Tman, I do not fully understand what bumps are you talking, but I'm pretty sure that the distant hill on the horizon is the farthest, tallest rim portion of the big ESE crater, 35Km away!
Click to view attachment
The heading is exactly the one calculated by you (125deg - red arrow). I strongly suspect that also the bright feature 10deg to the left is an isolated peak from the same rim (indicated by blue arrow)... is incredible that Oppy can see these features and this means that atmosphere transparency is excellent (what about latest tau values?).

Ustrax, I will use this logo for sure in my next stretched VC mosaic, thanks again!

Wow, you could be right! Visible in this distance, this relict of the rim must be "rather" tall!

I guess the real "hell of a view" of Meridiani could we get on (slightly higher) Victoria's rim at this winter season - not only due to Victoria.

Sure, and is probable we will really see it if we go first to the "bright crater", then follow the western rim in search of a southern access route...
About the 35m bright crater, each Sol I have the impression is rapidly becoming closer and more detailed!
Moreover, if you compare this last Sol815 stretched view with last one (Sol813) you'll see that Oppy started to descend because now the bright rim is closer to horizon and this happens also for dunes on the left (goodbye, Endurance!).
Click to view attachment
I highlighted with blue arrow a new distant feature, probably a more distant VC rim portion now visible. Red arrow indicate possible far/internal-rim details, but I'm not sure and we have to wait for closer view...

This week-by-week sequence of stretched images show the progress, from first VC sighting to recent approach to the bright crater...
Click to view attachment ...I like it!

Me too, Dilo. Me too!

ditto, dilo, ditto. Now who can make it into an anaglyph? An animation? That oughtta leave JPL in our wake!

Shaka, you really mean they could steer their aircraft carrier into the wake of our excursion boat?

Dilo, good comparison (like it too)!

You need an animation?
I've what you want

Victoria Approach from Sol 792 to Sol 813 (1,36 Mo) - Images Dilo

It's just ahead!!!

...at least 150m tall to appear over the (spherical) horizon, according to the horizonator!

Andy

Dilo, could you add images at the beginning of the animation from earlier sols. The animation makes it really clear what you are seeing and i would like to see what it looked like when the very first hint of victoria appeared over the horizon.

Great giff BTW.

Very nice model by a1call at the mar carey forum...:

http://gallery.perfext.com/displayimage.php?album=2&pos=68

With a good eye we can already see a little more detail on the beacon's form:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...LYP2407L2M1.JPG

With a good eye we can already see a little more detail on the beacon's form:

Do you mean the little darker "feature" on the rigth of the beacon ?

The form seems to have a light, sunward side and a darker right side.

Indeed you do, Psukie! Tres cool, merci. Now if you can convert it to anaglyph form, you can sell tickets for a 3D thrill ride.

Excellent excellent stuff - you can rerally see that we are approaching. it will be great when we get a much longer movie of the whole approach to VC, not just these early steps.

Click to view attachment
Thanks for the GIF, Ant103!

This is a enhanced version from Sol816 right cam, where I made an attempt to remove jpeg artifact and noise, obviously this impact on resolution but I think this is the best compromise...
Click to view attachment

Thanks for your comments.

With the three first pictures of the approach, I have complete the gif animation. Now, we have the whole approach of VC :

Victoria approach from Sol 785 to Sol 813 - Original data Dilo (2Mo)

dilo, I've picked up your enhanced version and blow it...
It may be a mistake but it looks like there are other bright features surrounding the main beacon:

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b14/ustrax3/beacon.jpg

I've given some temporary names to the features just for easier reference.
As the word beacon appeared I remember the alexandrian one, so, the names presented here are related to that wonder of the ancient world.

VC identification at least on sol 780.
That's more then three weeks ahead of the MER project's "initial confirmation" on sol 804.

Kudos, Dilo!

I grabbed this good old CorelDraw zoom tool and got a bit more detail, I guess...

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b14/ustrax3/beacon2.jpg

Going back again to the "beacon"'s position at the near/far rim, here is what I've got measuring some headings.

This vertical view displays the headings to the Corner Crater and to the beacon (*) both on sol 800 and on sol 816.
(*) Assumed to be on the far rim.

