It's most probable bright outcrop on the opposite ~far rim of the crater.

Nico

That's what I think. We'll keep an eye on this light spot: if it is on the near side of Victoria, it will remain visible for a while. If it is on the far side of the crater, it be disappear as we head downhill towards the crater.

--Bill

I imagine it will stay in view for another dozen sols though, so we may even get a little more detail before it vanishes (which I agree it probably will).

Ok, "Victora on the horizon" thread disappeared (and all my posts in it too ) but VC still visible, every day better!
This is a resume of last 15 days PanCam views (5x stretch):

Get with the program folks! Or if you have OS 9....
BTW, great jorb, Pando.

About the 'white dot': measuring from latest pancam images, the angle between the dot and the middle of the 'corner crater' is about 10.5 °. Laid on the map, from Oppy's current location this matches exactly with a small whitish mound on the near rim of VC, which I have long suspected to be the 'beacon'. Someone else also suggested it here.

Supposing it's the beacon also helps putting some other features there to their places. For the attached image I reused some images originally made by dilo (if I remember right and if you don't mind). It's somewhat reduced. (Please ignore the red broken lines from the earlier work. )

Yellow lines = bearings of the beacon dot and the crater

Editing note: Attachment changed for similar one without panorama limits (as they are harder to estimate), and being slightly larger.

Nice.

Makes a lot of sense, thanks.

'Corner Crater' is starting to look interesting I hope we end up passing nearby.

James

Pando, your 3D model / animation is great!
Exactly, how did you made it? Are you using the same digital model posted some time ago by Terragen user?
(A couple of small suggestions to improve animation: lower the direction of view in order to better see the near-side features and change general hue toward red...)
Thank you again.

No problem. Your beacon identification matches with previous analysis made by myself...

Very good analysis. I had assumed that the "Beacon" was associated with the fresh impact crater on the far rim and we were able to view it by chance alignment through on of the scallops in the near rim, but the angular position of the "Beacon" does seem to place it at that promontory on the near rim.

I hope we'll make a stop at "Corner Crater" (which I informally think of as "Bullseye Crater" since it is on the bearing direction we've been heading). It will provide a preview of the subsurface conditions at Victoria.

--Bill

Nice alignment marswiggle. I think though that this makes a strong case for the White Pyramid being one of two promontories on the far rim, since they will be showing rock towards Opportunity, whereas the near rim will show mostly ejecta blanket.

The view here which has not been stretched implies to me that the near-rim option is exceptionally unlikely. It's not just a speck, it's a sizable structure.

Indeed I like best looking the non-stretched images myself, but this landscape has taught me to respect the 'stretchers' here (reference to persons as well as their renderings).

In all stretched images the Beacon/Pyramid sits almost exactly on top of the highest point of the bulging VC. If it's rising from the far side, then it is sizeable anyway . IMHO it would need to be a _towering_ peak (in terms of Meridiani) at the far side to show above this local high. Also note that the far rim is ~2100 m away while the near side is ~1400 m, and this is a small globe.

Yet, we do know from experience that this is not the most predictable small globe in most cases.

Just a reminder of another beacon seen by Opportunity while still in Eagle crater. This beacon came from the cliffs on the far rim of Endurance. It's easy to imagine that the Victoria beacon could also come from cliffs on the far side.

One thing could dissuade this belief: Is enough known about the relative elevations of the area to unequivically state that the far rim of Victoria is lower than the near rim and no part of it could be seen by Opportunity from its present location?

Click to view attachment
(Pancam taken on sol 35. Horizon straightened and corners filled by cloning.)

OK, Back to those enigmatic black cobbles, from the enigmatic white beacon.
James' nice update of the route map for sol 808 shows us just entered the splotch of enigmatically dark ripples:
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...pe=post&id=5425

But they are less enigmatic because the latest pan cams show they are densely littered with the cobbles:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...2JP2402L2M1.JPG
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...2JP2402L2M1.JPG

So we may be able to plot their distribution from orbit, though I don't see any simple pattern focussed on Victoria. I personally doubt that they are homologous to the dark apron and wind streaks of the latter, or that they originate there, but if proven wrong when we get there, I will be duly humbled by the mysteries that have come to us Out of the Silent Planet.

I thought that was Earth....

tty

Lewis and I have differing philosophical positions on that. To me Earth is the noisy planet!

Too right, Shaka!

