Perhaps the ancient martians had a microlithic culture

tty

Thank you so much. I clearly had no idea what you were talking about, but damn it, I got excited!
Oh I love this place...

I think you're right on the priority and compression. And I must admit - I can't remember the last time I saw an MI image taken with a closed cover.

Doug

Obsidian chips in a similar manner to flint...and is a much more likely material. But I'm more intrigued by the larger, round-looking stones. They're clearly conical. Apollo capsule shaped? From solidifying melt falling through the atmospheric column?

I love this planet!

Andy

I see a problem with a grand circumnavigation and remote sensing. The far edge of the crater, even if 30m high, is only going to be 1/6th of the height of a Pancam frame. Oppy would have to get up close and personal to make much out of the sections that may be on view. I suspect a trip down a slipway not long after a few long-baseline panoramas are taken.

Andy

Hence the point of a circumnavigation.

Imagine Victoria as a clock.

From 12 O'Clock - 6 O'Clock is 700m away.

From 3'Oclock and 9 O'clock - it's only 495m away.

As you get closer, the angle closes - but I'd have thought 4 pans from around the perimeter would allow reasonably good observations of every edge of the crater - for mapping / surveying / DEM generation.

Once we have a good DEM we can then consider slopes and sun angles etc etc - and perhaps go down one slope during one season and back up another 8-12 months later.

Doug

I find different sizes for Victoria on the internet, ranging from 600 meters to 800 meters. For Pancam 600 meters would be 17.3 cm/pixel and 800 would be 23.1 cm/pixel. Still better than HiRISE.

Simple Question:

When will Oppy finally start moving again and when is restricted sols begin?

It's difficult to say when Restricted sols are due to start - they're typically a week or two out of every 4...ish

Opportunity will be on the road again probably next Mon or Tue - after they've finished the IDD work they scheduled for last weekend - but I'm just guessing.

Doug

Monday is a US Federal holiday, Labor Day, during which time everyone sits around and eats BBQ'd cow or hog. Not much labor done.

Tuesday, I'll hope we move to the next roadcut, Gamma (?) crater.

--Bill

on a side note..when is conjunction of mars and the sun? (or is it opposition?? I always get them backwards ) and how long will they be doing things on their own before we can communicate with them?

hope they get too victoria before then..
cheers
jb

...and drinks fermented grains.

The conjunction between Mars, Sun and Earth will be on October 23, 2006. The interrupted communication is around 3-4 days. During that time, MER only do basic activities such as monitoring the atmosphere with miniTES or PANCAM. No driving, just sitting.

Rodolfo

I think restricted sols will start in a little over a week - So next week should be fine but I would expect the week after (starting Mon 11th) to be restricted.

James

If that's the case, then the communication blackout should end on (or very near to) S1K for Spirit!

An easy way to remember is that it is how the target appears from the observer with respect to the sun.
At opposition the target appears opposite the sun.
At conjunction the target and sun appear together. conjoined (!).

target = Sun/Voyager/Celestial Object...


http://astrosun2.astro.cornell.edu/academi...planet_view.htm

Nick

Sol 927
IDD still in place
Pancam 8 pointing L257 of Tracks

Sol 928
Further IDD MI work
IDD APXS Placement

Sol 929
DRIVING With a 360 Navcam mosaic afterwards, but no Drive Dir Pancam (suggesting 930 will be untargetted remote observations)

Doug

un-needed quote removed - doug


I note that they seem to be able to stow and unstow the IDD. One of Aug 31st's forward hazcam
photos shows it stowed and later shots show it checking out the right scuffmark.

Whatever the problem is, they seem to have worked around it.

CE

Be carefull judging timestamps on images. This one is from August 25 (The day they dug the trench)
But the IDD is all fixed. The latest update says so too:
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/mission/status.html#opportunity

Well - not all 'fixed' - the windings will forever remain broken...but at least they've discovered nothing else is wrong

Doug

Sol927, taken 3 pancam pictures with L256 filters (manual stitch):
Click to view attachment Click to view attachment
Do we see the (just left) Sol919-924 mini-purgatory station?

We've not moved since the IDD problem. The churn you can see is what happens when you do a turn-in-place with one stuck steering actuator.

I was having a hack at it myself as well

Doug

The full mosaic autostitched
Click to view attachment

Very nice. I like the near natural colors.

jaredGalen, a "conchodial" fracture is a "shell-like" fracture (same root as "conch" shell), ie, a fracture which proceeds from a specific point of impact and thus creates a series of expanding ripples as in a bivalve shell. If you will take a round hammerstone and whack on a hunk of flint, or obsidian, or any glassy rock, you will see immediately! -- the same kind of stuff humans have been doing for millions of years, up to and including the early 1800's with the flintlock rifle. So to me there is a clear indication of impact -- which of course is to be expected with ejecta, but without enough heat to turn the glassy rock into reentrant tekites. I was fortunate enough to have studied for one season with Richard Warren, considered among the greatest (the greatest?) of mondern American flint knappers. This guy could make Folson points, with one huge conchodidal fracture down the middle to aid in hafting . . .

This one's for die-hards. L1 albedo pan from Sol 911, centered on north as always:



The images are heavily downsampled, but this gives us the only view we have of Beagle from this particular position, which is nice!

Here's a combined Navcam-Pancam version of the Sol 909-912 position, suitable for FSPViewer-ing. Again - probably just for completists, I guess

Off topic, but I couldn't resist asking... Ever since I became aware of Folsom points, I have wondered how some of our ancestors managed to create that lovely, longitudinal flute in those stone tools. I found one site with some beautiful examples of Warrren's work, but I have not seen any pictures or descriptions of such Folsom-like points with the central flute. Do you know of any?

http://lithiccastinglab.com/gallery-pages/...warrenpage1.htm

CosmicRocker, try this one: http://www.ele.net/folsom.htm
And there are a ton of other refs to be found by using "folsom point" as your Google query.

