Rui: I know the cover of the book is not an anaglyph. That is very obvious. I was only speaking of the "3-D" part of the title on the cover. If that was not intended to appear as an anglyph, I'll eat my cardboard glasses. I am attaching an annotated image of the cover to illustrate my point. It's probably a very small thing to talk about, but if you are going to create such an anaglyph impression in the cover design, why the heck wouldn't you do it correctly?
Click to view attachment

hehe! One would expect the glasses to come with the book. We'll have to see which sides the filters will be on.

There is no wrong-way-round for an anaglyph. One way around suggest closer, the other suggests further. In most Mars anaglyphs - you will find some rocks that look like that logo, and some that look the other way. There is nothing incorrect about that logo at all. You're never going to look at that with the glasses that come with it because they're built into the book itself.

But you know what - I think you might be right. It Does. Not. Matter.

It is meant to signal "3-D" to the browsing public in the book shop, not meant to be an actual 3-D text. Only those UMSF fanatics who wear red-green glasses in daily life will be thrown off...

That's a very good point. I see what you are saying, and you are correct, but in this case the "other way around" doesn't work for me. As I said, it is a small matter and I will not debate it further other than to say that if it had been my project, I would have had it done the other way around.

Haven't seen these HiRISE views of the rim of Endeavour posted yet.

Could you post a link to the source images?

It's not out yet - they were in Squyres' DPS presentation on Tuesday evening.

Feed us!

It was only taken a week or so ago. I'm hoping the HiWeb guys manage to maybe get it into next weeks release.

So is this the long awaited image covering the remaining path from "Mini-Endurance" to Endeavour?

I think this one might be more centred on Endeavour itself, rather than the route. They'll arrive soon enough.

I'm not sure if anyone has read Emily's Blog:

A shift in orbit for Mars Odyssey

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001698/

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=5539

Yea, but that area doesn’t get too much foot traffic so I posted it here. And it is going to be factor in the drive to Endeavour.

Thanks for posting the teasers. I can hardly wait until next week...


Is this one of the places we need to watch for the archived presentations to appear?


Thanks. I usually follow Emily's blog closely, but have been busy lately and missed that. I'd say it is going to be a factor in more than just the Endeavor Campaign.

The presentations still exist; the index page doesn't. However Google still has a copy of that, too: cached index page. Save this page to your computer if you want to watch more presentations, as the Google version may disappear soon as well.

Is Endeavour located at 2.28S, 5.23W? In which case, Endeavour is now the officially approved name for the crater Opportunity is driving to:

http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/HotTopics/ind...-Endeavour.html

Yes.

Are we now waiting on HiRISE Endeavour Route and Oppy images due to Odyssey-MRO transition?

I wonder how many meters has the huge east-side internal wall, i mean when we count from the bottom of the wall to cook peak... 200m ? less, more? In comparison Victoria crater with its walls look pretty small in this image.

Using Google Earth (Mars), I was able to pinpoint the lowest and highest points of Endeavour pretty easily. Remarkably, the lowest point (-2006 m) seems to be located just at the base of the eastern wall, 3.65 km due west of its highest point (-1309 m). So the east wall is quite dramatic, and actually about as high as Victoria Crater would be if tossed onto its side, its minor axis pointing up. (If you can imagine that.)

Coordinates:
lowest point - 2˚22'22" S, 5˚04'53" W
highest point - 2˚22'23" S, 5˚01'10" W

So, the difference between the lowest point and the Cook Peak is about 700 m. And how many degrees has wall's inclination ?

Plugging numbers for side c and side b into this online trig calculator, I get an average slope of 11 degrees.
Click to view attachment

That's not too bad. Certainly hike-able without too many problems. And certainly, Opportunity has had to deal with worse slopes at Endurance and Victoria, right?

11 deg only ? At first look the slope seems to be much more dramatic, at least on those 3-d generated pictures.... Well, now I can see those simulated 3-d pictures don't match reality..
You r right volcanopele, in such case Opportunity should have no problems to "climb" there. In Endurance crater there our brave rover had to deal with worse case.

Looking at the 3d image, the slope seems flatter near the bottom of the crater and steeper near the rim. The 11 degrees is an overall average. Maybe separate calculations could be done for the lower and upper parts.

Is that slope anywhere near where Oppy might arrive? - And how is the drive down from a sun angle perspective?

700 meters: that is one heck of a stratigraphic cut...

You can generate elevation and slope 3D maps with HRSC View.

And we ought to hang our heads in shame that we no longer accept the challenge to do this kind of thing on paper, with a quick glance at the trig chart pinned above our desks.

Does anyone still have their CRC log table books?

I still have my Chemical Rubber Company (CRC) book of logs around.....

