Updated sol 948 Navcam pan, cylindrical projection:

Pancam Sol 948

L2
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Stereo
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Ditto...

Indian3000, that pancam mosaic is pretty amazing. In fact, you've brought out so much detail in the saturated white areas of the original jpl jpegs that I'm wondering if you've gotten leaked images from the inside!

How did you enhance the white areas?

Here is an old one because the last images came down just a few days ago.

A 360 degree panoramic view taken on Sol 911 with the L1 pancam.

jvandriel

There's also a Pancam albedo mosaic from Sol 918 that just came down. The downsampled L1 images are slightly better than the available Navcam coverage - only slightly though. This pan also has four full-frame L2 images mixed in.

At this point, I directly made the Sol943-948 anaglyph of from Michael's PanCam:
Click to view attachment unstretched
Click to view attachment stretch 2x

Consider I had to rescale Sol943 by 106% in order to have far rim proportion match (so distance from VC is slightly smaller now) and to reduce the overall image size due to space limits.

Apparantly someone finally solved the puzzle or input the correct decryption key, or just inserted a quarter...

Here is the original 360 degree panoramic view

taken on Sol 918 with the L1 pancam.

jvandriel

I'm trying to set things up with our outreach people so that my "solly" (as apposed to "daily") location updates can be seen in the outside world, but it's taking a while. There should be a release soon showing my annotated navcam panorama and overhead MOC view of Victoria, which should also include a non-annotated/gridded version of my overhead map image, which is based in large part on the MOC C-PROTO provided to the science team by MSSS, and due to be released very soon (already?).

The object on the horizon some of you have referred to is indeed on the near rim of the crater. What's surprising, looking at the ground panoramas, is that the crater extends quite a ways to either side of the view of the far rim - which we're seeing because of our proximity to Duck Bay, which is 45 meters from our current location.

In the meantime, here's a teaser - Oppy overhead projection of navcam pans, using flight software tools for the terrain mesh and projection, which is registered to background MOC image in Canvas X on a Mac, and then rendered at 10cm/pixel, so as to retain some detail from the ground images.

The vectors are to the bays and capes on the far rim (mostly), viewed over Duck Bay. More on those later.

-Tim.Click to view attachment

About the picture of MOC images registered in canvas of MAC, the different colors of lines represents to the range of view by PANCAM, NAVCAM and Forward Hazard cameras?

About the ways to exit from Victoria Crater, I have realized that in VC there is no site to climb since all boat ramp are sandy which Oppy is nothing good to climb unless that any boat ramp is of firm land or over any outcrop from the bottom up to the rim. However, the only outcrop visible by the MOC are only few meters down from rims.

These above comments might be out of place since the image which I have analyzed are still not of good resolution and also of proper angles of views.

Rodolfo

Does anyone know the dates when solar conjunction will cause comm outage? Is there a chance that could happen before we get to the edge of Victoria and get a good look? Don't know how much her flash can store, but it would seem good to have Oppy at a good viewing vantage point beforehand, and have an extended automated Pancam survey set of instructions while we're out of comm, so they'd be waiting on the other side of the sun outage.

Nope. Not yet.

Thanks Tim for this image -- consider it a guitar pick for the groupies

This would be a great time to get that started, since we're about to embark on such a great adventure Hope it comes together.

Looks like sol 950 will be VERY interesting

Quickie view...

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....aw, dude - I'm like never going to wash my browser again!

I believe the start date is around October 18. We should get our view of Victoria first.

Thanks Tim.

Has anyone attempted to compute the height of the distant crater rim visible on the horizon? The higher it is the more scientifically interesting it should be considering that Victoria's rim is not evident above the level of the surrounding plain. A trip to that crater would be truly epic and may be very worthwhile.

We are definitely only seeing a small segment of the far rim of Vic -- you can see some tantalizing areas both left and right of the exposed far rim (especially noticeable in the analglyphs) where there is some type of depression. It should open up incredibly as the rover gets within 10m. Although I expect the width of the crater to be quite impressive it seems to me that without visual references for true scale (like the mystery men) the panoramas of the crater may not seem much different to those of Endurance (may even appear shallower even though it's 70+m deep). It will be interesting to see how the first pans appear and what is done to give a sense of the hugeness of the crater. I'm looking forward to the first images, but I think it will be truly impressive to see a flyover of a 3-d model of the crater complete with mystery men, rover to scale, caves, gullies and that incredible dunefield.

Standing there on the rim would be amazing though wouldn't it? But then, if a one of us was there instead of oppy we would have taken in the Victoria vista on day one of the trip and would probably be at the bottom of the Mariner Valley by now!

And we have an 8 pointing, L7/R1 drive direction pancam mosaic on the menu now as well!



This is gonna be great, even if it turns out to be a short drive.

