How about the Talking Heads' "We're on a Road to Nowhere"

aldo,

google says it's about 5 hours 50 mins to Mattawa from Toronto: http://www.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&a...mp;t=h&om=1

Tack at least another hour onto that to get to Brent Crater, which is probably best reached from route 17 east of Mattawa. There's a sign on 17 for the turn off, going west anyway. It's a 32 kilometer dirt road, well-maintained, so you can go 50 k/h + on it. I also saw a pine marten crossing that road, so it's serious wilderness. The Ottawa River is beautiful too, and there are plenty of accomodations along 17.

But lots of biting flies in those woods, don't say I didn't warn you.

konch

This fellow has managed to get a lot of that great stuff up on line, including what looks like all of Bonestell's work in fairly hi res.

Just make sure that you have a few hours first. Lotsa great stuff:

http://www.fabiofeminofantascience.org/

ANYWAY..... Back to Mars, does anyone know why we seem to have backed up on sol 909?

Being as impatient as I am I keep wanting to sprint across to Victoria. It's good that clearer minds are controlling the rover.

They are doing some MI and spectrometer readings on the soil.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...ger/2006-08-16/

This is hopefully the last stop before Victoria.

My planned visit to Barringer was ruined by a terrible snowstorm that delayed me enough so that I arrived at the highway exit half an hour after the gate closed (and it was getting dark, too). I did have several minutes of viewing, over my shoulder, the raised rim. That was all I got to see, as I had somewhere to be on the other end of my trip...

An easy bar to clear I'll raise your Judas Priest & see you Neil Young, 'White Line' (I should warn anyone of a sensitive disposition that there's a song with a rude word in the title on that album, which shows up on some of those lyric sites.)


On the related questions of the steepness and accessibility of Victoria's slopes, VC's depth and so forth... back in April, Pando posted this two-frame animation of VC from orbit:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&id=5169

I stupidly said at the time that this settled the question, the sides are far too steep, and there's just no way in for Opportunity. Over the last four months I've got the impression the slopes are expected to be similar to Endurance, and negotiable with care. Now we're approaching the last dash - and, let's face it, it IS the last time we'll collectively anticipate a major landmark like this - I thought I'd ask the question again. Was I fooled by a spurious optical effect? Because if Pando's animation is accurate, I stick by my prophesy of doom. Even the 'boat ramp' appears to be steeper than 45 degrees.

Fortunately, my prophesying doom is starting to look like a good omen; so far I've been completely wrong about at the navigability of the apron, whether the last reboot event signified an immobile rover, and, ooh, I don't know, perhaps 80% of my other posts? It's too embarrassing to think back too clearly

I'm glad you pointed out that rude word. I would never waste my time listening to anything that doesn't contain a rude word. These warnings save a lot of time.

I would have chosen "Keep on Truckin' ", having seen the Dead at Bickershaw!

Phil

We did some rough calcs on this a few weeks back - the boat ramp is probably around 5-7deg slope and there is fairly strong evidence that the shelf at the base of the "cliffs" around the boat ramp is only around 8-10m below the rim at least around the entry point. If nothing else that should mean that Oppy should be able to drive down the boat ramp and have a nice look round provided it's not a dust trap.

I hate to raise alarm bells unnecessarily, but I've worried about that smallish cliff height for Victoria before. Isn't 8 to 10 metres not much better than Endurance? (Does anyone recall how deep we tasted rock at Endurance?)

The big hope for Victoria was to get deeper into the stratigraphy, but perhaps, Vicky being older and more filled with sand etc., we won't get any deeper than at Endurance? Perhaps the orbital imagery is deceptive, and there is exposed bedrock deep into the crater, not just near the cliffs.

False colour images are beginning to appear of the Beagle pan at the PC website, and as there are Tif's available, they offer less compression...so....a rough hack that I'll improve on when more frames come down..

Doug

I'm darn impressed with the non-bloated abilities of FSPViewer, mhoward; thanks for pointing it out! Is there any chance you can post "equirectangular" jpeg versions of the fabulous Oppy qtvr's you have on your site?

