Another anaglyph..



Nico

Beyond doubt she is Steep and Deep as speculated back here

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=66333

This could easily take 500++ Sols to circumnavigate with numerous fascinating spots to stop and view. Finding a safe entry ramp will be a challenge. Caution is in order for this highlight of the mission.

Wow, did I miss some fun while I was at work!! HATE doing a late shift, I miss EVERYTHING!!!

Great work guys, some fascinating details in those far cliffs... roll on the next drive Oppy, ready when you are!

I can't believe it! Shaka's still around I've missed you my friend
Were you hiding into the caves I've just "discovered" or behind the Beacon? Welcome back to the best of Oppy's Exploration.

Is there someone in the rock?
Click to view attachment

As the Rushmore mount http://www.mikelevin.com/MountRushmore.jpg

An additional R2 view;



Nico

And a lot of features and even more details on whatever is on the horizon

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P2382L2M1.JPG

Plenty of detail in that far of hill on the horizon too.

Wow - I can't wait to see some L7 in that direction!

Shaka: "the stratum would no longer be level. The huge energy of the impact would have shattered and tumbled the evaporite far beyond its original rim."

I don't think so. Strata are exposed in lunar crater walls (Dawes being perhaps the best-imaged example) and not much disrupted by the impact Also, these outcrops are probably a bit outside the original crater cavity and have been exposed by later slope failure. No problem with this material keeping its original layering intact. Also, Shaka's view assumes that Victoria was flooded and then covered with a layer of evaporite. That would surely produce a very different morphology - the flooding and then the deposition would not leave us with such a well defined crater after the fact.

We only saw a few vertical meters exposed in Burns Cliff. This section looks to be 3 or 4 (or more) times the height. But is it higher or lower stratigraphically? Or will the Burns Cliff section actually be part of this section? Hopefully we will be able to answer that in.. a year or so! But there wasn't anything like that dramatic layer at Endurance, as far as I can remember.

When we get to the rim in a few sols, the views of the nearby 'cape' exposures will (probably) be so dramatic as to completely overshadow this amazing view of the far side (he predicted).

Phil

Here a projection of an MSSS anaglyph the way James Canvin presented earlier in this thread;

source original;
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2006/0...1R22640MERB.jpg

Nico

Here's my version of the Pancam anaglyph. I really recommend checking out either Nico's or this one, if you possibly can. For me, without the anaglyph, the view looks like a little model crater from some reason... but with the anaglyph, I can see Victoria is basically the Grand Canyon. I can understand why the rover team might be feeling a little overwhelmed.

But if you can't see the anaglyph, if suspect the full extent of this thing will be more apparant when we get closer, I hope in a few sols.

I thought the same thing Phil, I was just trying to think of a clear, concise way to put it. Pour yourself another Molsen's on me, eh.

I agree Phil. I'm quite glad we've stopped here, gives us the chance to take in the far rim a bit before we get totally overwhelmed by the rest of the crater.

James

Michael, that Navcam 360 is awesome too, do you have an anaglyph of that one?

Nico

Once we see the whole view, I think we'll have the impression it is a saucer rather than a pit because of the enormous scale of the thing (even though it's got to be over 70m deep IMHO). No doubt the sides are pretty steep, but the bottom must be quite flat to accomodate the large dune field. I was earlier under the impression that the southern rim was elevated above the plains but does not appear to be so from the current vantage point.

Thanks so much to the image processors for grinding away at these excellent and exciting views. It's nice not to have to wait until the busy folks at JPL get around to prettifying them.

Impossible to comment on everything I want to - thanks a million guys for the parade of panoramas!

We can now see what part of the far rim we saw in the first glimpse from sol 929-39. Here I've lined up a sol 939 pancam (top) with a 943 view:
Click to view attachment
What we were seeing was basically just the left rim of Sofi. (Btw, where did the name "Sofi" come from?)

This demonstrates the astounding mapping skills of Tesheiner: in this post his sight line for his feature B almost exactly points to the left rim of Sofi!

What we didn't know in trying to ID the features then was that we weren't seeing the jagged part of the rim at all, just the smooth upper regions and Sofi.

Thanks. I don't. I might try one tomorrow, or at least put the R camera pan together and let someone else combine them into an anaglyph. Unless someone else does it first.

A good question?

