And ye'll not be regrettin' it, Laddie! Nay, ye'll not be regrettin' it.

Updated Vote count as of May 26 at 1:01 AM Pacific Time
Final Vote count due to Restricted Sols, missed votes and other small factors will be The 27th now.

Here are the votes:

Far Rim

1. ElkGroveDan
2. prometheus
3. climber
4. MahFL
5. Joffan
6. bergadder
7. Stu
8. Nix
9. Bill Harris
10. centsworth II
11. alan
12. dilo
13. Kenny
14. Marz
15. Oersted
16. atomoid
17. antonise
18. Pando
19. Brian L
20. Bobby
21. MichaelT

Near Rim

1. lyford
2. sranderson
3. helvick
4. Tesheiner
5. ustrax
6. Chris
7. RNeuhaus
8. dvandorn
9. imipak
10. Shaka
11. Phil Stooke
12. jamescanvin
13. mchan
14. DFinfrock
15. ant103
16. fredk
17. Windy T
18. myran
19. Castor

Fence Sitters that are watching from Ustrax seating section in The Penalty Box? LOL

1. djellison
2. Bob Shaw
3. Zeke4ther
4. Tman
5. marswiggle

OoKayyy, Bobby. We hope these discrepancies will not continue. The eyes of the World are upon us! Over 700 steadfast members look to you to ensure that every vote is counted.
A U.N. Monitoring Team should not be necessary. And no b*llshit about 'hanging chads'!
Democracy will be served.

Okay,

I'll go for the far-rim-team

Michael


edit: and I had not read dilo's post before making that decision! Did that only now...

welcome to the RIGHT team

Nico

Nice to see more parts of the far rim coming into view, remember the approach to Endurance......

That was a very good one! Especially the evaporite part...




This time?!

Here again a comparision of "what we see from above" with "what we see from the ground".
I traced some headings on the map and then translated those ones to the pancams in order to confirm (or disregard) that "What You See Is What You Get".
It's still too early to say where is the beacon, but again the data is more consistent with a near rim location then far rim.

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

Somebody else want to join us on the near rim team (aka "winner team").

Edited: You can find a previous comparision here, including the headings on previous sols. I decided to exclude those ones in the current version to eliminate some "clutter".

Edited again: One note. If the rover continues moving due south (not SSE) the angular difference between the near and far rim expected positions will increase and then we should have a better evidence for the actual winner team.

Near rim for me..

That's pretty convincing. OK, I guess that makes me a turncoat.

Now THAT deserves a HUG!

Are we talking about territories?!
The drums are echoing in the plains...

Not too fast with the fireworks. As I said before "It's still too early to say where is the beacon".
There are still some uncertainties on the data we (I) have. Just as an example, here is the same exercise but using a different MOC image to plot the headings.

Click to view attachment --> Click to view attachment

As you can see on the pancams, the azimuths have changed from those in yellow measured in the route map to those others in magenta measured in that pretty map provided in one of the lasts press releases, making the "obvious" near rim beacon a little bit unsure.

So why that difference, where is the error? The problem is that different MOC pictures are taken at different pointing angles making a sort of "stereo effect". The height of an object above the terrain is translated to a left or right shift in its real (x, y) position on the map, proportional to the camera pointing angle. Just try to fit two images of Erebus-Victoria area taken at different angles; they will never fit.

We should add to the problem the issue about the pancam fov, as discussed before.

At the end, we should wait until the angular difference between the expected near and far rim positions are big enough to overcome these uncertainties.

Good work on the directions, Tesheiner... and a very useful caution about using different images.

But we also have angular sizes to consider. The beacon is resolved horizontally now. How does that width translate into sizes at the near and far rims? On your image, the two lines showing the width of the beacon stop at the near rim. You only take one to the far rim. But if the other one went to the far rim, it covers quite a bit of the cliff, not just that prominent point.

Anyway, it will not be long before some of us are gulping champagne from the Beacon Cup, and - dare I say - sharing hugs! There's nothing like champagne to loosen the inhibitions (so they tell me).

Phil

Mmm, the intention of those two lines was just to point the beacon's azimuth on either of the hypothesis, without taking the size into account.

Anyway, your remark about angular size is a good one. How big would be a feature made by those seven (or some?) pixels on either rims?

This is my current guess as to how features match up between the MOC image and the latest pancams. The upper image a a merged view of the two pancams showing the beacon on sol 830. Several markings are showing up now on the slopes. I try to match a few. I'm not measuring anything, just guessing... I'm supposed to be doing something else.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Bob: Please don't forget to divide the line between the far and near rim. See my previous append (Range 256-0 & 0-75 degree are for Near Rimers and from 76 - 255 degree are for Far Rimers). Otherwise if the rim would be in the middle, between them, we are going to shout!!! Faul! Penalty!