Indeed, fredk, I'm working on it Thanks for asking.

In fact I'm trying to go one step beyond that: I want to take advantage of FSPViewer's hotspot capability to add links between the VR panoramas. This relates to the question I asked in another topic on map coordinates

But I'll post some more equirectangular pans soon. Overall FSPViewer just seems to be working out better for this purpose than QuickTime VR at the moment; it's easier to author with it for one thing. "Non-bloated" is a good description. QuickTime VR might be better for a web-based presentation, but I don't really have the bandwidth to offer a great web-based presentation anyway: the pans are huge, and there are so many of them.

Me too and I was only away for 11 days!

And now I have TWO 360 degree mosaics to work on as well, so much for the quiet weekend I was looking forward to.

James

I saw a quote recently attributed to Babe Ruth..

It went something like "I am grateful for every strikeout because it brings me one pitch closer to my next home run"

SImilarly, every day Oppy spends in detailed exploration of it's locale is another day closer to that 'Mother of all Panoramas' from the rim of Victoria.

FYI, today (sol 912) is/was a driving sol.




PS: I think this is the currently "live" thread for the Beagle-Victoria leg, isn't it?

Fasten your seatbelts everybody because this is going to go fast

SOL 912 drive
http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...00P1311L0M1.JPG

Dunes are NO worries

that's the kind of image I'm longing for. thanks dot !

the best thing is that the dunes and the spacing between them seem small enough for Oppy to always have at least two wheels on the firmer in-between-ripple ground ... so even if it does get stuck in a
soft sand pile it can back out easily with the other wheels

Great news!

And still waiting for the nav/pancams, I think we can grossly say where Oppy is now located just based on the little rocks which can be seen on tosol fhazcam images. This is my attempt, plotted on sol 909 pancam mosaic.

Click to view attachment

Edited: A quick parallax calculation puts the drive on the 50m range. I'll refine it when additional images come down.

I'm British, so my emotions remain comparatively reserved and hidden, but I actually let out a "YES!!!" when I saw that RHAZ

That's twice that's happened today (I'm a speed record nut, and JCB Diesel Max did a 300mph run yesterday and got on top of their engine-sync troubles...so that got a "COME ONNNNNN!!!" at Breakfast when I read the news )

It's not like the ground from Eagle to Endurnace, but it's certainly like the ground from say, Triplet to Vostok.

We are very nearly as close to Victoria here, as we were to Endurance when sat in Eagle crater.

Doug

maybe 3 times, since you have also achieved the unfathomable 5000 post milestone

how far past design lifetime is that ??

Victoria here we come, at last

Navcam images are available and they almost confirm the previous position estimation.
About the driving distance, I calculated pre and post-drive distances to some of the rocks seen on the center navcam image giving a net result of 55m (give or take 2m).

nice to see the transition from from the current ripple-terrain to the smooth apron zone ..

two such drives more and we are already at the smooth part !

<small downer>
must be about time for the next "restricted sols" period, isn't it ?
</small downer>

We should get a week of reasonably good driving I think - perhaps half the way to Vic if they're bold.

Doug

I think Doug was designed to post far more than 5000 times. It's those negative comments about the MER team that start to impinge upon Doug's design limits.

Brian

I've been tested to 4,273 posts in another forum, but that doesnt mean the keyboard stops at 4,274

Doug

hmmm, regarding posts I'll remain at a very modest -1000 posts but I promise to make time for some Viccy-pans real soon... man I'm starting to get nervous, seeing this latest progress... go girl, show us the crater!

Nico

Similar view, now taken by the navcam: http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...00P1965R0M1.JPG



What?!?

Quite a bit of detail now appearing on the horizon in tosol's pancam images:

Vertically stretched by about 3 times and cropped:

Click to view attachment

Is the feature in the centre what we've been calling the beacon? Can anyone match this picture with the orbital images?

Castor

Not really; have a look to 907 pancams. The beacon is on the first (leftmost) shot while this feature (and Epsilon crater) is on the second.