I have the impresion that from the Sol 943 Oppy ride, the slope starts to go down a little. The reason is that now, I can see more the upper rims. Is that true, isn't?

Rodolfo

Check this post by Tesheiner. It is an issue of geometry. The camera is a long way from the far rim and quite close to the near rim (you can think of it as a long lever between opportunity's camera and the far rim with the fulcrum on the near rim). As the rover approaches the near rim the far end of the lever moves down quite quickly so the camera sees a lot lower down. The local slope has very little to do with it.

I've redone my slope calculation for the large bay almost directly across Victoria from us, using the pancam imagery. When I did it with navcam yesterday, I estimated 16.5 degrees for the slope of the upper bay.

With pancam, there's enough resolution to break the measurement into two parts: the uppermost bay, between the black and grey dots in these images, and the mid bay, between the grey and white dots:
Click to view attachment
The result: Uppermost bay slope 14 degrees, mid bay slope 18 degrees. I estimate uncertainties of plus or minus 1 or 2 degrees on these figures. This is about as far as we can push this technique since it's now limited by the resolution of the orbital image, though it still would be interesting to measure the slopes of other bays for comparison. At any rate, we're safely within traversable limits here, at least with a good surface.

As Climber pointed out, a foreshortened slope can look much steeper than it is. The cliffs are definitely much steeper than the bays, but it's hard to ID features to get an actual measurement.

Edit: the bay I measured was H1-I1 (and more precisely the H2-I1 side of it) I1 according to James's new naming scheme. Also the pancam crop is 2x vertical stretched.

Hey Fred when you have a minute could you track down mystery man? Both in pancam and navcam shots since we have the foreshortening issue, on which I agree with you and climber. Last time I saw him he was over in Gusev .

Some pronounced horizontal layering on the far rim visible now, stretching across the field of view in some of the new pancams:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P2382R2M1.JPG

I've been wondering about that myself. What is the layer just above the red line?
Click to view attachment
Could it have been the top layer when Victoria formed with the material above added later?

A stupid question, but -- what is the layer of white stuff along the crater rim?

Shaka was the one that gave this name to pay credit to Sofi Collis who named Spirit & Opportunity. Its has been used then "internaly".

Well not white, bright in L2 (red).

Nearly all bright things in L2 have been exposed evaporite - and there will be plenty of that along the rim!

I don't have a lot of compassion for the Team's "overwhelmed" feeling. They brought this on themselves by doing such an "overwhelmingly good job" with this mission from the get-go. I mean, do we realize how difficult it is to do this kind of thing repeatedly, as these people have done? The MER teams have become the dream teams that have put NASA and unmanned space exploration back to front and center on the stage. I have got to imagine that all the concern about NASA science going down the tubes is pretty much mitigated by the wild succeses of these intrepid pioneers.

I too am overwhelmed, as I try to catch up with the imagery and the many postings by members here since the terribly clipped, but amazing pancams came down. It pretty much took me all night to ingest all of the information contributors have provided. In our enthusiasm, we are always eager to start interpreting details that are not yet clearly visible, and that is a large part of the fun we have here as the discoveries trickle in. Keep them coming, but remember that things may appear somewhat differently in a few sols.

I am encouraged by fredk's slope calculations. As for the sloughing slab, it looks very much like a warped bedding plane that could be the result of the impact disruption, or post-impact deposition over a pre-existing surface. I wouldn't dismiss Shaka's suggestion just yet, as his comments seem to be aligned with the regional observations in the Edgett paper. We need to get up cose and personal with this road cut before we can start to confidently interpret what we are really seeing.

I posted a question on this subject that was tentatively answer by Shaka & All.
Now, I just notice on Fredk "slope" mesurement that the horinzontal layering is ALSO visible on MGS pictures of VC : see Fredk's post 8 posts above

Well I did do a quick check using the navcams yesterday and I did get the same answer.

With regard to other bays, a couple of rough calculatons give:

18 degrees for Bay K1 (just to the right of Sofi)
25 degrees for Bay J1
25 degrees for Bay F1 - although we're not looking squarely onto the slope so this is probably an underestimate.

James

The layer IS visible in the orbital images. I traced it when noticing this 'overhang' on the southwestern part of the rim.

The overhang looks thicker than the depth of the evaporite layer at the far rim, but the far rim being lower...

Nico

Well, now we know that it's (will be) mesurable verticaly (from the ground) and horizontaly (from MGS').

