Greetings folks,

ESA recently released map projected version of HSRC images, including orbit 1183 when MEX took a look at Meridiani Planum and Oppy's landing site. Which allows me to present you... the first color image of Victoria!

It's created from the HSRC Red, Green, Blue channels which have resolution of 56.2m/pixel.

Since it is just simple GIMP color composite, I wouldn't rather trust the colors completely, but still figured you'd like to see it I also tried the ESA supplied HSRC reader tool and the result was virtually identical, albeit I'm unsure whether one shouldn't apply some transformations. Trying to find some docs on it

Click to view attachment

PNG version

Simple color adjustments and it looks more like Mars :-)

My attempt, with larger coverage.
Click to view attachment
Original image dynamic is poor and this affect the result...

Nice results though!

Nico

Where would Opportunity be in those images in relation to Victoria now?

I am so used to seeing Victoria close up that seeing how small it is
compared to that other Martian crater was an initial surprise.

If the rover survives, any chance they will try for that really big crater?
What is its name?

Opportunity is about 2 - 3 Victoria diameters to the NW

Doug

Doubt it - The crater seems to be 13.4km away and has diameter of 23km.

Miracles happen -sometimes. If the larger crater would be another 3 kilometers or so away I might be willing to make a bet but it's just to far for a 'tired' rover.

Nico

The thing is, at ground level the big large crater to the south-east would look really boring - just a bunch of slowly rolling hills, barely noticeable...

Any Endurance sized crater nearby?

Looking at http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/0...Ellipse_25m.gif - there's nothing out there after Victoria realistically - the large feature to the SE if you wanted a suicide run of big blind drives and to hell with the risk...

Doug

The large patch of outcrop to the southeast would seem to be a good long term target. At least we'd be moving updip and seeing younger portions of the stratigraphy. I don't think they'd want to go east or west as that would be more or less along the same stratigraphic horizon.

After the southeast outcrops, we might as well throw a "Hail Mary Pass" and try and go for the huge crater farther to the southeast. The interior or walls of the crater might show deeper portions of the Burns Formation which might be correlatable to the units we saw at Endurance and Erebus, or even below those units. Like, Nico said, miracles can happen......sometimes........maybe...........with luck

http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/...ages/E11-01328/

Dilo, what's the scale on your version?

Is there a color HRSC image of the Spirit landing site yet? One thing that I think would be a neat comparison -- if it is possible to do with this data set -- would be to put Spirit and Oppy site views side by side, with the same color adjustments applied to both. I'm curious how the color/brightness of the Oppy site compares to Spirit's.

--Emily

Not sure of the orbit number ( which is how the images are arranged ) but
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/in...fobjectid=34531

The center of the Gusev crater with the landing site of the NASA Spirit rover marked with a cross. The image was taken by the HRSC instrument in colour and 3D on 16 January 2004 from a height of 320 km.

(Managed to do an order via the RSSD Esa 'thingie'. Dan - would your technique for radiometric processing of this stuff be suitable for public consumption.)

Doug

>The large patch of outcrop to the southeast would seem to be a good long term target. At least we'd be moving updip...

Aldo, where do you get that dip direction? I don't recall seeing anything "official" on the bedding dip. Oppy will be heading downhill to Victoria and that means stratigraphically lower (assuming essentially flat bedding).

--Bill

Maybe the Skycrane from MSL could be flown over to Opportunity
to pick it up and move it to a new interesting area....

Can it do battery jumps and oil changes, too?

Bill, I guess i was transposing "up dip" with "up stratigraphy". Re-reading the following paper there is no mention of dip angles. The authors simply state that as the rover moves southward, the topography is increasing and, therefore, the rover is presumed to be moving stratigraphically higher as well.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/1926.pdf

They released this two years ago, so the answer is yes. Now to find it in the ESA PDS...

PS - I've actually had decent success with the LAT/LON image search functions.

PPS - This is a "bit" West of the current location, but the fresh crater in the lower left of the image may be interesting for as a site to visit.

Spirit ( and indeed other HRSC obs )
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=2653

Doug

>Bill, I guess i was transposing "up dip" with "up stratigraphy"...

That is what I (and I figure, others) do; I was wondering (hoping, actually) that a marker bed had been located and we knew exactly where we were in the section. But it matters not, we know within the constraints of what we know...

--Bill

Attached - at full resolution ( quoted as being 4.3m/pixel - but obvious quite out of focus and probably only resolving 12m/pixel...if that ) the SRC mosaic strip of the Meridiani observation.

Obviously one can see Endurance and Victoria - but that's about it. Quite easy to see why ESA kept rather quiet about the SRC when you look at stuff like this.

Doug

Assuming I'm interpreting this correctly, that "table land" to the south would be really interesting to visit, albeit about double the drive distance that oppy's managed so far. If I'm not mistaken, there are at least a couple of apparently water eroded channels draining to the north visible in that image.

I'd be REALLY surprised if Oppy lasted that long though. Considering the degradation of Spirit, I don't have any serious expectation of going far beyond Victoria.

Doug, what a southern vision!

Wow, that SRC picture is...unimpressive.

Well, in terms of resolving power at Mars now, we have...

MOC
HRSC SRC
Themis Vis
HRSC
Themis IR

It may be unimpressive compared to a MOC image, but it's still better than anything else....
http://themis-data.asu.edu/img/V06305001.html is the next best, and http://themis-data.asu.edu/img/V07416001.html in colour.

Doug

Speakiong of Themis IR, look at what we are about to get!

The MEX image of Victoria certainly isn't as good as we've seen from the other spacecraft, but is still interesting as the lighting is rather different. It suggest how subdued the ejecta blanket relief really is - and also shows up the wind-scouring toward the upper right rather nicely.

Bob Shaw