I don't think those are larger cobbles because they seem lighter in color. It looks more like chunks of evaporite have been tossed around by an explosion. Wouldn't a small crater be a tidier event? Could this be an oblique impact?

Sol 828 is driving day. Let's see if they repeat a 70-80m move like on sol 823, just to recover a bit from being stopped the last five sols.

Here is the complete panorama of the small crater.

Taken with the L2 pancam on Sol 818.

jvandriel

[quote name='jvandriel' date='May 23 2006, 08:03 PM' post='55449']
Here is the complete panorama of the small crater.
Taken with the L2 pancam on Sol 818.
jvandriel

Even if seeing a crater is a nice change, I'm always amazed to note how clearly we can see the beacon. Even if we have cameras with a view of 10/10, I wonder how the beacon will be seen by human eyes. There is less light on Mars than on Earth and, even if the camera are adapted to marsian conditions, I have the feeling "we" will have a good perception. Not to say we'll see where the beacon is but we could compare its light to the one of the stars (ok, not at the same time), see how ponctual it is.

I want to know what do you think that is the most probably height of beacon?

I bet it would be around 1.50 meters tall from the horizontal view line.

Rodolfo

[quote name='RNeuhaus' date='May 23 2006, 09:39 PM' post='55463']
I want to know what do you think that is the most probably height of beacon?
I bet it would be around 1.50 meters tall from the horizontal view line.
Rodolfo

I have no real figure but it has to be higher than that. Using number of pixel in the image, some of us have already determined that it's at least 1 meter high and we all believe it's above the surrounding. On top of this Oppy is on a slope that goes down to VC and we can still see the crater above the horizont even on the unstretched images. I mean from a range of about 1 km, even at human eyes height 1.5m is not enough. If it's on the far rim it'll be even higher. Based on this, I'll put it in the 3-5 meters range.

3-5 meters


Heh Heh..
Stop! In the name of love
Before you break my heart
Stop! In the name of love
Before you break my heart
Think it over
Think it over

I put 1.50 meters because I have already tested the visual distance test of an 5 meters object (a house) from a distance of about one kilometer. I realized that the house in which I looked is taller than the beacon at about the same distance.

Rodolfo

And we have found a beautiful piece of evaporite proximal ejecta! Get over dere!
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...A3P1311L0M1.JPG
If we find a shatter cone, it's mine! hee hee.
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...A3P1214L0M1.JPG
C'mon, baby. do the locomotion!

Looks like close to 50 meters due south on this latest drive. Of course, I will wait for the official red dot placement.

Brian

39m according to the tracking data.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...A3P0705L0M1.JPG
Hmmm...I wonder if that junk yard over there is the splashdown of a big chunk of ejecta. And the cute little shards everywhere just splashed off it.

Shaka:

In the sense that *everything* is ejecta, yes - but I wouldn't count on it as coming from Victoria. Apart from everything else, it looks quite fresh (at least in Meridiani terms!). It's been suggested that most small Martian craters are actually secondaries.


Bob Shaw

Whatever it was it looks like it came straight in / down, blasted ejectra straight up and without flattening the dune it punched through. Note what looks like fairly vertical walls. Maybe it was like the comet probe that penetrated the surface quite a way then blasted debris almost straight up. Dare I say geyser?

I also note the crater doesn't seem to be on the orbital shot used to plot Oppy's movement. It may be VERY new.

Click to view attachment

Yes it is.

Click to view attachment



Strange...
I've got 43m via parallax measurements and 45m when plotting the new position on the route map with the help of a polar projection of the navcam mosaic.

Thanks for the updated position.

The view in the drive direction. ( Corner crater )

Taken on Sol 828 with the L2 pancam.

jvandriel

[quote name='jvandriel' date='May 24 2006, 01:23 PM' post='55537']
The view in the drive direction. ( Corner crater )
Taken on Sol 828 with the L2 pancam.
jvandriel
jvandriel (and all),

"The view in the drive direction. ( Corner crater )" you just posted show something new to my eyes : features further than Corner crater. There is a "black line" that start on the far rim of corner crater going South west and that, in my opinion, can be related to the end of the smooth "ejectat plain" that come from VC and nearly touch Corner crater. (Still difficulties with Photoshop, can'r draw a line now!). I hope you see what I mean. Opinion ?
Click to view attachment

Hi all,

This is my first post here, but I've been following The Journey for months and want to thank you all for the work you do here.

James - Can you explain to me how exactly you've derived the figure of 39 m for Opportunity's latest move. I've seen the MER Pancam Data Tracking Site, but can't see anything about drive distances. Are you working it out from the site drive numbers? If so, how?

