Man... ...what a change in such a short time! I wonder if the dust cloud had a discernible edge as seen from the ground. This is one of the most Earth-like changes we've seen on Mars, IMHO.

Some Pancam images were taken on sol 1224, no doubt to study the sky during the dust storm. Of course brightness levels of these stretched JPGs are all over the place, but I think it does look dusty. The time was about 3:20 local Mars time.

Interesting animation, Fredk. It is also instructive to make an animation of those two images adjusting the levels of the sunlit areas to be similar in addition to the shadow areas being similar as done previously. The on-the-ground effect is that the shadows appear markedly brighter with increased dust.

Rather the difference between LosAngeles and Palm Springs

--Bill

The dust seems to have softened the light, making the pancam 1x4 appear prettier than normal on sol 1224. I was waiting for Mike to update the metadata so I could use anti-vignetted images from MMB, but it seems I couldn't fully compensate for the brightness variation between images. I didn't screw with the color balance, because I liked the false color in this set. If someone can correct the brightness banding, this set of pancams will make a gorgeous postcard.
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You're right Cosmic, lovely subtle light here at the moment...

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Nice, Stu. The lighting reminds me of the diffuse illumination we get here in LA when the marine layer is moderately thick...gives kind of a homey feel to the image, oddly enough.

But Mars doesn't make your eyes water.

I don't know...you get some of this micron-scale dust in your helmet somehow, would put that up against LA smog for sheer eye-watering capability....

We have a new navcam picture of the tracks.
The first one was taken on sol 1216 and I remember we talked about the remarkable difference between the first set of tracks (from sol 1214) and the second one (from sol 1216). The second picture was taken yestersol (sol 1224).

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There is no question about it. Large changes are occuring in a relatively short period of time. This is something new. Changes like this have never been seen this dramatically at any other time during the mission.

Fred,

Thank you for the animation. It is also intriguing to watch the wind effects between the two frames (note the 'ribbing' of the tracks near the left wheel and some of the thin layers of dust on the rocks near image-center for a pair out of many examples).



-- Pertinax

Been trying for an hour to get these two to merge but it's just not happening, but they're nice individual views anyway...

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And a 456 of the dirty, dirty sky...

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Any Storm posts should go in here - http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ic=4375&hl= - it's a seperate topic all of its own I think.

Doug

Compare the shadows on the mast. It's barely visible on the second image. And the calibration target doesn't seem to have any shadow at all.

Stu: If you are using Autostitch, try increasing the RANSAC parameter "max iterations" to 3500. It can do wonders for a stitch. You can also adjust alpha and beta, but I don't think it's necessary for this panorama.

... and don't forget to set the "SIFT image size scale" to 100%.

Stu, I'm a big fan of your imaging work but please retain something of the original filename, even if it's just the Sol the image was taken. When I save images like these, just having 'left-medium' as the file name just kinda sucks. Love the work though.

Sorry bout that MK, guess I'm just not v organised that way! I tend to do most of my "imaging work" (more like "messing about" ha!) v v early in the day, before I go out to work at 7am, so giving everything nice neat names has to battle with being awake enough not to drown my keyboard in coffee, but I'll try to do better. Glad you like my efforts tho, thanks. Slowly getting the hang of it I think...

Some details on the approach to the white layer in this Aviation Week article:30 metres into the crater seems quite far, since at most the white layer is about 20 metres inside the rim.

Yeah. I didn't take the time to measure distances with AlgorimancerPG, but apparently they intend to enter at the best place to cross the ripple on the rim, and then traverse the slope in a northeasterly direction toward the northernmost, reachable exposure in the bay. Then they would take a hard right and follow the layer across, to the opposite side. That's one scenario I can imagine would work, and what I suspected they will attempt. The dark/light boundary appears traversable for at least half of it's length.

Then again, we've seen many examples of people tossing around rough estimates in these situations.

If anyone sees that article in Aviation Week, it's worth noting that the online picture and the main image accompanying the printed version, first appeared here on UMSF.
It's the 'Opportunity Descends into Victoria Crater' image that I did a few weeks back before the storm.
The image is credited: Glen Nagle, Doug Ellison, unmannedspaceflight.com.
Thanks to 'marsloon' for helping to make this happen.
Yippee! Another score for the UMSF team.

Astro0

How true! The image magicians of UMSF are a science editor's Best Friend.

For those still following the exploits of Oppy, she's started to move around to the entry point.

--Bill

Awesome! So the storm's blown over and sunlight's streaming in?

No. The storm is not over. But the rover has not been doing much for many days. The batteries could be in good shape, so they decided to use them a little. I think the movement is more for collecting useful data during the storm than actually getting to the entry point.

I think an appropriate song at this point would be the Beatles "Here Comes the Sun"

i dont think this is already posted !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_WLJtnr4FY

"It's all right..." yeah, sure hope so for our "little darlin'...

That entry animation is cute, however I think it's going to be like Endurance - two feet and then a RAT under foot, another two feet, another RAT all the way for each obvious layer.

ElkGroveDan: Agreed -- what would be the point otherwise? Unless they are going directly for the deepest, most quickly reached layer, with the idea that the rest can be filled in on the way out . . .

My second panorama :
http://www.enregistrersous.com/images/1076...71007124639.jpg

Nice stitch, Space... which software are you using.
I made this one with Autotstich but I encountered some difficulties in order to reproduce a correct crater slope everywhere:
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And this is an elaboration (with sharpening) of left portion:
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(both pictures are 70% original scale)

The pans provided by space and dilo show some nice views of eolian erosional features called yardangs:

http://www.tec.army.mil/research/products/...heet/lsyard.htm

The features at Victoria are mico-yardangs, only a few centimeters/ten's of centimeters high.

I wonder if these features set up the pattern that results in the embayed nature of Victoria's rim -- the emabyments and projections are just larger yardangs that have undergone some mass-wasting and undercutting due to differential erosion to make the near vertical cliffs. It would be a satisfyingly fractal landscape evolution story!