Right on the money! We're just north of a pair of purgatoids.
I think that the SW heading leg will end in a sol or two and then we'll basically head south following the outcrop patches.

Thanks fredk!
And finally! Finally Oppy reaches the paralel of the halfway beacon on my 2nd leg of the quest for Endeavour!
The delay has grown quite considerably, from 119 days in the previous mark to 227 currently what makes my prediction of arrival at Endeavour pass from February, 8 2010 to September, 23 2010...
Let's see some nice drives to catch up with the craziness!
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Less than a year from now will not be too bad after all

Here's a navcam mosaic made from today's post-drive images.
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Nothing really special and the landscape is quite boring actually BUT to the right we start to identify the patches which will be the "yellow bricks" for the next couple of Kms. It's time to drive south again!

I think I see another meteorite

Speaking of yellow bricks, when was the last time Oppy made an extended stop to give the bedrock a good, hard squint? I'm not trying to call it, or anything, but it almost feels like we're overdue.

Yes there was, though it wasn't anything to write home about:

-Tim.

Did someone ask for "cobbles" to study..?

Here ya go...

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Personally I suspect they are all small meteorites, and each and every one should be thoroughly examined and photographed for at least a week.

( That would delay your Endeavour arrival date to sometime in 2104 usarax, sorry! )

Just NAMING all those critters would take till the 22nd Century. If they are meteorites, I move that we call them the "Philippine Archipelago" & be done with it!

Actually, is this something new? I'd characterize it as gravel.

It resembles the shore of an island. It makes me wonder if this cobble plateau is a relative high spot or low spot on the terrain -- something to interrupt the regular ebb and flow of the dunes. I could see small meteorites riding on and in dunes over the millennium and being dropped in places where the wind currents or underlying terrain interrupts the uniform dune migration.

... or droppings from that scary guy on your avatar, Dan...

Not as scary as that guy on your Facebook avatar Stu.

Yeah, he's just been signed up for "SAW X: Martian Massacre"

"Actually, is this something new? I'd characterize it as gravel. "

No, not new.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...N8P0735R0M1.JPG

This was just south of Beagle crater in July 2006. At the time some people suggested it might be a clod of crater ejecta.

Phil

Ah. Thanks, Phil!

There's a relatively fresh-looking hit just to the east of here; maybe that's the source.

Yep. We've seen several examples of these piles in various stages of exposure. This one is partially buried by more recent drifts, I'd guess.

I have time...

Curiosity here, we are seing not only Endeavour but also Iazu on the western horizon, since we are heading south now will Opportunity have the chance of catching a glimpse of the rim of the monstruous crater on the bottom left of this image?:
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What I mean is that, due to the distance, height, rover position, weather, will it be possible? btw, does that crater have a name?

Is Endeavor in that image? Can someone highlight it for context?

Endeavour is the big crater - top right.

Thanks, now she looks familiar.

And that big crater bottom left gets my vote after they finish with Endeavour.

Google (Mars) is your friend.
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Oh! No problem at all; it's "only" 50km away...

I've been looking for Bopolu in the horizon pans, when we get to take them in that direction. I think we should be able to see it at some point, particularly as we roll off this "nose" of topography we're on and start our descent toward Endeavour - the topo also drops off to the southwest of us, and the intevening surface should 'get out of our way' soon.

-Tim.

That should be the intervening surface in southwest direction (~227°)

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...GP2427R1M1.HTML

If my math is correct, in the distance of 50km the rim have to be at least 368m... eh, ~370m high to appear over a flat horizon.

Could you point out the "high point" of our current path? More or less the point in which we could get a clear horizon view?

I like this thinking!
Let's see, we're just approaching the 19km mark, so just another 15 years and we're there?

It is interesting that of the 4 craters in that Google image, all have obvious ejacta aprons except Endeavour. Does that imply Endeavour is much more ancient, or does it hint that the geology is different? (and apologies in advance if I'm regurgitating previous posts)

Speaking not as a geologist, but as someone who played on the beach as a kid, Endeavor looks like a crater made in wet sand.

I'm off work today, so it'll have to wait until Monday. Problem is that the MOLA topography is pretty coarse in longitude in particular, so there could be higher frequency topography in the near and mid distance that isn't resolved by MOLA. Plus, we're near the edge of a large convergence angle stereo pair taken around April, so I can't see the smaller features in the stereo either. But in general we should be able to see more as we progress south and southeast from our current location. We have to take a gander periodically, which requires pointing pancam in the direction we're not driving. Probably albedo pans are our best bet for dection followed by targeted imaging. Or Navcam if the Bopolu rim is high enough to show at that scale.

-Tim.