Phil

I'm one of the ones who asked if there was any chance of an open/standards-based formatted version. Now I've watched it without having to fall back on a non-Free legacy system , using a computer running entirely Free software, I'm very impressed with a lovely piece of work - thanks, Pando! Hopefully I'll be coming back to this animation repeatedly in the next months as Oppy explores Victoria...

Excellent MGS identifican of black cobbles, Shaka!

Hello.

Yesterday, I've build a Terragen panorama of Victoria Crater from the arrival point targeted by Tesheiner route map.


(click to enlarge)

And here is an aerial view of the location of this virtual Opportunity's panorama :

Click to view attachment

Enjoy!

Those terragen scenes are so good.
I suppose there isn't any point in Oppy going there now

Roy F

I was thinking just the same... - amazing terragen models!

Ant103, this is a beauty!!!
I think you should work a little bit on the inner dunefield to make them less smooth and more realirtic...
For the remaining, very impressive work!

Grumble... I hope it's not too realistic. I'd like some slopes that are not so steep, for Opportunity to drive down.

Previously, I tought that around Victoria crater has no rims but a slope down flat land starting about 400 meters before reaching the cliff. However, according to the recent pictures, it is confirmed that around rim is a on higher surface than its around. Hence, it is named as a Beacon...a good name

Rodolfo

Hi dilo, I didn't use the terragen digital model. I actually did that last October, way before the Terragen map was ever posted:
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...indpost&p=23430

Basically I created my own height-map from the Victoria photo which I then used to create a mesh using tsxTruder plugin and projected a texture on it with truespace. It's not perfect since the crater edge cliffs are drooping down a bit. One of these days I'll make a better one.

If any of you want to get your feet wet with 3d modeling, there's a nifty little app available for download for free -- Caligari Truespace 3.2, and the only thing you need to do is register at Caligari website to get the serial number. TS3 also has a bunch of third party plugins (free and otherwise) that do various things.

Free ts3: http://www.download.com/TrueSpace/3000-667...tml?tag=lst-0-1
plugins (watch for the ts version numbers): http://www.primitiveitch.com/php/product_i...gory=Free&Linux

There is a learning curve associated with its funky interface, but once you know the basics it's pretty simple. People have created some really amazing images with this. You can also create a camera and animate it over a path and render to video file.

That Terragen image Ant103 posted is awesome though. Was this created from a real DEM data, or is this using a hand-made height map as well? I like the fact that it can simulate the level of detail for the texture which makes it look much more real.

(sorry for the long post, I guess we should continue discuss the imaging details in another forum, and keep this one for Victoria images)

Thanks Pando.
As highlighted in the Opportunity route map thread, few days ago JPL guys decided to look for VC by stretching PanCam images and they found what we already know!
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/press/op.../20060505a.html
Is beautiful to see we correctly identified all features (they call the beacon "promontory far rim" and the bright/white crater is a "35m crater").
Due to better quality of press release image (based on not-jpeg, perhaps 12bit precision original images) I decided to make this further stretch (10x) with enhanced contrast...
Click to view attachment
At the left of VC it seems to see a large depression, which could explain the tilted crater profile... moreover, we can see a couple of very far, bright outcrops on the horizon (similar to beacon feature), possibly belonging to the rim of the huge, distant SE crater I already discussed in another thread...

Your images suggest pretty scarce possibilities for Oppy driving to the floor of this monster crater.

I’ve kept mum about my thinking that Oppy drivers will find no safe entry to descend into the interior of VC. But should that prove to be the case, I’d be among those who would be greatly disappointed.

On the South and Southeast sides of Victoria the rim is lower and the slopes are less so access may be more of a possibility. But remember the problem Oppy had at Endurance with getting stuck in the very loose material inside.

My take is that Oppy ought to make a traverse around the rim without making entry a priority and then continue downhill to the Southeast and go lower in the geologic section, health permitting.

--Bill

"This vertical stretch technique was first applied to Viking Lander 2 panoramas by Philip Stooke, of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, to help locate the lander with respect to orbiter images."

Agree, Bill. Rim profile (which is tilted 0.7deg, probably like the surrounding terrain) and position of internal dunefields suggests that SE is the best entry way... this could add at least another Km to be covered before enter VC (a couple of months, perhaps!) but circling the crater should be a spectacle by itself!

The traverse around the rim isn't all that bad an idea: although the rim is overturned and jumbled ejecta we can still look at different points of the section laterally and vertically along the way as well as get different views of the cliff. There'll still be plenty of photo ops as well as science along the way.

Is the "JPL Victoria Route Map" noted this morning available as a non-annotated image? Much better resolution and tonal quality than out MOC images here. I looked and didn't see anything else.