Rodolfo

I'm beginning to think we're using the wrong sporting analogy here. You know, with all these panicked people dashing between the Near and Far Rims, this is now more like cricket than football...

Hi Everyone -

Short term lurker and longer term habituee of the 'other board' (just cuz I found it first. don't see too many beasties in the pics). I am delurking to vote for the

Far Rim.

Here's what pushed me off the fence: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=153537448&size=o

Looks to me like the beacon is on the far rim in this flicker animation, popping back and forth behind a couple of dark spots I take to be the near rim.

Thoughts?

stevelu -- exactly! That's what I saw as well.

Logically thinking, when looking at JPL's high-res image of Victoria, there's nothing on the near rim that would strike out as the beacon, or it would leave a considerable shadow. On the far rim, the outcrop is pretty large, and will glow when sun is illuminating it since the bright rock layers are exposed. The dark soil covering the slope in the near rim would not produce this effect.

I shall also vote for Far Rim. It makes more sense to be seeing part of a far vertical cliff than a single giant rock that happens to point this way. And now we're seeing more of the cliff as we approach. Sorry guys!

Updated Vote count as of May 26 at 1:14 PM Pacific Time

Final Vote count due to Restricted Sols, missed votes and other small factors will be The 27th now and please don't yellow card me RNeuhaus.

Even know antoniseb jumped ship to the Near Team. It’s still a dead heat with the Far Rimmers ahead by 1 vote and the Fence Sitters getting pelted by evaporites from ustrax.

Here are the votes:

Far Rim

1. ElkGroveDan
2. prometheus
3. climber
4. MahFL
5. Joffan
6. bergadder
7. Stu
8. Nix
9. Bill Harris
10. centsworth II
11. alan
12. dilo
13. Kenny
14. Marz
15. Oersted
16. atomoid
17. Stevelu
18. Pando
19. Brian L
20. Bobby
21. hendric
22. MichaelT

Near Rim

1. lyford
2. sranderson
3. helvick
4. Tesheiner
5. ustrax
6. Chris
7. RNeuhaus
8. dvandorn
9. imipak
10. Shaka
11. Phil Stooke
12. jamescanvin
13. mchan
14. DFinfrock
15. ant103
16. fredk
17. Windy T
18. myran
19. Castor
20. Adam
21. antoniseb

Fence Sitters

1. djellison
2. Bob Shaw
3. Zeke4ther
4. Tman
5. marswiggle

far rim

Precipitately hurrying to make my vote public so as to avoid untimely death under evaporite shower (though my thought might have been interpreted from my map posts):

It's near rim.

Welcome to the forum, stevelu.

Horton is an imaging wizard!
But I still cannot assure if the black spot moving in front of the beacon is real or an artifact. IF that turns out to be a real feature... otherwise...

Of course, I won't mention that NASA already identified it as far rim some time ago (oops I just did that didn't I...)


They may have access to higher res DEM data that we mere mortals will never ever see... Of course, raw image files will help them too without those pesky Jpeg artifacts.

Yes. They may.

I haven't seen a vote from Emily yet. If we're going to be sharing group hugs, I would prefer to have her on my team, as opposed to some of the hairy beasts I have seen at the BBQ!

David

Here's a processsed image -- looks like other outcrops on the *far* rim are starting to show themselves as well...

Good point. What's the official UMSF position on suffrage for women? Emily's a pro; she could only be a Near-rimmer.

Although the tally has flip-flopped to either side of the middle over recent time, the consensus hasn't waivered much. People here are pretty much divided down the middle. The statistics suffer from a lack of numbers, as there are probably many like myself who have not declared a position, and who should properly be placed on the fence. Then again, who would place much confidence in statistics with a decision like this.

I've tried some things to knock myself off of the fence without convincing success. My gut feeling at this point is to join the far team, but I have one more thing I'd like to try.

For the time being, chalk me up on the fenceline, but leaning toward the right side.

Careful there, Tom. If that's a bob-wire fence you're leanin' off, you could do yourself an injury!
Glad the rockhounds are rolling up; we missed you. Is Tim Demko moseyin' up the trail?
How's about that Mineral Fair passin' on the starboard side? http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...A3P2417R2M1.JPG
I reckon it deserves more'n just a hoot an' a holler, but nobody listens to me.
Adios, amigo.

It really is time to close the bets: too many features are beginning to show up.

I have this recurring nightmare that Oppys wheels give up one of these days and WE WILL NEVER KNOW about the Beacon! - Oh the Humanity, if that were to happen... Grown men arguing into old age about smudges and pixels...

Far rim has consistently made the most sense to me.