Click to view attachment

For sol 800:
- Corner Crater @ 160.6º
- Beacon (far rim) @ 151.2º

For sol 816:
- Corner Crater @ 160.2º
- Beacon (far rim) @ 149.6º
- Beacon (near rim) @ 148.8º

Depending on the beacon's position, the angular separation would change from the 9.4º on sol 800 to either 10.6º or 11.4º on sol 816; there is a little but measureable difference on them and it should be noted on the pancams.

And here is the results. I did a manual stitching of the pancam pics and tried to annotate the "theoretical" heading separations. The topmost mosaic is from sol 800, while the bottom is from sol 816. The beacon's heading is, imho, consistent with a near rim location.

Click to view attachment

fwiw - I've done an 'ask' on the unannotated version of that newer, shockingly good Victoria MOC image, but no luck I'm afraid.

Doug

Tesheiner : where do you have obtain this hi-res image of Victoria? I want it!

Thank you again Tesheiner for your excellent work, and yes I appreciated that new view of Victoria too.

And about this im not certain, have anyone mentioned where the halfway point from Erebus to Victoria might be?

That's the annotated picture from the last press release related to imaging VC. It have been discussed here already about the source (raw image) of that picture. Look for previous posts on this thread or on Victoria features one.

Yes, I've just see it. The resolution is very good. Exist it a version without label and text?

God, if you guys had been with Columbus on the Santa Maria, you would have spotted Miami Beach a week out of Portugal!

Excellent work. I was preparing a post on the same theme, but you were quicker. And the quicker the better (so to say).

I only add my observation which is consistent with your results (as of my original draft):

Oppy has traveled 600 m on a relatively straight course towards the Corner Crater since detecting the 'beacon', about sol 780. All the way the position of the 'beacon' has remained virtually unchanged relative to the near rim 'bulge' and the conspicuous dark patterns around it. (See dilo's series of stretched images and Ant's movie.) The horizontal parallax of a far rim object should by now have changed about 0.7 degrees relative to the near rim (using sol 816 pancams as a scale). If the 'beacon' were on the far side, it should have moved to the right of the near rim bulge or then become obscured by it. Given that Oppy has been descending, disappearance of the beacon would be yet more probable (as Phil Stooke demonstrated).

Well, all these arguments seem to add up to a fairly solid case... the only alternative I can think of is that the 'beacon' is a small hollow in the near rim showing a glimpse of a distant outcrop. Changing the viewpoint reveals a different part of the distant cliff through the same hollow. I don't think that is very likely. But in general it's always good to try to think of alternative interpretations if you can!

Phil

And someone would have spotted an abyss somewhere in Arizona.

There is indeed a line of prominent anatolia-like features trending NE, as you have observed. I've looked for a message that was posted earlier message and haven't been able to find it; I suspect that it was in the missing "Victoria on the Horizon" thread. Oppy may pass near another one of these features on the way to "Corner Crater" so we may get a closer look.


I'm rocking on the fence (that is, undecided) on the location "Beacon" feature. It could be on either the near or the far rim: it is hard to tell now since Oppy's path is headed in it's direction and there is little parallax shift. As I noted earlier, we'll know in a few Sols.

--Bill

Or _thought_ they had spotted...

--Bill

That would be the most important attraction center. Very strange to have a tall lighthouse of VC. Everywhere around VC is completely flat with only minor oscilations of no more than 1.40 meters of land with sand ripples. Then it might be a survival big boulder caused by impact VC crater.

Rodolfo

I am thinking and am something surprised that in Mars, the long range view does not get blur view as does in the Earth due to the thermal heat. As the Mars' weather is so cool and the air does not make less distinct or clear the long range view.

Then the blur view might be due to the low PANCAM resolution for that distance, around 1,200-1300 meters.

Rodolfo

" am thinking and am something surprised that in Mars, the long range view does not get blur view as does in the Earth due to the thermal heat...."

The surface pressure of the air is somewhat less than 1% of that on Earth at sea level. I expect that refractive index is somewhat dependent on average temperature and composition, but to a good zeroth-approximation, the refractive blurring of the martian atmosphere will be 1/2 to 1% of that on Earth.