Now, there's no reason the layer is limited to far rim so, once at Duck Bay, we'll probably see it under Cape Verde & Capo Frio very close to us. As near rim is way above far rim, it'll be very interesting to see if this layer is at the same relative depth on near rim (taking the rim as a reference) OR if it's at far rim depth (taking the plain as a reference) i.e. some 6 meters further down. Very interesting stuff there (not taking in account that I've seen caves in the layer )

RE: Post#174, alan: "What is the layer just above the red line?"

My initial idea? The horizontal layer immediately above the red line represents the Meridiani Plain surface at the time of the Victoria impact and the somewhat hummocky material above is the ejecta blanket. The orbital images suggested a number of flat slope failure or slump areas along the rim, but these first Pancam views re-suggest this persistent unit.

With the classical model of a crater rim there are upturned and overturned beds at the crater rim but may be that the evaporite is too weak to form upturned beds and traceable overturned beds. And, of course, the present rim has eroded back several meters from the original rim.

--Bill

I told him NOT to talk about this to anyone but did he listen?...

By extension, if we assume that the evaporite layer is relatively uniform all around Victoria, then it looks like Duck Bay is indeed (and reassuringly) the lowest-slope entry into the crater, based upon the horizontal extent of exposed evaporite in the overhead view. Really convenient that Duck Bay just happens to be on the nearer side of the crater

Bill,
I agree with yoru interpretation that the white line along the rim represents the evaporite bed that is the Meridiani plain surface covered by the overlying ejecta blanket and aeolian deposits.
The jagged shape of the far cliffs look to me like joint weathering.

From a strictly geological point of view you're probably right, but I'd like to make another prediction. However spectacular the views get from now on, the one we have now will always stick in people's minds. It has a special epic quality: it portends great revelations, something which can never quite be repeated. Also the far side cliffs are all the more dramatic for being only partly visible - they may well seem smaller when we see the whole interior spread out below them.

Do you think they'd want to circumnavigate the rim before trying to enter?

Not a chance, the circumference would be about 2.4 Km long.

Yeah, I'm guessing we may see something like the sequence at Endurance. Drive far enough around in one direction to get good images of all the faces, ID a good entry "bay", then drive for that & take the plunge.

I wouldn't be suprised to see a full circumnavigation - think of the reasons why you would want to..

1) Image all sides of the crater from 3 pan positions
2) Generate an excellent DEM for planning
3) Use identified slopes for positive power
4) Mobility is VERY easy around the rim, 50-100m/sol it would be perhaps a 3 month trip to lap the crater and have 3 pan stops en route. ( 2500 / 70 = 35 driving sols. Double for restriction + 3 x 5 sols of imaging = 85 sols )

THEN - you can decide where best to go into the crater when we're getting toward mid Spring.

Considering that it's FAR from certain we'd get out of this thing, it would make sense to document the hell out of it before we go it would it not?

I would be certain of 120 degrees of circumnav - I'm expecting as much as 180 degrees because the southern side may well present the best entry options when looking at the MOC dem - and I would not be suprised at 240 degrees +

Doug

I agree, the only restriction would be if Duck' bay is the ONLY place we can enter VC, but, as Mark Adler says on TPS blog : "we always find a way"

I think Duck bay looks like the best place to enter from the satellite images. I think they'll go straight in after the initial pancam mosaic from either near cape. But we'll see what we see :-)

If the slopes are only 16 to 20 degrees, driving in and out will be easy. Endurance was a lot steeper than 20 degrees.

Maybe I'm being a bit pessimistic but, from what we've saw so far from the far rim, I can only a few possible places (yeah...We only need one...) where Oppy can make an entrance and they're all in sites not imaged yet...There are two who I consider the best ones, they are presented in green, the others in orange...Humm...I just don't know...Looks everything so steep...

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

Look at the MOC DEM movie - the duck bay slope looks NASTY - I would estimate as much as twice as steep as some of the slopes on the South and South Eastern edge of the crater.

Doug

No colour views yet, so here's another bit of fun...

Click to view attachment

Wouldn't the steepest slopes be where the distance to the dunefield is minimal? As seen in the orbital images the dunefield is not smack in the middle.

Nico

It will depend on what they are made of.
If they are mostly sandy or with some slippage I don't see how we would be able to leave the crater.

And who says we are leaving the crater after we go in ?