Hate to sound like a killjoy, but I have to agree, it's getting a bit silly now, and soon we'll have people chopping and changing each time one more pixel is filled in on a new photo.

The joy of a gamble like this is in making a choice based on evidence at one point in time, or - if you've not got the smarts to do that, like wot I haven't - just going with your gut feeling instead, and we're starting to lose that now, I think. I'd much rather be proved wrong after sticking with the same choice for weeks, than be "right" just because I changed sides the day before 1000% conclusive proof came in.

We need to put a lid on this really, then if you're right you're right, if you're wrong you're wrong. It's just a bit of fun after all.

( ) According to the MOC, the rim of VC is out of the view. The horizontal view line which we are seeing on the picture is ones of a 300-400 meters circle of VC's rim. So the VC's rim is somewhat sunked. So, the beacon will always look like near as well as far rim.

Rodolfo

Wow, if we're not yet actually seeing the crater's rim yet, I can't wait for the day when it appears for real..!

The fact that we are seeing the rim of Corner Crater, and seeing material behind and above that means that we ARE seeing the crater rim. However, I agree that it is not a very tall rim for a half-mile crater.

I thought that too, especially as we can see what appear to be some of the dark "streaks" seen on MOC images. Guess we need another week or so's driving to clear things up properly.

Sure, If we can manage 80 meters a day for 5 days, we'll have a great view of Corner Crater.

I don't think Victoria has had its original rim for a long, long time.

I wonder about the dimensions of the ripples in the central dunefield, has this been discussed?

How tall can we expect these dunes to be?

Nico

Twenty-five quatloos on the Near Rim!

-the other Doug

That's one Tim Demko might try. Is there a proportionality between crater size and the ripple height within?
Somehow I doubt it's as simple as that. The prevailing winds across Meridiani would be more or less the same. The population of eolian dust particles ditto. I would be inclined to suppose that the ripple heights would be comparable. Crater depth might be another issue. Doubling the depth of a crater with a fixed diameter, might produce quite different wind flux across the bottom. That's speculation though.
Somebody want to go measure the ripple dimensions in a few MOC images?

I hereby move that we take a vote on whether to cut off voting on the location of Beacon. A seconder?
All votes must be received by midnight on Tuesday.

oDoug:

Cue cheesy music?

Accept no bets from any strangers wearing red shirts - they'll not survive the hour!

Bob Shaw

Updated Vote count as of May 27 at 3:00 PM Pacific Time

I agree with Stu and Oersted that this vote must come to an end. I was saying midnight tonight but Shaka says midnight Tuesday. Lets all agree with Shaka and end it at Midnight Pacific Time Tuesday for the Final Vote.

Here are the votes:

Far Rim

1. ElkGroveDan
2. prometheus
3. climber
4. MahFL
5. Joffan
6. bergadder
7. Stu
8. Nix
9. Bill Harris
10. centsworth II
11. alan
12. dilo
13. Kenny
14. Marz
15. Oersted
16. atomoid
17. Stevelu
18. Pando
19. Brian L
20. Bobby
21. hendric
22. MichaelT
23. avkillick
24. algorimancer
25. Cosmic Rocker

Near Rim

1. lyford
2. sranderson
3. helvick
4. Tesheiner
5. ustrax
6. Chris
7. RNeuhaus
8. dvandorn
9. imipak
10. Shaka
11. Phil Stooke
12. jamescanvin
13. mchan
14. DFinfrock
15. ant103
16. fredk
17. Windy T
18. myran
19. Castor
20. Adam
21. antoniseb
22. marswiggle

Fence Sitters

1. djellison
2. Bob Shaw
3. Zeke4ther
4. Tman

This gif is a nice attempt. But for L/R pancam pairs separated by only 30cm, a feature on the far rim would only shift by 1/3 pixel relative to a feature on the near rim when you shift from L to R views, as viewed from our current distance. So we can't be seeing parallax between the near and far rim. All we're seeing is noise. There just aren't any other features on the rim nearly as sharply defined as the beacon. We need more time (and distance really) to see real parallax.

Fellow Mars geeks, there are real calculations to be made regarding the beacon! There's more to this than just squinting at a few heavily jpeged pixels. Unfortunately any real calculation I've done has been inconclusive so far!

Exactly! Which is why you should take a chance and come join us on the dark side and together we can rule the galaxy! Dark side? Did I say dark side? I meant near side.

You misunderstand me, Bobby. I support closing the Beacon voting tonight. But it'll take until Tuesday for everyone else to express their opinion on doing so.

FredK,
I have great respect for the careful and meticulous measurements on the Beacon location carried out by Tesh and others. They form the major basis for my being 'off the fence'. Tesh has been especially cautious in his own description of his results and, whatever his formal credentials, he has impressed me as 'the genuine article' of a scientist.