Hail great Beacon!

Cue music from film "Vertigo"!

Oppy - that's close enough!!

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Here is a look inside the shadow on the the face of Beacon's cliff

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Wow...

Where IS everyone??? I thought there'd be images and mosaics flying in all directions tonight!

That's the BEACON over there!!! We've talked about it for all these months, and we're here!!!

Maybe everyone's waiting until they release that pic of Oppy standing on the edge of VC as taken by MRO, at tomorrow's Media Briefing... (if that's what it is...? Wouldn't it be brilliant if it was an image sequence, with three frames, #1 showing one of the MER's being approached by a dust devil, looking all dirty and grungy, then #2 the rover enveloped by the dust, and #3 reappearing all shiny and new again! )

Hey, how about a "mystery man" standing down on the floor among the dunes. The floor seems so close from here, but I'm sure it quite a ways...

I was saying that the view from the Beacon Cape would be better then from here, but in any case my reaction when looking to tosol images was the same as almost everybody here: WOW!

Special processing of the shadowed cliff under the beacon... no sign of that finely-layered band. I haven't seen it anywhere else either, in the more distant views we have of the other capes.

Phil

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You're not the only one; it does look a little uplifty.
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Some Photoshopping to lighten the shadows, and rotating to level the horizon, but it still looks verrrry interesting. I would guess that the height of Beacon relative to the rest of the rim, and the uplift, are related.

(my first image post, too)

Well done diane, nice one! Welcome to the image processing club (from a VERY junior member!!)


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Cape St Mary? The Beacon?

I know I'm pleased...
10th of January, 1520, Magalhães reaches Cabo Sancta Maria in Uruguay.
Here's the cape:

And guess what's it's major attraction?...

Kelp Gulls apparently

tty

It is what we said : seen from Europe, Beacon's on the Far Rim
Good catch ustrax

Cape St. Mary Rocks?

http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...POP2594L7M1.JPG

http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...POP2594L7M1.JPG

Where is that?

Really odd... IMO cannot be a portion of the beacon wall because we are too far to see such details.
Perhaps, with the new navigation software Oppy decided to descend from CapeVerde without tell us!
Anyway, this conglomerate of rocks is incredible, with each rock having different stratigraphy orientation!!!

EDIT: oops, this is a beacon detail!
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...POP1767R0M1.JPG

Is worth to make a enhanced/sharpened version:
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Clearly, stratified rocks are progressively sliding down...

The two frames were taken 1.5 hours apart, so in this simulated color view is like to have two different, colored light sources (the sharpened version was used for green channel):

Context:

Astonishing!

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...POP2594L7M1.JPG

Sol967


Left Panoramic Camera Non-linearized Sub-frame EDR acquired on Sol 967 of Opportunity's mission to Meridiani Planum at approximately 11:50:37 Mars local solar time, camera commanded to use Filter 7 (432 nm). NASA/JPL/Cornell

Holy crap!

From sol 967:


Have they already started their descent? Is the above from Cape Verde's aeolian unit:

From sol 953:


Or is it near the top of Beacon (upper left)?

From sol 962:

This was already discussed in the Cape Verde thread.

New pan cams are down, many shots of the Cape St. Mary view we saw yesterday.

http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...POP2596R2M1.JPG

My try at martian color

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The large rock on the lower left has some interesting vertical streaks (the layering runs at roughly 45 degrees) I wonder what produced them.

Thanks, Fred! Man, oh, man, I turn my head away for a day or two and I'm lost!!

I don't believe that Oppy has already descended into the Cabo Verde ramp but the PANCAM made a good zoom on the stratified rocks and they are not aligneated.

The Cabo Verde ramp has a slope of around 30 degree that is rather steepy and that ramp has no good sun orientation for its solar panels.

This might indicate that these rocks are brescias of the impact and they are in the process to fall off in the future.

Rodolfo

And this is mine, based on L456 combination with adjusted balance and some sharpening...

But what's with the ugly, fake horizon on the uppermost image of post?

Ugly...yes. Fake? What are you talking about. They've intentionally overexposed to get a clearer view of the rock thus causing saturation of the sky which has bled into the upper part of the rock.

Doug

Here's your image at home, Dilo...

Since posts about Cape St. Mary were getting scattered between two threads it appeared to be time for a new thread.

New pancams, nothing more on Cape St. Mary yet. It's hard to believe they are sitting there and not imaging it, I hope more come down today.

http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...cam/2006-10-15/

It must be getting more and more difficult to download anything this close to conjunction.

Yes it's well worth it. Great detail. What caught my eye was the nearly polished surface of the rock in the lowest part of the frame. I would guess this was a fracture surface since it seems close to planar, although it looks faintly like there are diagonally oriented strata within it. The vertical streaks running down it are also interesting and perhaps may be from falling dust or sand. Would be nice to get a closer look of that.

We are also seeing more of the sheer cliff behind St Mary which will yield a nice view of the thin white line.

Looks like we're back to work guys.

Take a look at the anaglyph of the sol 976 (Cape Verde panorama) pancams of St Mary. I can't wait for the whole pan.

James

Yahoo!!

Look also to this sharpened and contrast enhanced version

A beautiful jumbled mess on the cliffs of St Mary (beacon), from sol 974:
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(Heavily stretched to bring out detail in the shadows.) We're seeing the sols with one pointing each starting to come in.

PS - let's keep St Mary to this thread!

Thanks, Dilo! There's something in that shot that drew my eye. Lower right of the pic you enhanced.
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Not enough info as yet, but is this going to be stratigraphic or possible ground water alteration?
From this point, it looks like the thickness varies. My initial vote for this would go to stratigraphic.
Interesting at any rate.

good to see Oppy back at work again

here is a colorized version of dilo's sharpened image above:

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Hmm...lots of scattered rocks (ejecta?) out beyond the crater's edge in this shot. If descent into the interior of Vicky is deemed too dangerous, maybe Oppy should check some of these out once the stratigraphic units have been identified like they were back at Endurance...

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...POP2402R2M1.JPG

Maybe the Near Rimmers Maskot can help Oppy get into Victoria???

In the following stitch I used the great Nirgal colorization toghether with enhanced L257 pictures from Sol972-975:

WindyT.
You've identified an interesting feature. It looks like a zone or stratum that has been preferentially weathered into a broad groove that is mostly parallel to the bedding. It is also marked by a darker band of color. If you follow that darker band of color to the left of the image, it emerges a a some what resistant ledge between two recessed horizons. Based on those observations, I'd say it's stratigraphic.
If you will forgive some wild speculation, it could be stratigraphic and ground-water related. The bed that is more resistant to erosion, might mark a horzion occupied by an ancient water table. Mineralization may have occurred at the water/air interface forming a bed that became slightly more resistant to weathering. But that is wild speculation and as you said, we just don't have enough information yet.

Hi

After a one week internet black out, I'm back and ready for the recover of Mars visiblilty

So, here is a four picture pan of Cape Saint Mary :

The apparent striation in these exposed rock faces is fascinating. Almost like they were emplaced after being dragged or pushed. THat is a phenomenal image of CSM!

Truly wonderful pictures. The smooth slopes of planed-down ejecta in the Bay between us and Cape St Mary are really striking, sort of like a mega-breccia. They are clearly made of different materials combined - shattered bedrock blocks cemented together with a pulverised matrix from the Victoria impact, I imagine. How did the slope get to be so uniformly smooth? Aeons of wind erosion?

Kenny

That has to be it. Although the basic erosional processes on Mars and Earth are similar, the details are different. And this is the beginning of this phase of the exploration of Mars, so 'feets don't fail me now'.

--Bill