Can I give my input?
I was last week climbing in the french alps and went up to "Les Ecrins". Even if my view of "La Barre et le Dôme des Ecrins" is sideway, I found it remarkably close to Cook:
Enjoy:
Click to view attachment

Nice picture, It is evident, the snow is already melting. On the other hand, this mountain has a very big ripple. Any moment, there would have a snow mass falling.

I don't want to continue OT but this is not only snow, this is a glaciar including 3 seracs. One of them partly broke up 3 weeks ago which obliged climbers to take a more direct path to the summit.
I'm realy wondering if we can get such a view when Oppy will get to Endeavour (if she even will get close to Cook). The actual height of the summit is around 1000 m above the place I took the picture. I'm a bit confused about the height of Cook relative to Endeavour floor.

Looks like clays ahead.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0907/19opportunity/

Well, Oppy may be a little turtle, but after roving all this time now she can see the clay goal over the hill.

Woohoo! Don't want to say I told you so, but...

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=69014



OK, I didn't mention clays... but I knew it wasn't more of this sandstone!

Wow! I think a lot of us were hoping for something like this, but this is a pretty amazing announcement. Let's hope she can get there.

Hmm. I wonder if this will have an immediate effect on traverse planning? Clays are a pretty high-value target; she just might be doing fewer opportunistic (sorry) science stops enroute.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but we've seen nothing radically different for quite some time. The cobbles seem to be the most enigmatic things, and many of them seem to be meteorites; is there any compelling reason at this point not to accelerate the effort to reach Endeavour?

Just the RF wheel currents.

Also, how old is this crism data? It may very well be that the rover planners have been aware of the clay signatures for some time now.

You know, it's been over a month and I haven't seen a single other article on this anywhere. Nothing on Space.com, spaceref.com, etc... I may have missed it but has this clay mission been confirmed?

The wait is over. I believe this is the first pancam view of those new very subtle features:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...C7P2401L6M1.JPG

The distant horizon in x5vertical exaggeration.
Sol 1987...
Click to view attachment


EDIT: Phil-o-Vision inspired

Very nice image! Thanks.

Phil

Wow! Even though I know it is a vertical exaggeration, I'm still salivating.

Will we actually get there? My assumption is yes. Given the slow degradation of certain parts of oppy what equipment will still work when we arrive?

I'm especially excited about the clays that were identified from orbit. How much science will be available once we find a handful?

I hear you! I'm more excited about Oppy than I have been in years. I'd love to get more info on the clays exact locations, but so far the only article I could find was the spaceflighttoday article.

With the recent improvements of the RF-wheel situation I'm very optimistic about that

However it probably also depends on how much priority is given to actual driving versus long science stops ...

So it is encouraging to remember that the priority has been clearly set by the Rover's Lead from the beginning of the Trek and re-iterated in the press updates since then:




And I interpret this that it's not about record breaking single-sol drives or such ... Just a couple of months of slow but safe and steady daily progress without much interruptions is all we need to make serious progress towards the destination

The horizon pan...no stretch.
If someone wants to start identifying craters/features and distances
Click to view attachment

Under the current plan, a couple of months of slow, steady progress will actually take us farther away from the destination.

Here is your pan with 3x Phil-O, lined up with an inverse polar image of Endeavour/Iazu and with a few guide lines added.

Click to view attachment

James

Thanks a lot for that Astro and James. This will be a great reference image for identifying old and new features.

THAT's why I love this place. No sooner had I thought "Wow... I wish I knew which peaks those actually are..." than someone showed me. Great work guys, appreciate it. Quite thrilling to see Endeavour's rim peeking over the horizon, isn't it?

Couldn't agree more with you Stu but the question here is...
are we there yet?!

Click to view attachment

SCNR
Nirgal

PS.: Cartoon originally made by Ustrax back in the good old "The Abyss" times

And off we go! I hope Oppy will reach Endeavour crater, it would be a fantastic achivement! Go Oppy!

Welcome Robert! Lucky the atmosphere of Mars is so thin as we won't need goggles over the coming weeks! Seriously - we're on one of the greatest scientific treks of all time and I have to keep pinching myself that we've been asked along for the ride..... pretty well in real time. (I'm a complete sucker for what's over the next hill, here on Earth!!)

Thank you, HughFromAlice! I just agree to 100%. It is AMAZING to see new raw pictures everyday, to read what you all know about these rovers, and just to try to imagine how advanced, skillfull and amazing all of this is!
I will keep reading alot in these forums, but maybe i will not talk so much as my understanding and knowledge about this is nothing compared to what you guys know. Thank you all for this forum!

// Robert