And the growing shadow ^ ^

Hope some of you like this...

Click to view attachment

Thanks Stu, one of my favorite, very close to what I feel.
Well, may be Oppy's will still be roving in those remote days

I am sure there are great cobbles to study on that huge crater...

Quite happy to see Oppy out of the deeps and geting ready to hit the road again!

And...great words Stu...great words...

Question for the masses here. If an earthling woman had a baby on Mars. Would the baby be Martian or Earthling???

Also. Does anyone have any overhead images of the area to the south of Victoria??? I want to see what crater
they are talking about that they may venture to?

It depends on who the father is.

Edited out for inappropriateness after seeing this post.

Victoria Exit movie

I tried straightening out the ride and addad a little color.

Actually, it's just a fade effect, but it give a good transition between pictures .

I've updated my movie with adding the latest frames :

(size about 30 Mo, Quicktime movie)

And I made a panorama from Sol 1634 pics, showing the "complex track" near Duck Bay (it remind me a highway exchanger). We can see at the left the first tracks of Sol 951 arrive to Victoria, the departure from Duck Bay to explore crater rim and the return to this place.


I've also made a colorized version (with Sol 1614 clouds)

Ant, that last one is REALLY, REALLY nice!

Great works Ant!

The sol1634 colorized mosaic with that clouds and the bit solar effect from above is really a very nice composition!

The only objection I have is the yellowish tone of the image. If you don't mind I changed it a bit - sadly the contrast of the clouds have slightly decreased:

Whaddayathink?

Wow! Those are all beautiful.

Seeing three sets of tracks fading into the martian distance...there's a regular jeep trail out there!

Ow! Many thanks .
Tman : you made more realistic image . Very good .

Superb picture, fourmi 103
Merci

Tracks. New, old and older.



And now, since Doug has very kindly sent me some 3D glasses (Thanks very much Doug! )

Colour Anaglyph.



James

Talk about burning... errr... rubber

Great mosaic, James!

Oh great, James is doing spectacular anaglyphs now, too... I might as well just delete Stereophotomaker from my PC!

Here're some pictures taken on sol 1643 of Opportunity exercizing the IDD: http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...cam/2008-09-08/
And the plan for sol 1645 (today) includes a bunch of MIs; that would be the first use of it in months! Actually, since sol 1502.

First MIs in four months.

http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...ger/2008-09-09/

I take it these are views of the old tracks?

Tracks from 3 times. From left, 2 years ago when Opportunity first arrived, next this past week, next driving in 1 year ago, next last week again. The tracks from 2 years ago went through the worst of the dust storm and are really degraded. Those from a year ago were after the dust storm and look just a little degraded. (I hope I have this correct--please correct me if I am wrong).

Was asking about the MI's - which set of tracks do you think they were imaging?

The MIs are not of tracks. It looks to me like they are of the circular impression made when one of the spectrometers is pressed into the surface. I wonder if it's a fresh impression or if they have relocated an old one.

Fresh one. The IDD is positioned at a sand drift built up on the rim to the right of the entry/exit path.
Click to view attachment

A series of 6 navcam EDN frames were planned for a sol 1647 cloud movie. They came down recently along with 6 others taken approximately 13 minutes later.
I think the extra set probably corresponds to the "Unexpected sequence!!!!" record in the pancam database.

I was going to post the movies, but I think someone else will do them better , so I'll hold off.

I'm sure that someone with a nice flatfield for Oppy Navcam images will improve this, but here's both sequences.
Sorry for the slight distortion from the original frame size but you get the idea.
Click to view attachment

Nice. You did a better job of compressing it than I did. My good animation was almost 2 megs. I'd love to know how you did that, but now, we are again preparing to evacuate from another arriving storm. cya, next time...

Very nice hit Oppy!
Here's my try with it: 800KB http://www.greuti.ch/oppy/1647clouds1.gif
It's the sequence from 12:00:51 to 02:39. The other is more difficult.


Good luck, Tom!