Many thanks,

Castor

What one does is work out a range to a feature in both pre-drive ( i.e. yestersol) and post drive ( tosol ) imagery, and the difference is the distance covered.

Doug

Thanks for the reply. I got the impression from James' statement "according to the tracking data" that there was something more in the data that enables you to calculate a distance travelled.

Castor

[quote name='Shaka' date='May 24 2006, 02:52 AM' post='55493']
3-5 meters
Heh Heh..
Stop! In the name of love
Before you break my heart
Stop! In the name of love
Before you break my heart
Think it over
Think it over


Shaka,
I know you're a nearimer but, let's consider two thing :
1- IF beacon is on the far rim (and it is ) it could be higher than you think it is.
2- WHO's said that beacon is the top of something? If it's an outcrop or a stone or whatever, I'll NOT place it at the top since the top will be oriented up. Why can't the light come from 1-2 meters below the top? So, beacon (as a whole stuff) could STILL be 3-5 meters above the horizon. How do you call a reversed Abyss? Oh, yes a peak! Kind of Climber's stuff

Climber said:
" 'The view in the drive direction. ( Corner crater )' you just posted show something new to my eyes : features further than Corner crater."

I noticed that too. If there is a change in view due to vertical parallax, what about the beacon? Any noticable change there as well?

[quote name='centsworth_II' date='May 24 2006, 06:40 PM' post='55578']
I noticed that too. If there is a change in view due to vertical parallax, what about the beacon? Any noticable change there as well?

Oh yes there are changes! Near rimer's are (nearly) giving up : See Dilo's post : http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...=55579&st=450&#
Plus : Ustrax is lost (see post that follows Dilo's).
Good news anyway is that there's something new near Corner crater already visible. We definitly need to go there. On top of this, somebody said that dunes are parrallel to this direction. Must be an easy one for Tesheiner. By the way I'm going to Spain (Sierra de Guarra) for the next 4 days. Kind of restricted sols for me.

Climber,

here is that part, you are talking about.

It is cut out of the original panorama from Sol 828.

When you zoom in, it look's like dark ejectamaterial from small craters. ( but I am not an expert )

jvandriel

[quote name='jvandriel' date='May 24 2006, 09:42 PM' post='55609']
Climber,
here is that part, you are talking about.
It is cut out of the original panorama from Sol 828.
When you zoom in, it look's like dark ejectamaterial from small craters. ( but I am not an expert )
jvandriel

Thanks jvandriel. I agree that some dark zones to the rigth of Corner crater can be related to what we see from above and could be ejectat from small craters. Anyway, I suspect that the one zone that seems to come from behind Corner crater could be related to the bright zone of the same view. To me, this brigth (from above) and dark (from actual Oppy position) seems to match (may be Tesheiner can confirm) and could correspond to the limit of VC's ejectat. I'll be interested in more opinion & analysis.

God, how to do this: half a dozen little posts or one big one? I guess the latter uses less bandwidth. OK, Doug?

Bob, Laddie, you misunderstand me. I went on record weeks ago that I didn't think we would see any Victoria ejecta. I doubt any of it survived the Hesperian. Any ejecta we find will be from recent craters, and I consider Corner and probably Sofi to be among those.
I accept the recent view that secondaries predominate. That complicates the already-complicated mechanical models for crater formation and ejecta distribution. Hopefully we can cope. For now I'm hypothesizing that we are entering an area of proximal ejecta from a fresh crater. I'm looking for a pattern of ejecta distribution centering on Corner. Time will tell.

Castor, Laddie, welcome to UMSF. How nice we have another Scot who can help us keep Bob's puns under control!

Climber, mon ami, I hope you got the reference in the song to Diana Ross (aka Spongebob's Mom). When I first saw her, I estimated her as "3-5 meters" wide. In the end I think she was smaller than the real Diana's afro! Just a cautionary note. Size is hard to pick on Mars.
I accept the estimates by Dilo et al. that Beacon's light - that we can see from Oppy - is a meter or less in size. Of course, if there's more structure hidden from view or dark colored, the structure could be any size. It could really be the Pharos, transported here by aliens, but my usual procedure is to trust to Occam's Razor: If a simple uptilted slab of evaporite will explain what we see, I go with that hypothesis until further observations show the sphinxes flanking the doorway. There's no harm in speculation. Time will tell all.

Another stitch&stack of CornerCrater, now from Sol828:

Yeah, I still don't fully understand what happens, sometimes the tracking data is bang on but every now and again it seems to be a little off. It's no substitue for your work.



Welcome Castor. Yes there is more to it, there is a wealth of information in the tracking database. Pity it's not accurate all the time! I'll PM you the details...