Hello

It will be a little hard to show my images after what I've seen

But, let me show you my own pics of the last shots of Oppy

The panorama :


And a desktop from this view where I rebuild the sky from original colors :


Click on the pictures to more details

Great work, Ant103!
Looking to these color pictures, now I see a clear slope change immediately after the "maneuver point".
In fact, both wheel tracks perspective and brighter (more illuminated) terrain suggests Oppy is climbing... first hint of Victoria rim topography?


pseudopolar:Click to view attachment vertical (2.5cm/pixel):Click to view attachment

It ties in with the change from small dunes to the flat surface we're on now - you could see it from Beagle if you stretched vertically, as a 'sheen' on the terrain where we now see it to be very flat.

Doug

And tosol (929) is a driving day:

So it is possible that for the weekend Oppy can be on the rim of Victoria :-)

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...056&st=465# - as I said

We don't know if it'll be a short drive or something significant. Either way I think next w'end will be at Epsilon and then the weekend after at Victoria.

Doug

I've always loved those looks back at the tracks behind us, and that false color one with the orange tracks against the blue surface was particularly striking, if not truly accurate in color. I don't know if we have seen such a color contrast previously, and that would suggest a different surface. Ant103, thanks for posting your views of it.

Mars is always such a surprise. I was expecting a somewhat more significant change in slope, but that tells you how much I know. It seems that looking off toward the east, we can see a rough profile of the slope we are on.

Let's hope for a long drive after this campaign. I see no reason for a short drive.

site 75OZ vertical color projection 1 cm /pixel

Click to view attachment

You can tell it's a good projection because the tracks stay parallel and dont diverge of converge...good work!

Doug

QUOTE (djellison @ Sep 4 2006, 09:51 AM)

Either way I think next w'end will be at Epsilon and then the weekend after at Victoria.
Doug

HE DID IT, HE DID IT, HE DID IT
Welcome to the "beacon..." "Pool of arrival at VC" tread

SLAP

I'm not pinning down a date - already made that clear (for the sake of impartiality when the arguments start over 'arrival' ) - all I'm doing is laying out a best guess at progress over the next two weeks.

Doug

Drive slow, taste every place, and goes far!

Rodolfo

I know, I know, just like DD jokes! BTW, I must admit that I've got trouble with "SLAP"! Internet accronyms give me : Standard Light Antarctic Precipitation. Don't know what YOU mean

yes that would be the *perfect* approach for an infinte life :-)

.. but unfortunately the Rover's days are counted

so we can't taste every place but must set priorities ... and the #1 priority now is Victoria.

-> stop as much as necessary - make as much progress towards VC as possible

Given that we are about 120m from Epsilon and another 120m or so from there to the rim, Opportunity will probably (imo) stop at the little crater for the weekend.
I wouldn't expect more then two driving days this week if we are again in restricted sols. Are we?

Every time I try and think of when uplink and downlink are w.r.t. EDT and PDT, and I think I know when restricted sols is going to be - I get it wrong....not sure why...

I agree though - Epsilon as this coming weekend's science stop, it makes sense to see if it's anything different to what we've seen before.

Doug

Question for Doug and everyone Else.

At The Planetary Society web site. Steve Squyres said there are a cluster of small craters between Oppy and The rim of Victoria they have named Emma Dean, Kitty Clyde's Sister, Maid of the Canyon, and Canonita. Is Epsilon now named Emma Dean and can anyone indicate which small craters were given these new names?

Thanks

Does this mean that we'll only see a small bump today?

This mean that Oppy will take a full vision spectrum PANCAM on the trenched surface scuffed by Oppy in earlier soles.

Rodolfo

Yeah, yeah,.. save it for the D.A.! Well spotted, Climber!

I seem to be the only one around here who regrets the feverish pace. Not that there's any particular reason not to drive as fast as the surface and power will reasonably permit, it's just that once we have a full view of the interior of VC, that's it for MER -- no more long anticipatory build-ups, with many suggestions, guesses and calculations about what we'll see... no more will map updates show the steady march of progress for months and months, towards an aim point... OK, we'll drive around the rim and down into VC, but even if Oppy leaves VC (pretty doubtful IMHO), there will be no more destinations. We will have arrived, and the journey's over. (Unless Oppy takes a leaf from the Megacity 1 Justice Dept. in '2000AD' (a popular British science fiction comic, M'lud) and sets off on a "long walk drive", heading off into the sunset...

Finally - should probably be another thread, please move if there is one! - I'd love to see an UMSF/MER book (especially if it were to be 'Creative Commons' license, but that's a tangent for another thread) and I'd certainly buy one unless it was extraordinarily expensive. However, I've heard of an alternative publishing medium, involving 'pages' on a computer screen distributed over a global network. How about a 'best of...' compilation website? It would take a lot of work, of course, but think of the arguments heated debates we could all have over our favourite pictures from a given site (or indeed which sites to include )

'post bump' would suggest a short backup - followed by imaging of the scuff area - and THEN followed by a larger drive. A 'bump' drive wouldn't be long enough to warrent 'penultimate' Hazcam imagery on its own.

Also - if we were only having a bump drive, it's unlikely we'd have Drive Direction imagery when we already HAVE drive direction imagery from this spot.

Don't quote me....but I think we'll see quite a good drive distance. 70m is the dougcasted drive distance.

Doug