth it.

It would be nice if there are some undisturbed cuts through the strata in this area seen in the walls of Beagle. I'm worried though that it may just be a jumble. fingers crossed for what the first look inside reveals, although some may wish for little of interest so the trip to Victoria picks up again in short order.

No drive today.. more MI pictures though.

six days in a row without progress towards Victoria ...

does anyone know the reason for the delay ?

Cool little formation -- hope we get a closer look.

Now quit picking on BRIAR SHILL. Anyone can make a mistake, especially when those annoying BRILL HAIRS are bothering them.

Wow! This rock is like an alien head skeleton. THERE WAS LIFE ON MARS, THIS IS THE KNOWLEDGE!!!!!

Thanks, James. I am a happy camper. I saw the names and figured it might be one of those two. When I checked the tracking site the thumbnails were not available, and I don't know how to find the pointing info.

While we're waiting, here is a crude Autostitch of the Sol 878-879 Navcam pan. Lovely view of the little crater now behind us.

They're waiting for Tesheiner to return from vacation.

good one

QUOTE (mhoward @ Jul 18 2006, 06:45 PM)

While we're waiting, here is a crude Autostitch of the Sol 878-879 Navcam pan. Lovely view of the little crater now behind us.

Not that crude! What is attracting my eyes on your Navcam pan is that the 2 rocks close by are very similar in shape, size,...., and only, what, 2 meters appart ?

Just speculating: Oppy is now in reasonable sensor range of Different Stuff than what
he's been seeing since he left Erebus. Oppy could die at any moment. It thus makes
sense to stop and gather as much data on the Different Stuff as possible, as soon as
possible, since another chance may not occur.

Oppy could suffer a Spirit-style wheel failure anytime, or worse. It would be
a real loss to pass up collecting data with the idea of 'we'll come back later'
Later may never come.

Oppy has to live by the motto 'Live each sol as if it were your last one on Mars'.

CE

Definitely not an alien head skeleton.

QUOTE (CryptoEngineer @ Jul 18 2006, 07:54 PM)

Just speculating: Oppy is now in reasonable sensor range of Different Stuff than what
he's been seeing since he left Erebus. Oppy could die at any moment. It thus makes
sense to stop and gather as much data on the Different Stuff as possible, as soon as
possible, since another chance may not occur.
Oppy could suffer a Spirit-style wheel failure anytime, or worse. It would be
a real loss to pass up collecting data with the idea of 'we'll come back later'
Later may never come.
Oppy has to live by the motto 'Live each sol as if it were your last one on Mars'.
CE

May be another (better ) explanation from Emily's TPS here : http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000644/

I think Emily was speculating along with the rest of us when she wrote that - note the frequent occurence of works like 'seemed,' 'perhaps,' 'you might think' and 'time will tell.' My impression is it's just a quick blog entry, not one of the (fabulous) detailed TPS articles on the mission that quotes Squyres et al.

At least if Emily has more inside info at this point, she hasn't clearly indicated so yet

Anyways... here is an x-eyed stereo pair of that evaporite ejecta with the odd fracture fill (??).

Let's hope for Pancams of it...

--Bill

What is the fossilised head of an American eagle doing on Mars?

Thanks Mike, I didn't read your way, but you're rigth.

The Eagle has landed...

If my reading of the Tracking Database is correct, Sol 883 was a driving day, and the pictures are on the ground. Should show up any time now?

Nothing yet Have to wait till 7.30 now lol

Assuming Oppy continues as usual, I'm guessing that she'll go about 40 meters south down the same trough, aiming to stop at the clear region at that distance, from which she can subsequently make a left turn and head east towards Beagle, if there isn't a detour past West Hillock along the way.

Best guess:
Click to view attachment

New site/drive code appears to be 74G2; previously was 74AZ. That's a pretty respectible little drive, I think; it may even be exactly where you suggest. I can't wait to see the pictures, they should tell us a lot about how things are going to go from here.

Bad news is, Exploratorium may not be updating - some Spirit images just came through the JPL site. No Opportunity update yet . At least we know that the rover is doing something.

I wonder if we'll get a look at the big pile of dark stuff that seems to be a renegade from the ejecta blanket.
What the heck is that stuff that it travels in big lumps, but just falls into little grains over time? Could it be that the layer below the salt-cake is water-ice with dark-stuff suspended in it, and that when exposed, the water sublimes leaving soft looking piles?

Certainly if not now, at the time of the Victoria impact that may have been the case. I have a little hypothesis that this is the reason for Victoria's subdued topography (as opposed to the more commonly held erosion theory).

I feel sure that a close examination of the hillocks and of the ejecta apron will determine their origin. Much more so than looking at cobbles or disaggregated cobble piles.

I'm thinking that Oppy will travel South to the near hillock and then eastward to Beagle. That seems to be the most direct route.

--Bill

I agree, looks like its heading for the Mound and would then track east to the south rim of Beagle before entering the Victoria apron, rather than approach Beagle directly to the north rim as we had imagined. I talked previously about the "scarp" surrounding the apron, but the closer we get the more it shrinks and it doesn't look like a scarp with an elevation discontinuity any more. That makes it harder to understand, I think - so we have a really interesting period of discoveries coming up!

Kenny

Exploratorium is up:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...G2P0695R0M1.JPG

Looks a little rough to cut east just yet, so I guess a little more south as Bill said. Ugh! I'm too impatient for this!

The pancams are interesting; another good shot of the "skull", and check out this "carapace" (hey, you started it!):
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...AZP2550L7M1.JPG

And Victoria bekons:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...G2P2449L2M1.JPG

I like that pic posted by algorimancer hypothesizing where we might be headed. Can anyone say where in that pic we actually did go?