James

Welcome Castor.
This is a a back view (N direction) from Sol829 Navcam:
Click to view attachment
this 180deg stitch was 5x vertically stretched and clearly show the "hell view" hill. As I suspeced, Oppy missed the highest point passing slightly west of it...

Shaka and others. Thanks for the welcome. Actually I'm not a Scot. I'm what's known here as a Sassenach (i.e. Englishman living in Scotland). I've still not worked out if Sassenach is a derogatory name..... I wouldn't dream of trying to keep the locals under control....

James - thanks for your personal reply. I think I'll let others interrogate the database. I'm just a geologist, not a SQL expert.

Castor

Castor:

A Sassenach? Fit like!

Actually, so am I (in principle - I've lived in Scotland most of my life, but still can't 'pass'). Enjoy Aberdeen - I worked there a few years ago for Baker Hughes (it was strange being a part, however small, of Howard Hughes' old CIA shell-game!).

Bob Shaw

Let's go back on track from Scotland to Mars.

Here is the 360 degree panoramic view taken on Sol 828 and Sol 829

with the L0 navcam.

jvandriel

The view in the drive direction on Sol 830.

Taken with the L2 pancam.

Look at the beacon on the left side of the pano.

jvandriel

Is that two beacons side by side?

Nice pan. How about some more silly speculation?

In this image, the beacon looks like it may have 2 components. What are the odds that both the Near and Far rim ideas are correct?

Here's an anaglyph version of the Sol 830 Pancam mosaic:



full size

(That's it for me, I'm off to Arizona. I'll post a pic when I get back.)

Marz:

Can I vote for that! Yeeha!

Bob Shaw

Look at this wide angle Sol830 West view (stitch of four NavCam images).
Click to view attachment
The left crest of the big dune is strange (whit regularly spaced peaks) while the tracks on the right are quite odd (perhaps due to the damaged steering wheel).

Another feature is worth to look is this one, already higlighlighted by Shaka:
Click to view attachment (sharpened stitch of 3 Sol830 PanCam images)
Perhaps another crater... cannot localize it in the NavCam images, some help needed!

This looks to me like a large chunk of the layered sulfate salts got blasted out by the creation of Corner Crater, and after travelling 400 meters or so, hit the ground and broke apart, leaving this rubble pile. I don't think it is a crater as such.

You mean a 2ndary crater

Doug

It's the same spot located here:
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ic=2417&st=566#

Thanks for stichting Dilo! Looks like an impact from yesterday Interestingly most of the ejected debris show no secondary (distinctive) impacts or other tracks in the surrounding area --> maybe roughly an indicator for the time span...


If so, we should find more of them around Corner Crater, roughly radiating from it - also in the orbit images. Do we?

Except that I don't really see a circular hole in the ground, just strewn layered rock fragments and disrupted dunes. So, no, I don't think this is a secondary crater. Just rocks.

I'm confident that the increasing amount of rubble on the surface, and the large clumps of it we see in places like this one, are crater ejecta and (in a few spots maybe) poorly developed secondary craters, but the scale is completely wrong for them to be caused by Corner Crater. This must be Victoria ejecta.

Phil

I'll agree with Phil, this must be Victoria ejecta. The closer we get to the crater, the more we will be seeing this.

If we were walking a canyon on Earth, we would be looking at the float (rocks not in-place) on the slopes to get a preview of the strata that lie ahead. Similarly, we should be looking at the ejecta from Victoria as we travel.

Note, also, that there seems to be an increase in the number of micro craters. FWIW.

--Bill

The ejecta is quite interesting. This mean we can take a look into the crater without actually going into it. Ofcourse it's still better to go into the crater itself as the ejecta is all out of context.

Phil & Bill, Are you suggesting that Victoria was formed since the last major mobilization of these ripples?
Guys, where are the ejecta rays around VC that we see around Corner? Corner is a 35 meter hole in the ground. That's a pile of rock thrown around! VC is as old as the hills, maybe older. Sorry, I can't agree with you. This rock collection might not be from Corner, but it can't be from Victoria.

I'm fully in agreement with this - Victoria must be old enough for almost all of the ejecta to have eroded to dust (and spherules), just like Endurance. The only way that rock pile could be from Victoria is if it was a substantially different material from the sedimentary layers we saw within Endurance and if it was that then where is the rest of it? I find the idea fairly improbable but perhaps this isn't as improbable as it seems to me. If it is from victoria then it would have to some much more resiliant underlying layer. If it's the same general material type as everything else then it has to have been fairly recent dropped as a secondary from elsewhere.