Finds it hard not to panic

Also the tracking website hardly works for me anymore, anyone else had that problem?

Brilliant!

...Awe-inspiring....thank you!

I couldn't get it to return any results earlier today, but it seems to be working now, however slowly.

I tried to find those earliest images flicking through my downloaded images with the aid of the great StereoPhotoMaker, and I possibly tracked the very first glimpse (I hope.) Of course someone may already have found the same before.

The series of the images of the Beacon emerging from behind the dunes, beginning sol 775 to 780:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...DLP2377R2M1.JPG
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...FWP2378L2M1.JPG
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...J9P2380R2M1.JPG
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...QEP2381R2M1.JPG

And a crop to aid finding it from the sol 775 image (the very first glimpse of CSM Beacon as I think).

It had to be right around the time Opportunity was climbing over HOAV. I went back today to look at the panoramas from that time with MMB, but I couldn't convince myself I saw it quite that early. This should be a great time to chase this down, while we are waiting for new images from Opportunity. That could be it. I think it was somewhere between 775-780.

Marswiggle, I'm in exact agreement with you - sol 775 was our first glimpse of the beacon, and that is it you point to in your image. I came to the same conclusion but hadn't posted yet because I wanted to use a pds image, but the analyst's notebook site is not displaying images now.

The best way to convince people of this is to show this image, from someone on this board at the time:
Click to view attachment
You can see the highest part of Vicky's rim just becoming visible, and the beacon is at pretty much the highest point.

SOL 780 looks like the first clear view.
Here's some context with Tesheiner's map for SOL 780:

Thanks for that, marswiggle & fredk, and the map link atomoid.

So long ago and so far away, I can't believe we're (hopefully) sitting right there on the fabled beacon now!

James

We're going to miss Sol 1000

I guess every thing's ok as there is a "Opportunity reaches SOL 1000" banner on the rover homepage.

Some NavCam pictures

http://207.7.139.5/mars/opportunity/navcam/2006-11-16/

Hmmm...think they have the guts to sneak any closer to the edge? I would think they'd make a slight left turn and move closer to the tip of the promentory.

I think we're here to get a look at the other side of Cape Verde. We're close enough to the edge for that.

After that I guess we'll head over to some of the beacon outcrop.

sol 994-995 site 76WU

Click to view attachment

and vertical projection 2cm/pixel
with my new methode

Click to view attachment

Yikes! I think you should call that a vertigo projection.

sol 999

it's not very useful but it is all what we have now !


Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment


Edit : Updated with new last datas ...

Hi,

I'm in a little late... So, here is the FF76 site panorama or Cape Saint Mary



And a desktop picture



Gain compensation and antivigneting with MMB and "autostitiching". Gimp processing for colors.

Sol 1002 Navcam facing east:



I like this perspective view:

Mike's 1002B nav pan.....polarized.

Doug

perfect (and prompt !) panorama stitching work as usual, Micheal
...



So do I indeed one of the most dramatic "cliff views" so far

Here's my take on oppy contemplating suicide...

Doug, you can avoid the 'pucker' effect if you add a bit of space at the bottom of the pan.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Another Sol1002 polar version (thanks to Michael for original stitch):
Click to view attachment
and vertical (50cm/pixel):
Click to view attachment
Watch your step, girl...

EDIT: changed size of first and orientation of second image

And I thought Oppy was already too close to the edge on sol 999...

Nice polars, everybody. The funny part is, although polars always distort the view somewhat, I think these pretty accurately convey how alarming that dropoff is!

Here is my version of the Sol 1002 panoramic view.

Taken with the L0 Navcam.

jvandriel

Michael, the mosaicked pan was gorgeous. What would be great Marco is if you could make eight or more of these with smaller dimensions, each oriented at 45 degree stops so you could run through a series of them and watch the surroundings rotate. Or is there a viewer that will do this smoothly? Sorry if I'm asking too much. One baby step ...

Click to view attachment

To get some idea of scale (calling mystery mudflap gal) I calculated some distances from parallax in the navcam image pair that looked closest to straight down. I've included the original for comparison:

Annotated
Click to view attachment

Original
Click to view attachment

There is a very steep grade towards the 10m rock so I'd take the 3m rock as being at the level of the rover wheels. So at a guess, the drop from the rover to the floor below would be about 25-30m. It also looks as though Opportunity still has a bit of climbing to do to get to the top of the CSM promontory, so the height of that spot could be closer to 30m above the floor directly below. Has anyone been able to relate the view here to the one of the west side of CSM taken earlier from Cape Verde?

There is always MMB. But if you don't feel like installing Java 3D, then the best way to view an equirectangular projection like I posted is to use a spherical (equirectangular) projection viewer. The best of these seems to FSPViewer on Windows.

Thanks. I must install MMB. I have kept a mirror of the JPL site, but not the exploratorium so I am not keen to re-download the whole image set. Obviously it's a great tool though. Just a question of getting some free time.

Is it just me or do you see the haziness very clearly here? Gives a nice sense of the vastness of the thing!

I think the 'haziness' may just be an artifact of the anti-vignetting used (the black level is brought up a bit in the area that happens to be farthest away). Still, quite by accident, it seems to work :-)



I think MMB's import feature can import a whole directory structure's worth of images. Plus, IIRC, MMB's raw image directory structure matches that of the JPL site, not Exploratorium. However, I haven't looked at it in quite a while.

Interesting - I noticed that the shadows at the far side seem less dark, but (maybe wrongly) I put that down to the angle of illumination.

Back on Sol 992, after driving away from the RAT hole:

Nice new view:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...SNP2421L2M1.JPG

Phil

Opportunity future activity update: It looks like we'll get pancams of this side of Cape Verde tomorrowsol (1006) then driving on 1009.

Mark, do you mean something like these?
Click to view attachment, Click to view attachment(same point of view and different zoom)

Pay attention, this is a flat, not DEM-based projection so distorsion is huge and do not reflect real crater structure but yes, from this perspective is quite dramatic...

"Quite dramatic"?!?!? If you zoom in on that right hand image you can see a Balrog plummeting towards the crater floor, with a wizard falling after it...!!!!!

Can't wait for the view from (not too much closer to) the edge...

Yup. First I thought "1009? That's a typo error; it must be 1007. Let me check the PCDT web".
Then I found those post-drive imaging sequences planned for sol 1009.

It's quite unusual for them to plan so many sols in advance except on weekends.

WRT sol 1006 imaging plan I'm wondering if they will take the same shot looking at Cabo Verde on different lighting conditions (my guess: the second at 14:15).

It's Thanksgiving.

Those are great. Thanks. It's nice to see it from differing perspectives.

Enjoy.


jvandriel

Good catch I hadn't noticed the second entry.

1415 meaning 14:15 is a good guess, the problem is, 14:15 is a perfectly normal time to take images (Cape Verde was taken at this time) it may be the other one that is at an unusual time.

We'll know soon enough, should be a nice dataset.

James

Soon enough is now!

Sol 1006 local time around 10am.

And local time around 2pm.

Perhaps the single most jarring image of the mission.

And an anaglyph from the afternoon view of Verde:
Click to view attachment

Where's that swear jar? clink, clink clink

I don't know what has happened to the rest of the Cape Verde pan, but I've updated my version with what we have.



James

Great, James.. and also your B/N stitch - anaglyph from last Sol1006 pictures are great, what odd/intriguing view!!!

Here is a coloured version of the Sol 1006 Cape Verde

panorama. Taken with the L2 pancam.


jvandriel

I see you've moved from B&W and started to do some colorizations.
Very nice one, Jan.