Yeehah! Exploratorium is working.

Calling rocks informal and identifiable names is OK as long as we don't go overboard and start believing such non-sense. Geologists tack on quaint informal names all the time; formally, you have to watch it because once you publicly name something "Pygidium" the wackos will come out of the woodwork...

no <smile>

Wonderful images. Interesting textures on "the carapace" it has a Wopmay-like look and lots of Blueberries on the surface.

Algorimancer seems to have nailed the route on his guesstimate.

--Bill

I'm not worried about the wackos. This forum seems to stay clean of them. The rock is roughly shaped like an animal skull. I don't mind calling it Eagle Skull or whatever. No one actually thinks it is a skull.

Do we know how far we went on the last drive?

I'm all for giving things names but can't we keep things simple and use the JPL name when there is one. Even if it is a rubbish one like "Red Rock"?

James

I think we should stick with the JPL names where we know them. You've got to admit though that "Eagle Skull" as a name would have been pretty cool. Probably a little too 'heavy metal' for NASA, though.

Since Flickr apparantly has had a major system failure, here is the Sol 883 Pancam drive-direction mosaic posted to the forum space. I don't recall what the guidelines are for posting images in the forum space, this one is 620K - is that too big?

Here's a polar version of mhoward's pancam minipanorama. It certainly matches the position shown on James's route map in that thread.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Not arranged N-S - are you feeling alright Phil?

Should be more like this I think.

Quite right, James, I didn't do anything to orient it, I was in a hurry.

And after that glass of wine, yes, I'm feeling pretty good.

Phil

Time for another silly prediction that we're all about to know the answer to anyway...

My gut says that if the drivers wanted to, they would've driven more directly to Beagle. I'm guessing we're headed for a quick closeup check of West Hillock.

And a crater, which was not mentioned before (or at least I didn't see it was) - according to the tracking site this is called Waco and I think it's the little crater NE of 878 position. In 3D it looks surprisingly deep.

Btw. tosol (884) is also a driving day! :-)

Ah, good, Alpha has a real name now

Last night I was putting together another labeled panorama from the Sol 883 pancam images, working with the latest route map (also added some labels). Jpegs are here:

http://www.clarkandersen.com/panoRSol883.jpg
http://www.clarkandersen.com/Route_Map_Sol883.jpg

better quality versions in Jpeg2000 format are at http://www.clarkandersen.com/Jpeg2000/Jpeg2000.htm

There's still room for debate on the actual Sol 883 position, it may be six or seven meters south of where it's plotted, or it may be exactly right. Doesn't make that much difference.

I was doing a bit of horizon feature identification, correlating angles in the map view to the pan view, measured from Delta to several other targets. There're a couple of interesting things out there.

One, since about Sol871 I've been noticing what appears to be a really big black rock WAY out there on the ejecta. I've been calling it Hawking (black rock/black hole). Anyway, there's enough parallax at the moment to estimate that it is somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of the distance between the Sol 883 position and Epsilon. It strikes me as a useful navigation target once we get out there on the ejecta, and intrinsically interesting ... and since it is on the way, we may as well visit it.

Two, a more interesting anomaly. I'm not entirely certain that we've actually seen the crater Epsilon just yet. There's some horizon activity in its vicinity, but the angular spans aren't right. When I measure from Delta to where Epsilon should be, and overlay the angular span expected, there are hints of Epsilon, but nothing clear. What is clear is that the Victoria entry region makes up most of that horizon activity, to the left of where Epsilon should be. There is a mound in the Epsilon vicinity, but its angular extent is too large to be Epsilon, but matches neatly with the large subdued apparent crater behind Epsilon, which I've labeled Zeta. I hadn't expected to see anything of Zeta from here, on the map view it looks very old and eroded and subdued ... yet there's this distinct rim in the right place. Hard to say from this far away, but it looks more like a mound than a crater. I'm having a hard time envisioning a process which would create a big round mound on the edge of a bigger crater (Victoria), and wondering whether it could be the result of something like mud volcanism? Anyway, probably just a crater, but interesting.

I'll agree, we ought to use JPL names once they are assigned, but we can use our informal names until a JPL name is attached. Examples such as "Alpha"/Waco and "The Cindercone"/Von Braun or "Ultreya"/ElDorado come to mind. As a convention, I usually enclose "informal names" in quotes.

It _is_ getting quite interesting as we approach the ejecta apron. I'm looking forward to seeing the contact between the hillock just ahead and the evaporite bedrock.

--Bill

Yeah, I'd be happy to use JPL names ... if they would just bother to share them at the time they create them. Meanwhile we need to be able to talk about things without having to draw a picture and point every time. Generic/descriptive names get the job done.

Oppy has reached "west hillock"
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...LVP0722R0M1.JPG
Congratulations on a long voyage across the dune sea.

Wow - it looks like they finally got tired of following the troughs! Near as I can tell, Sol 884 saw a long drive to the southeast, cutting across all the small drifts. The drive direction was on the extreme left of the Pancam drive direction pan - if not off the edge of it.

This is the view due south - to be filled in as more images and pointing data become available. Unless I'm hallucinating, we are now slightly to the northeast of the hillock feature! And yes, the drifts behind it are on the 'apron', I believe.

And yes, this shows Beagle, not Waco - or actually the secondary next to Beagle, I guess edit: nope, it's Beagle The image is centered about 36 degrees ground-relative azimith (northeast-ish).

Not only a great drive, but access to the dark lump, and good driving straight to Beagle if required.

Doug