As I recall, the thought is that Endeavour is very old, and the older terrain is draped by overlying sediment. The rim of Endeavour apparently is elevated above the sediment and has a distinctly different composition than what we've seen so far ... which is why it is an interesting destination to drive towards. Oppy has been driving over the overlying sediment all along, so reaching the rim of Endeavour would be a chance to see some really new geology. An argument may also be made that water may once have pooled within Endeavour, making for further interesting geology. The other craters, being more recent, would lack all or part of the sediment draping. Iazu (to the south in the Google Mars image) has the "splosh" outline characteristic of an impact into wet/icy terrain, while Bopolu (to the southwest) seems to lack this, perhaps indicative of different eras at the time of impact.

Endeavour is "under" the Meridiani sulfate deposits, poking through them, whereas Bopolu and Iazu formed after the deposits were laid down.

-Tim.

That fits with the impression I get of Bopolu that it looks like one of those "splat" craters in the icy soil regions. I'd be willing to predict that there would be evidence of flowing water on the downslope regions of the denser ejecta apron. In fact if you look at about the five o'clock position on Bopolu some river-canyon features are definitely visible which would have been cut by brief catastrophic melt/flooding.

Mark in your agendas...canyoning on Mars with Oppy by 2015.

I agree with your math. Can anyone estimate the height of Bopolu's rim above the surrounding plains using GM or whatever?

Try this:
http://hrscview.fu-berlin.de/cgi-bin/ion-p...

There is an elevated 'island' almost due south of us at about the same distance. Actually it's at the end of a larger peninsula that seems to rise above the plains, perhaps part of a very large crater rim. That island does look as if it casts an appreciable shadow so might also be worth checking out if someone is working on elevations. It has the added advantage of being located front centre for a southbound traveller.

http://www.google.com/mars/#lat=-3.118576&...mp;q=spacecraft

Have now implemented this math in my MER filname decoder for "any" desired distance to get the minimum height. Additionally, it can also output the viewing angle in which a given length/width appears in the distance. For example try +50 or +50/6992 in the box full image link or file name code and see what happens.

Thanks to Fred the outputs for minimum height should now be more accurate (at 50km ~370m vs. now ~322m).

Just a bit of fun... not to scale, calibrated or anything fancy like that...

http://twitpic.com/mqtfn/full

Cool, Stu!

Nice! And by the time we get to Endeavour we'll have more then enough to fill the whole image.

BTW, what's your new avatar?

Tesh: that's an imagined spiral galaxy shining above Kendal Castle, where I do most of my private and public observing. Amazing place :-) Full size: http://twitpic.com/mrtq3

And I'd been thinking more along these lines:

Silly me! (Sorry for the chit-chatty post.)

Back on topic, is anyone else curious where the hazcams are for the end of the sol 2043 drive?

Yes, and I'm anxious to see them, given how short the drive was. I'm surprised (not that it takes much) they turned south there, instead of another SW drive onto more open road.

Re cobbles. Reading a comment on another forum - about piles of cobbles Oppy passed in the past - set me hunting through the raw images pages, and I found this from sol 657...

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Fascinating...

That's an image from a long time ago; by the time Opportunity was near Erebus, stopped at Olympia, wasn't it?

Coming back to today's cobbles at our current site and answering to the comments about the hazcam images, they were downlinked together with the navcams for that same sol but it seems we have another bottleneck at the Exploratorium. In any case and reading between lines there seems to be not too much interest in investigating this site. Those hazcams were taken and downlinked with high compression (one and two "bpp" instead of the usual 3bpp) and besides we should be leaving this area right now; due south once again I would say.

Edit: The official MER site is not updated either so the problem might be in the process/server/firewall/whatever which serves the JPEGs to the public sites.

Kind of a pity; I was hoping for an MI or two.

Still...at this point, it's probably time to unless something truly unique is encountered.

Yep, sol 657, as I said. I thought it was interesting comparing it with what we're seeing now. Maybe the well-scattered cobbles we've just seen started off as a "pile" like the one seen on 657, and gradually it fell apart.

That's my non-educated guess too.



Looking at the HiRISE image our current spot has clearly a dark signature and it looks like similar places can be found on the way south on the same image. Let's see.

re the cobbles / meteorites ponderings... take a look at this: http://www.saharamet.com/expedition/CO3/part3.html

It's an account of the recovery of the Dar al Gani chondrite meteorite(s), 180kgs of meteorite fragments gathered up from a "strewn field". Take a look at the 8th picture down the page, the one showing two people crouching down amongst lots of meteorite fragments... looks familiar?

Just wondering...

Well decided to do a panorama out of those Nav Cams on Sol 2020. My first pan! Got a lot more respect for Corel Photopaint - learned a lot and had fun . The first few rungs of an interesting ladder. Could have just kept going on and improving, but decided to draw the line and post it anyway..... Thanks all you guys who've inspired me to get to this point. First pic I felt I could put my name to! Full 1.6Mg version on Flikr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/42652279@N07/?saved=1

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