Thanks, Tman. We are comfortably away from the hurricane, in central Louisiana, and I am hoping to go home tomorrow. As far as I can tell, the storm is much less intense than the various media are depicting it as. Some of them are interpreting this hurricane's "eye" as the large hole in their radar map. It appears to me that their radar can not penetrate to the center on the storm, hence the hole in their radar. I can't see any "eye" in the satellite imagery. There's a breeze here, and a little rain. The reporters are blowing it out of proportion.

If earier reports are correct, our home was seriously damaged by wind, and then levelled by the storm surge. No way... Stay tuned...this is fun...

Beautiful cirrus clouds over Opportunity's landing site (Sol 1651).
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...RPP1588R0M1.JPG
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...RPP1588R0M1.JPG
I wait for next beautiful animated GIF.

I have forget to upload an updated version of my movie of Oppy's escape from Victoria. It's done

I'll never be able to change the forum skin, because your GENIUS avatar, and lovely drop-shadowed thumbnails are just too damn good!

Doug

Hey, who's said "it gives the forum some profundity..."? It's really a nice eye-catcher!

Sol1651 cloud movie in "false"color:
http://www.greuti.ch/oppy/1651clouds.gif
What do you think? Could it roughly look like that way?

Nice!

It looks like they are trying to just push on through this sandy material at VC's rim to get to the light soil patch ahead.
Here's a four camera animation of the wheels digging/driving through.
Click to view attachment

Let's hope they make it out and can get on with driving to Endeavour Crater (EC).

Astro0

It makes me nervous seeing the wheels churning away like that when I think about how many revolutions they will have to make to get to Endeavour.

I'm sure there will be times of churning on the way to Endeavour. Lots of ripples and some will be soft and embeddable (new word). I think the driving team has so much experience now in these conditions, they aren't afraid to push things a bit. They've gotten both Oppy and Spirit (with her bum wheel, which could happen to Oppy) out of some pretty nasty jams. Perhaps they are even testing one of the new driving techniques that SS spoke of. No more zigging and zagging around ripples, Oppy will just bull her way through.

AstroO - great work on those movies.

Now that they're "hitting the gas" wouldn't it be great if they could get Oppy to "peel out" on it's way from Victoria!

I made this comparison between navcam images of wheel tracks taken now and 1 year ago, almost in the same position... to aid, you see some referring points (d location is tentative):
Click to view attachment
Interesting to see that track degradation is small (consider that farthest tracks are 2 years old!).

Any driving plans in the works? Still trying to get to the bright patch? Exiting out?

> Any driving plans in the works? Still trying to get to the bright patch? Exiting out?

Today (sol 1659). And based on Paolo's comments I would say we are leaving this site.

Does this view bring back any memories, guys..?

And cobbles? You want cobbles..?

Ladies and Gentlemen, fasten your seat belts because our trip will start soon. Next stop is, mmm, Sputnik? Cabo Frio?

Navcam mosaic from sol 1659.
Click to view attachment

Hoo-rah!!!
Next stop?...
The cobble just ahead...and study it for like...three months...

D is probably under the deck in the 1286 navcam. I also think that this place is seeing too much traffic. We need to get a traffic light installed.

Paolo

1659 has been a good sol on Mars. Yanked Oppy from the ripple and covered about 10m. Yes, I know it is not 100m, but at least we have "proven" that in case of an embedding event she can be out in a single drive. Both because we are near VC rim, and also because we still need to set our minds for really loooong drives it will take some time to see the first 100m drive.

Paolo

La lunga crociera ha cominciato! Speriamo di arrivare ben in porto dopo di traversare con successo gli oceani di sabbia....

(Ho vissuto quattro anni a Firenze, é per quello che parlo un po' d'italiano...)

And for anyone without a Babel fish in their ear...
A straight Google translation...

The long cruise has begun! We hope to arrive well into port after successfully navigate the oceans of sand ....
(I lived four years in Florence, is what I speak a little 'd'Italian ...)

Very nice words Oersted.

Those who do have such a device might be interested in listening to RoverDriver interviewed by the AstronautiCAST and Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Pod podcasts, both in Italian, I'm afraid.


I hope the Italian navigator will land in the new world--will let us know how the natives are. Very nice words indeed, thanks.


Paolo Amoroso

If Oppy's in an "ocean of sand" (fantastic words, Oersted!) she was in danger of becoming becalmed here...