Complete disruption in the upper layer with a fascinating mix/jumble of rock but once you hit the "white line", fracturing aside, there's good continuity. I also have the distinct impression that the ejecta rubble is only very loosely consolidated.

What a great shot.

Tesheiner,

during the last 2 years, as a member of this forum,

I have learned a lot about Mars but also about using

Autostitch and Paint Shop Pro 7 and AntiVignetting.

jvandriel

There was a curious sequence of pancam images taken after the sol 994, 999, and 1001 moves, aimed at almost the same direction. Here's a cross-eyed animation showing the approach to the edge:
Click to view attachment
(There was another member of this series on sol 992, but the position was very different so I didn't include it.)

And away we go... a good drive north on Sol 1009. Here's a view. Not all of the Pancam drive-direction images were down yet.

Sol 1009 Site 768U

Spheric

Click to view attachment


Vertical 2cm/pixel

Click to view attachment

Sol 1009 immersive

The Pancam L2 drive direction mosaic:

This just seems to jam up my browser. Must need a huge amount of memory.

Could be, I suppose... the pan is 7672 x 3836 pixels.

Kills Camino for me as well - running Version 2006021414 (1.0) on and iBook 10.4.7 with 768 megs ram....

I had some problems getting it loaded up initially but an update to Shockwave fixed it. It is a bit of a memory hog though - just opening that link chews up about 400Meg of memory on my system. It's a nice viewer all the same - given an option I'd prefer this to the QTVR approach.

A while ago in this post Marswiggle found our first view of the beacon, from sol 775. I finally got hold of the PDS images for that sol and confirmed that that was the beacon.

Then I decided to put together a mosaic of our approach to the beacon. I tried to find a series of images, starting from sol 775, with each following image from about half the previous distance. In the end the images span nearly a hundredfold range of distances, from 1820m on sol 775 to 21m on sol 994.

The sol 775 image is from the PDS RAD file. Sols 848, 907, and 916 were averages of 2 or 3 images on those sols to improve signal to noise. All images are pancam L2 except sol 955, which is L7. All images are presented at full scale.

It's been great fun spoting the beacon, arguing about its location, and watching it slowly grow in size these past 7 months or more. Enjoy!
Click to view attachment

Thanks Fredk, that's great. To see some tiny dot on the horizon over a mile away get bigger and bigger really shows the power of rovers. It's a shame that we didn't go over and MI the beacon, it would have been great to end your sequence with an image taken from just cm away.

James

Yeah thanks fredk, real nice closing-in sequence

Nico

Tres kewl, Freddo. I think I remember the first day a couple of our more "eagle-eyed' members (one was Dilo IIRC) first noted the light on the horizon. I couldn't see it and I remember thinking, "Man, these guys must get off on eyestrain!" It certainly led us a merry chase through those months when Vikky was just a distant dream.

Upgrading shockwave also fixed camino - but golly it takes a while to load - I prefer the QTVR myself...

Oh, and awesome beacon, fred!

Awesome job! That should put to rest any questions about the origin of the Beacon as being from the near rim.

I'm assuming that Oppy did a complete 360-degree pan from its "high point" perch at CSM, right? Oughtn't we be getting just about the best view of the surrounding terrain (including back the way we came) as is possible, since we are at the elevation of the first piece of Victoria that was visible along our route?

I wonder -- can we see Endurance from here?

(I have to admit, the line that just crossed my mind was "Oppy! We can see your house from up here!" )

-the other Doug

Only with the navcam.

I doubt we could have seen Endurance but it's still a little disappointing. There is so much to take pancams of and limited flash space and downlink capacity (mars on the opposite side of the sun + limited power during winter) that it's understandable that Oppy can't take many 'tourist' shots at the moment.

James

I did...

Do you remember this?

Now compare it with your last image...

Man...WE are good...

Sol 1012

spheric

Click to view attachment

vertical 2.5cm/pixel ...

Click to view attachment

Pseudo Polar sol 1012


Click to view attachment

I've been wondering exactly the same thing, and praying without avail that they find some reason to shoot pancam northwards.

Still as James said there was navcam, and I enhanced/zoomed/squinted the heck out of them but couldn't see Endurance.

You can clearly see that we're very high (as far as Meridiani goes!) because the north horizon in the CSM navcams is only occasionally dotted by the dunes from the HOAV highpoint that we crossed. Up to now the north horizon had been nothing but the HOAV dunes. So I wouldn't be surprized if pancam would show some of Endurance.

I'm sure that if I set up a stepladder on the beacon and climbed to the top and squinted I could see Endurance!

"I wonder -- can we see Endurance from here?"

The same here. For a couple of days I'm looking/hope each time for pancams that pointing that direction.

Think we can look over that dune field that we crossed since Erebus. Following a try (from mhoward's pan) to enhance the horizon line of that field of dunes (where I think it is). The question is still: How far away is that behind that we can spot.
(Click for original size)

The left edge of that image points on a bearing of about 12 degrees, so that image misses Endurance and Erebus. I think we would need two more pancam frames to the left to be pointing at Endurance (and another one or two more to get Erebus). The topographic high (hell of a view) is also the direction of Erebus/Endurance, so although we can clearly see a long way in the direction of your image, it's not clear that the view would be as good in the direction of Endurance.


Please take an image in that direction Jim, just one little subframe?

James

Hmm, this Navcam pic of today show more of the interesting direction: http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...23P0635R0M1.JPG

"It's not clear that the view would be as good in the direction of Endurance"
Sadly it looks like the dunes represents the visible horizon there. But more to the left it seems to be better again.

Tman's image brightened and stretched vertically about 10 to 1.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Hum...
I'm not sure it's Endurance. The crater is about 6km far. I don't know at how atlitude is Oppy... Maybe, maybe not? Or is it "Hell of a view" point?

Somewhere in this Navcam pic should be exactly north - but where exactly? And Endurance should be circa between 3,5 to 5,5 degrees left of it - according to image PSP_001414_1780: http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/PSP_001414_1780/.

According to the tracking site that image is pointing -18 degrees from north (342 bearing). So north is about 1/10 of the image width from the right edge, and Endurance should be about 1/5 of the image width from the right edge. Right on the edge of what I think is obscured by the "hell of a view". So maybe just maybe.

James

http://www.greuti.ch/oppy/beacon-eduran_sol1014.jpg

So Endurance between 354,5° to 356,5° degrees. I took Oppy's position from Phil's route map.
Additionally are drew in the pixel values that I got.
Nothing so far... but in that direction should be more visible than only dunes.

Perhaps we are starting to see it!
Click to view attachment (image 1P218649755EFF7700P2435L2M1, 5x stretch)
Azimut is the expected (based on Sol1016 position in the routemap) and also apparent dimensions are close to espectations (1.5deg rim-to-rim); heat shield still covered on the leftmost side but should become visible in the next sols going east...

EDIT:
This is a wider view toward NE (manual stitch of four frames, same stretch):

According to the tracking site that image is pointed at -19 degrees (-18 after you account to the 1 degree toe-in I think). So the right hand edge is at -10, which means it will miss Endurance.

Argh.
James, I was almost sure but my estimation was very rough (based on bottomless bay rim and approximate rover position from Sol1019 route map)...
At this point, based on pointing info you report, also the other candidate visible on the right of my first proposal should be excluded, because is headed at -13deg.