I'll have a look, but that dark patch on the left horizon looks like the dark streak that emanates from VC's northern rim, which I seem to recall was quite close to the Beacon when viewed from this angle.

Castor

Tesheiner,

You are correct. I've compared to sol 907 and the image I posted is further around to the south than I had at first thought.

Castor

I think we're looking at solid, 50m a day runs now. Those ripples are small and getting smaller every meter as we head SE.

BTW, did anyone ever denote what the distinction was between a 'dune' on Mars and a 'ripple' there?

My suggestion: A dune is anything big enough for a MER to get stuck in, whereas a ripple is something it can roll right over.

Dune: MER / Dune barycenter within the Dune.
Ripple: Mer / Ripple barycenter in free space or within the rover.

I think that dunes are large scale features with a so-called distinct slip face. Ripples are small-scale features formed by creep and they do not have a slip face. For dunes to form you need much higher wind speeds, too.

Michael

Sol 912 Navcam mosaic, equirectangular centered on north:


Looking good on the drifts - that's a relief!

Polo minted

Beautiful stitch Mike - superb horizon, much better than I can manage with PTGui usually - I can never get them that level.

Bit of a Nic-o-vision look back stretched anaglyph - shows the terrain quite nicely.

Doug

Love the polars

Based upon the triangulation and ranging I've been doing, the fuzzy feature in the center is actually the far side of what we've been assuming would be the entry ramp into Vicky (could be the beacon for all I know). To the right the dominant feature is the crater Epsilon, behind which is the larger but darker Zeta (presumably a crater), and it's just possible that we're seeing the smaller crater to the west of Zeta which I've provisionally labeled Eta (just keeping up with the Greek alphabet). And of course that's the presumed rock I've been calling Hawking (the whole black hole thing) on the right, which has been visible since way back around Sol 875.

Click to view attachment

Yes indeed, lot's of neat details beginning to come into focus. Another hundred meters should be very edifying.

Sol 912 polar from mhoward's big pan.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Thanks for the beautiful equirectangular stitch, Michael!
Here two vertical projections (15cm/pixel and 2.5cm/pixel respectively) + a pseudo-polar view (the elevation angle isn't linear, but details close to horizon are more visible...):
Click to view attachment Click to view attachment Click to view attachment
The orientation was corrected from original (less than 1deg) in order to have perfectly flat horizon..

How did you do the middle one?

Doug

Yeah, the middle one is gorgeous. Now my desktop.

913 looks like insitu obs, with 914 being a drive sol.

Doug

Doug, first and second image are both vertical projections, made using the Michael image as texture, projected spherically from a point onto a plane 1.5m below.
For Pov-Ray users, this is the relative piece of code:

CODE

plane { y, -1.5      // for vertical projections
// sphere {<0,95,0>,103     // for Polar
     pigment {
        image_map {
            jpeg "Sol912.jpg" // the file to read
            map_type 1          // 0=planar, 1=spherical, 2=cylindrical, 5=torus
            interpolate 2       // 0=none, 1=linear, 2=bilinear, 4=normalized distance
            once                // for no repetitive tiling
            }   // image_map
         scale -z
         rotate y*180             // rotation around vertical axis
         rotate 1.0*z               // going down
         rotate 0.5*x               // going left
          } // pigment
     finish {ambient 1}
     }

Last 3 angles define orientation of projection.
I used them to better adjust to local slope in the following two versions (now wheels tracks and dunes are parallel):
Click to view attachment (2.5 cm/pixel)
Click to view attachment (1 cm/pixel)

Obviously, projection onto a simple plane has some limits: ripples are distorted and rover solar panels appear bigger than real.

Simply brilliant!

Marvellous, that gives me a small idea

Thanks for the kind words, guys... but this isn't new! Many will recall my route maps of Erebus highway I did using this technique; the only difference is that now start mosaic quality is excellent, thanks to Michael.
Indian, I thought your software already makes something like this...

I think rather of the mapping of a panorama on a half-sphere on which one can move in 3D.

Rerhaps that that could provide interesting infos