--Bill

Now my theory 'promontory on near rim' is contested against the JPL guys 'promontory on far rim'... we will see. With all their firsthand information the odds are quite in their favor, though they have had the tendency to fall a bit behind (findings here). [Edited for accuracy:] ...but inevitably they also seemingly lag a bit behind until actually confirming many findings here.

The ~left side of VC in that 10 x stretch is confusing to say the least. After all, a depression (partly) around VC, as speculated earlier?

I don't think they're behind us, things just get reported about 7-14 days in arrears

Doug

Ant103:

Well done! All they need is a teensy little MER...

...and the ragged edges make the whole thing look like Autostitch has been doing it's stuff, just like the real thing!

Bob Shaw

There is a little Oppy here

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...pe=post&id=5444

So there is!

Bob Shaw

Don't know if can be useful, this altimetry map from MOLA show a depression but I suspect that spatial resolution is too low, at least in the east (upper) portion:
Click to view attachment
(the step visible in the mid of altimetry profile is not real but clearly due to a discontinuity in the database)

Victoria was fprmed on a hillside and there is bound to be unusual topography around it.

This is a perspective view created from MOLA and the source "map" view. These are from my archives and, although I got the images here, I don't know their source. In the perspective, "crater" in Victoria, and the BIG crater to the SE is the big crater to the SE.

--Bill

Something is strange here. This shows that once you get to the 35-meter crater, you are at the rim of Victoria, and should be able to see everything all the way down to the bottom with no obstructions. That can't be right. The MOLA data seems to be fundamentally deficient. It appears that this could be the result of Victoria's diameter being less than the resolution limit of the MOLA data. The Victoria crater is thus spread out over a larger area in the MOLA data.

Scott

You're dead right there. The MOLA data is superb on the planetary scale but it's asking way to much of it to get this amount of detail for a wee little crater out on the plains.
MOLA's sampling "spot size" was 130m diameter and the on track spot to spot interval was ~ 330m. The track to track spacing varied due to the mapping orbit but the best MOLA covered areas only have a couple of points per square km. The best data on Victoria and the area around her has to come from stereo photogrammetry if there is appropriate source images.

Just a thought...
Is it be possible that what we are seeing in these vertically exaggerated images (circled with blue line) is actually far rim of VC?
Near rim may be still under horizon or in line with it…

Click to view attachment

It seems rather unlikely, Toma, that the only bright reflective vertical part of the far rim http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...pe=post&id=5415 we could see would be the Beacon.
It ought to look more like Endurance in that case, as centsworth showed:
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...pe=post&id=5426

Good question, Toma. But I must agree with Shaka...
Sometimes I had too the impression to see crater interior in the stretched images; however, in addition to the "beacon" argument, if you look carefully to dark and bright rim features, they match very well with VC closest side as seen from MGS.
IMHO, in addition to the "beacon", the only point where we possibly see a small portion of the far side is on the left, showed by a red arrow in the Sol813 image below (10x stretch)

The elevation map is made from MGS data by using The Gimp. But, I make this with the idea that Victoria is a normal crater and the known slopes of a normal crater.
But, were are the DEM data of Victoria crater? Are there very precise?

I don't know if someone already mentioned it but I think we are seing already visible outcrops on the Victoria's 'left rim'...

http://s16.photobucket.com/albums/b14/ustr...nt=outcrops.jpg

Original here:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P2405L2M1.JPG

Start covering that hole 'cause ustrax is back...

WOW, ustrax!!!!
Welcome back, happy to know VC caused you comeback! your logo "Victoria ahead" is fabulous, I would like to use it!!!
If I made correct identification, features you highlighted are outside of VC, at the far edge of the slight depression surrounding it from east...
perhaps we are looking to distant outcrops, or even big dunes.

Here my image version, processing reveal some shadow in favour of "big dunes" hypothesis...
But what about this "tall" very distant hill? (clearly visible also in the "official" JPL stretch)
Click to view attachment

edit: oops, forgot to post image

Hi Marco, I tried to boost these bumps by expanding and blacken (the original is a cutting from Tim Parker's mosaic):

http://www.greuti.ch/oppy/oppy_sol804_sehorizont.jpg

Strangely the black beam between the bumps seems to be real.
These bumps in my image is the left peak in your stretched pics I think.

Good to read you dilo!
Of course you can use it...the vessel in the center is truly the Victoria one.
I'll try to attach a solo and large version as soon as possible.
Thank you for the corrections! I'm just arrived now and trying to get use to this new locations.