[Two reasons why L7/R1 is better, 1) much better resolution than the usual L2/R2 and 2) The outcrops won't be so bright compared to the rest of the image and so shouldn't appear so overexposed in the jpegs we get]

James

And it's 10:34 am at Meridiani! When I wake up I hope to see some great shots of Victoria......

Nice article in The Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6092501112.html


(emphasis mine)

"Rugged terrain"? I must say I've seen a lot more rugged terrain in Iowa than in Meridiani.

tty

Stu, Wrong planet. Your "Quickie view..." looks like Venus from one of the Soviet Venera landers...

Tty, rolling over those dunes for months was indeed a "rugged" trip, even if our current area is smooth. But I was pleased to see my long-ago predictions of the smooth nature of the Victoria annulus confirmed, rather than the boulder-strewn worries of others...

Kenny

That's a joke, right? I mean, you're not really suggesting I can't tell Mars from Venus...

That was colourised v quickly from yesterday's pancams. Hope there's better today...

So, who's here waiting for the images from tosol?

Me...

Can I get you a coffee akuo? I'm having one...

Me too. It's 9pm in Sydney now and I'm not expecting any images for a while yet. Could be a late night tonight! I'll take a coffee if your offering.

Is that a poll, akuo?

I´m here too and hope to have some time to see whatever we see after tosol´s drive.
BTW I´ll be in Germany (at/near Karlsruhe) for the whole week so don´t expect any route map update during this period.

No problem. Got some choccie biccies here somewhere too... pass those to akuo would you James? Ta. Sydney sounds gorgeous... I envy you your stunning night sky, with its beautiful Milky Way core overhead, you lucky thing... but can't complain, it's a beautifully sunny day here in Kendal, birthplace or stellar physicist Sir Arthur Eddington, sunlight streaming through the window as I sit here and try again to post something on "Victoria's Innards", only been trying for two days... that thread just doesn't like me at ALL...

While waiting for new images of VC I've been going through my "Endurance" folders, reliving those heady days of gazing at outcrops and ledges there. They were exciting, eh? Wonder if we'll see them repeated inside VC, or if we'll be restricted to looking down at outcrops or at their sides from halfway down ramps... I'd love to see another image of Oppy's shadow cast over the rippled dust dunes too, like we did at Endurance...

I'll try and fill in as usual, although with the downlink time heading into night here I might not be very prompt.



Will do, cheers.



Well not tonight, just looked out and we just have the orange glow of city lights reflecting off cloud. But it is stunning sometimes, I don't mind doing the washing up so much when I can see the Southen Cross out the window while doing it.

Half past again, time to get ready if anything appears on Exploratorium. Nothing indicated by the Tracking site, but it has been late before...

The images are here!

WOW!!

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...CNP0666L0M1.JPG

Castor

Wow, willya look at that...

Funy I said WOW too. Can't wait for the Pancams.....

Well - another 50 minutes wait now

Doug

While you're waiting, note that even the front hazcam is showing detail of the far rim, and Vicky covers almost the entire horizon even in the fisheye focus!

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...CNP1212L0M1.JPG

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So close you can almost touch it...!

Just to make sure everyone knows what they are looking at.

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Look at the huge chunk that looks like it's fallen from F3!

James

I grew up in the Ozarks, where fallen rocks like that were kind of routine, and a lot of highways wound tightly around the base of cliffs and bluffs. There were highway warning signs that said "WATCH FOR FALLEN ROCKS" and I always thought of those signs like markers from a tour guide.

That orbital image almost hangs over the horizon like a huge thunderstorm. Ah, the weather of home!

Neat image, James; thanks for mapping the feature back to the orbital image!

Who were those dorks passing coffee around, I just spilled it down my shirt and tie!

I'm having my lunch break from interpreting in the European Parliament right now: meetings about Rumanian and Bulgarian accession to the EU, the newly-elect president of Liberia is also here... - Earthly matters of some significance, but my head is on Mars!

Oops, I was a little bit over zealous with my cropping, here's another one that follows the rim a little bit further to the left.

Click to view attachment

James

Great job James!

Interesting to study the differences in lighting. Seems that even the less-dramatic-looking parts of the rim, as seen from the orbiter, manage to produce overhang shadows.

V quick and dirty colourisation...

NASA new release 09.25.06



Mars Exploration Rovers mission has been extended an additional year. Funding for Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey have been extended two years.

Expected, but very welcome news.


Floyd

Nice one Stu. I know what the purists will say but I like it!

"Wow" is what I thought too!
And look that we can clearly distinguish Cabo Verde on the left of this first navcam (can´t wait for the next ones in 10 minutes or so). I said before and will say again: watch your step, Oppy!

Thanks! "Pure" can - and will, I'm sure - come later, I just wanted to see this part of Red Mars