I've got the popcorn ready!
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I'll tell you what I hope it is: a pancam version of the L0 navcam Endeavour approach movie. Maybe they're thinking that as we turn towards the SE/E, and take drive direction pancams anyway, why not do a regular documentation of some stretch of Endeavour? That would be seriously cool.

Any possibility they are documenting future Curiosity process?

What do you mean?

Colorized version of this 2218 pancam pan toward the horizon


Love this kind of views

Anybody else got thoughts about this feature (or an azimuth for it)? I pointed to it before but hopefully this version is more accessible.

Me too! Thank you, Ant.

As Curiosity is supposed to shot "movies" I was thinking they could wish to test some processes as they already do for some softwares...

Oh - I think MastCam is so different to Pancam or Navcam as to be irrelevant really. MastCam can do a few frames per second. With these MER observations, we're talking about one frame per drive

R2 have arrived (and L2 also), time to produce the color pan :

Wow Ant, this one really took me there, beautiful colors!
Magnificent solitude

Azimuth should be 171.2° for this feature in http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...1XP2414R1M1.JPG

From comments in Scott Maxwell's Mars and Me blog:

ipparchus: ... I`d like to ask you something about Oppy. When (how many kilometers away)are we going to start seeing different kind of rocks in Oppy`s route? The phyllosilicate rocks are inside the wall of Endeavor or outside of it?

Scott Maxwell: According to the science team member I asked, the phyllosilicates are expected to show up starting 200-500 meters from the rim (hence, starting outside of the wall). That's still another 11-12km from here, so we have a way to go yet! ...

There are other changes expected besides phyllosilicates, and they should happen farther from the rim. Check out this post and the next four or so in that thread.

Here's an average of the 2218 and 2220 R1 frames of Iazu, with 3x vertical stretch. We can clearly see brightness variations on the rim now. The peak just left of centre is in front of the stuff to the right and looks brighter, probably due to lighting differences:
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Darn!

I guess we'll be having some looooog science stops for spectrometer readings as Opportunity reaches these variations in mineralogy. The up side is that if by that time longer rest periods for the 'hot' wheel are needed, there will be something useful to do.

Thanks for that Tman. (The crater I had thought it might be is on 173 according to my crude protractor work.)

Well I've scoured the CTX and can't find any other candidates. I'd be very grateful if some resourceful person could do a proper job of establishing the azimuth to the fairly fresh crater SE of Rockaway to see if it matches Tman's azimuth for the feature in the panorama. I keep getting slightly different answers depending on where I measure from. (Bent protractor, deteriorating eyesight and general incompetence are a devastating combination in this situation.)

Sol 2220 pancams are down, and the view is pretty nice there, a lot of details on the horizon

The first of these "movie" frames are down. Here's one:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...5M1.JPG?sol2220

Endeavour - the movie... 1000 sols in the making?

Yes, I can see it now. Very moving. They need to use either the theme song form Chariots of fire, or the one from Rocky. I guess it depends on the pace of the film.

I'd said they still hope to get there

And the next "frame" of the movie is planned too.

02224::p2419::24::6::0::0::6::1::13::pancam_Endeavour_movie_2x1_L257

It definitely looks like a movie like the one taken with the navcam. Has anyone attempted to assemble that one?

An other pic of Sol 2220, but in L257 showing in a better way Endeavour.


And (inevitable ?) the desktop picture

Oooh, pretty!!! That's my desktop right now... and I'll be showing it during an Outreach talk tomorrow night, up in Cockermouth (recruiting night for my old astro soc) if that's ok?

Thanks Stu And of course you can use it to your Outreach presentation. This kind of pictures are made for this after all.

(pssst, I'm on Twitter like some us here…)

Moi aussi

Mine too.

Ditto

(a slight stretch doesn't really affect it either)

Glad to see that you like it

I also have put this beautiful vista on my desktop.

Ant, I believe I have asked before, but I too would like to use this image in my outreach presentations. I am very fond of the coloring you put into these images.

Thanks, Ron

So awesome! I'm borrowing that for my astronomy club meeting tonight. Full credit given to you of course!

Oh, boy, Ant, those are just gorgeous! Thanks!!!

Desktopped! while we're on a roll...
Thanks for sharing your work for folk like me who are not so good at doing that sort of thing...

BRAVO Fourmi 103 ! Vous êtes le meilleur !

Just to let you know, Ant, that your image wowed the crowds (well, I say crowds...! There were at least 30 people there...) in Cockermouth last night, with several "ooh!" and "aah"s heard when the pic flashed up on the screen.

Now, while we all wait for you to work your magic again, here's my take on April 28th's pics...

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And a close-up of the special hills...

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It's funny, they kinda look like the hills Spirit saw right after landing in Gusev. I wonder how they compare distance-wise.
That will be a sort of milestone when Oppy is as close to Endurance as Spirit was at landing to the Columbia Hills (however far that was, it's so long ago I can't remember exactly!)

The Columbia Hills were around 2.5 to 3 kms from the landing site. The closest bit we can see in Stu's view (the part on the left, Endeavour west rim) is something like 12 km away. Most of what you see in that view is Iazu, which is around 3 times farther away still. So when we're only a few km from the Endeavour rim, the view will be spectacular...

Here is my take on the sol 2224 pancams:

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And 3x Phil-o of the horizon:

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James

Sol 2224 view


And a new desktop corresponding to this view :


Can't wait to be half time closer, and three time, and four time, and…

Wow nice!

Thanks again, Ant. These are sure to induce even more desktop envy amongst my co-workers (heh, heh, heh! )

Here's a comparison I posted near the beginning of this thread.

Well, that sure puts them into perspective...thanks!

Official NASA version / vision of the "Vista"...

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA13081.jpg

very nice, too. But personally I would prefer Ant's version for its perfectly seamless stitching and beautiful sky coloring

Question @Ant:
did you use an entirely artificial sky in your image or did you extrapolate the "real" sky colors from the limited sky portions visible in the original images ?

BTW: your image work is getting even better and better all the time ... keep it up !

Nirgal, it's a mixed technics with some picked-up colors from the original sky, and creation of a new one. Just add a bit of noise, blur and renforcements effects to simulate a true noise with the jpeg compression.

Thanks for your support .

Some more official images in the full release here.

I also think Ant's mosaic (and James' too) is clearly superior - notice the washed out bedrock and blurry horizon in the official release. The false colour official version seems to have a heavily sharpened horizon.

(Btw, the official release says this mosaic is from sol 2226 - it's actually 2224.)

It's due to "Ant's work" (I wonder if this one works in English?)

Have to be honest, yep, I think both James' and Ants' versions are better - sharper, cleaner, more detailed - and I'm a bit puzzled why NASA's official versions can't be just as sharp and clean. I'm pretty sure they have slightly better computing kit than we do here...

Then again, they are under a lot of pressure to make their products as accurate-looking and "natural" as possible, so they're not left open to accusations of "doctoring" images by people, so I guess their hands are tied slightly.

All the versions I've seen have their own appeal, their own beauty and their own power.