Ustrax, your features identifications/namimg is intriguing, but I must underline that original image quality was very poor and I made heavy processing, possibly some features could be not real!
we will see...
Ant103, great animation. Looking to this and considering also that beacon visibility is continuosly increasing (in spite of the fact that Opportunity is descending), I'm seriusly re-considering the hypothesis that we are seeing the crater interior (far rim) in the center portion of VC, as suggested bu Toma!
Look at this annotated version of !official stretch", where I outline possible far (red) and near (blue) rim contours, with some possible inner crater features identifications (purple arrows)...
I'm still not sure but I would appreciate comments on the hypothesis

Very interesting considerations on the beacon from Theseiner/marswiggle... I didn't consider parallax, I will make some checks on this soon!
Meanwhile, I suggest to concentrate the discussion on this argument on the other specific thread (Victoria Features); IMHO here we should discuss other features like "sink-hole" or the "corner crater"...

Here I am, still rocking on the fence, but about to fall off!

You may very well have a point there, Dilo. What we are looking at is the entire southern part of Victoria's basin?!?!! I was simply assuming that we were seeing the northern "ramparts" to the rim, and the "Beacon" was either on the northern rim, or we were, by chance, looking through a scallop in the rim.

But if we were looking at that northern rampart, we would be looking at the ejecta blanket, and it's appearance would be dark, whereas the crater basin near the rim is clearly lighter toned. I'll agree with your identification of features in the rim. Note also that there are light and dark streaks from the mass-wasting ("landsides") on the southern basin wall, let's enhance contrast/etc and see if we can match these albedo features.

I hate to make "I agree" posts, but I agree.

Interesting spot, this Victoria.

--Bill

Well - I'm not one for fence sitting ( get a sore backside doing that ) - I don't think it's the far rim, I think it's the near rim

We'll find out soon enough
Doug

Doug, I would like to know why you think we are seeing the near rim...

This base image (which was posted by Dilo earlier) isn't 100% correct, but I've annotated it to show suggested lines-of-sight that seem to support the contention that we are looking at the far rim of Victoria.

FWIW.

--Bill

The problem with this is that the MOLA data is way too sparse to use it for this - there are something like four MOLA data points within all of the area we are looking at.

My gut feel is that the parallax changes make this look like the near rim. We'll see pretty soon though - another 200-300m and it should be blindingly obvious either way.

The problem is that the MOLA data is "blurry" to the point of total abstraction. If it had more resolution, it would show the slope leading up to Victoria, the rim, and the crater itself -- but all it shows is a blurred depression sorta centered on Victoria. In reality the whole depression is inside the rim.

Must agree with helvick, these data aren't very reliable (the middle step is an artifact due to unmatched datasets and also VC slope do not seems realistic).

In the meantime, using Registax, I made this "super-res" image of the beacon based on Sol815/816 PanCam images (total of 4 frames):
Click to view attachment
(150% of original scale)
The features highlighted by Ustrax aren't evident ( ) while the dark patch on the right is clearly visible...
This structure is about 2 pixel tall, a little bit more than 1 meter assuming that is located on the far rim and only 75cm for the close rim...

Yeppers, the MOLA data is horrid _for this application_. But it shows that the terrain goes from a topographic high of x-magnitude at Oppy's current location to a low of y-magnitude at Victoria and strongly suggests that it is possible that we could be looking at the nether side of Vicky. Even if the rim were horizontal instead of "tilted" it would still be possible to see the other side.

So there.

--Bill

Given that picture I would agree with you, those matchings are quite convincent; actually I had the felling too that we were looking into the crater itself.
I did an exercise (see below) to find the correspondent points on the near rim for each point you selected on your image, and try to match them with the pancam views. No conclusion at all. If that was the only data I would say "far rim".

Click to view attachment

BUT after doing the other exercise of measuring the angular distance between the beacon and corner crater for both near and far rims scenarios (*), those results pretty much convinced myself that the beacon is at the near rim. It can't be at the point we see it today if located at the far rim (if my math was correct, of course ).

(*) I'm looking forward your (or anyone) review of it.


And yes, this "mystery" may be solved in a week or two.

Umm - because I think what we're seing is hte near rim and not the far rim. I might very well be wrong - but at the moment I think we're seing the near side of the crater - not the far side.

Doug