Yes I still have it. Didn't even toss it out when I got my handy HP35 calculator for $360 (ordered it before it was actually released).

Ah, but is your trig table old enough to have versines and haversinies too?

--Greg :-)

Am I correct in that haversines were used extensively in setting up the curves in railroad tracks? I'm old, but wasn't around in the 1850s.

I'm just wondering that as Oppy gradually approaches Endeavour, and since it was able to glimpse tiny parts of that crater's rim from Victoria, then surely some more of Endeavour's rim peaks must be coming into view now?

I'm a sucker for distant views on Mars of mountains and hills. So does anyone know of any images taken by Oppy in the past few days showing parts of Endeavour?

On sol 1797 Opportunity captured a series of pancam subframe images looking to the east for a glimpse of Endeavor's northern rim. Those images were described as "pancam_endeavor_look_R12." This was briefly discussed in another thread here, but since none of us were able to detect Endeavor's peaks in any of the raw jpegs, the discussions have since moved on to other subjects. Considering why Endeavor's northern rim was not apparent in the sol 1797 images, I think Opportunity is currently at a lower elevation than it held at Victoria. She is also immersed in a sea of ripples, drifts, and purgatoids impeding the view toward the horizon.

I suspect there will be more attempts to catch a glimpse of Endeavor along the way. In the meantime, we'll have to wait for the next attempt, or a fortuitously positioned pancam along the way.

I agree that we may be at a lower elevation now than when we had views to Endeavour. Alternatively, we may have moved far enough south that a subtle ridge is now blocking our view towards the east.

You can see this quite clearly in recent navcams. This is a recent view northwards. We can still see the Beacon, and the horizon "looks" very far away, because of its smoothness:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...J5P1625R0M1.JPG

This is a typical current view towards the southeast:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...BSP0725R0M1.JPG
By the roughness of the horizon, and knowing the scale of the dunes, the horizon looks much closer in this direction than it does to the north.

This roughness of the horizon is harder to see directly east, since we're looking across the ripples, but I believe it's still there and the high, close horizon is blocking our view to Endeavour.

So perhaps after we turn and move eastwards for a while, we'll crest the subtle ridge and get a "heck of a view" towards Endeavour...

I'm waiting for the day we can look back and see the Beacon on the FAR rim.

OK, I'll let it go now.

fredk: I didn't find the time to check Google Earth/Mars when I posted my comment last night, but I did tonight. It appears that they used interpolated MOLA data to define the elevations for the 3D model of Mars. That's not a surprise. A very useful feature of the software is the Lat/Lon/Elev readout of your cursor's position at the bottom center of the view. Tracing Opportunity's route SW from Victoria (with Eduardo's trace as a guide) using my cursor shows that the rover has traveled both below and above the highest elevation of Cape St. Mary along the way. As of sol 1806, Opportunity apparently was a few meters higher than The Beacon.

There does seem to be a subtle ridge to the east, but it seems to be only a few meters taller than the generally local elevations.

You may also change some preference settings on GE to exaggerate the heights...

Here are the Endeavour hills as seen in today's images. It's a merge of three images, enlarged by a factor of two.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Thanks Phil!

Land Ho!!!!!

(Which image is that cropped from, btw?)

Stu, I believe this is the one:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...PYP1625L0M1.JPG

Obrigado, Rui!

Twin Peaks or what?! Alluring, beckoning out of the haze.... looking forward to seeing them closer.

I take it that, relative elevation-wise to their surroundings, they are the highest thing we've seen so far on Mars (incl. Columbia Hills, Pathfinder's own Twin Peaks, etc, but perhaps not the distant view of Gusev rim)?

Rui is correct, except that I cropped it from all three images in that set and merged them.

Phil

Don't count on it. Those peaks are on the north section of Endeavour - almost due east from Oppys current position.

She is headed to the west rim and with the route we are taking I don't expect her to get significantly closer to those peaks.

Don't worry though, I'm sure we'll get some very alluring peaks to aim at sometime soon.

Thanks to Phil for giving me permission to use his pic in my blog post, here:

http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2009/03/0...deavour-land-ho

Looking forward to even better views of other peaks and features in the future

Stu, from your blog: "other people have suggested Endeavour’s Hills have been vaguely visible on previous Oppy images - but I think it’s our best sighting so far of the distant shore that is Endeavour Crater."

Hum...aren't you forgetting some views we've seen a long time ago here at UMSF?...
I know James...the matching lines are not to take in consideration...

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b14/ustrax3/ithaca3.jpg
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b14/ustrax3/ithaca2.jpg
And last but not the least...
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&id=13492

Um, no, I'm not forgetting them; those are the views I'm referring to! But I think you'll agree that this is the first time that the hills have actually been visible to non-UMSFers, right there on raw images, without having to be stretched on the image processing rack...