So it is good to have a rover down there to find these things out (Mission science objective 4 of the MER mission: "perform 'ground truth' of surface observations made by Mars orbiter instruments").

Here's my take on the sol 2269 superres sequence of the far (east) rim of Endeavour. My image isn't superres, just the average of the 16 L6 frames to reduce jpeg and other noise. Some nice details showing up now:
Click to view attachment
I aligned the 2x scaled images before averaging. Here's my original 2x average, showing not much more real detail than the 1x image above since this isn't superres, and some of the jpeg artifacts reinforced because of nearly-coincident frames:
Click to view attachment
As before, I can't wait to see a proper superres with the raw images...

Meanwhile, the horizon in that direction is starting to drop, as you can see by comparing the above view with this 2277 view:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P2351R1M1.JPG

It looks like we can now see parts of the plains beyond Endeavour through the notch to the left of Mt. Cook and also (very thinly) further to the left of the rim hills on the other side of the notch, visible here:
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/...00P2351R1M1.JPG

If these hills mark the rim of a single crater, then there must be a really (really) big hole behind our current near horizon...

Added Ant's most recent pan to the animation sequence.
Slightly different crop - excludes 'Mt Cook'.
Click to view attachment
3.28mb version here.
Definitely gives you the feel that something big is just over the horizon.
If Oppy keeps taking this sequence, it's going to be a heck of movie.

Plus a four frame sequence.
Click to view attachment

Impressive Astro0 !

In the same time, I've just finish the Sol 2277 color pan. And the is going to be amazing !


All the elements will be connected -when ?- and this is will be a gorgeous view !

Can't resist more to make a desktop picture of it

Hooray!!

Fully agree; spectacular, I would say.

Here's what I'd love to see: that Oppy drives far enough east that she can get a complete view of Endeavour's rim, right down to the plains, before the dusty skies of spring/summer return (tau was 0.28 in the last update!). Then take a colour super-res pan of the entire breadth of Endeavour-Iazu!

Fred is outlining a very realistic scenario ahead. Now put yourself back at the end of 2004 after Opportunity had emerged from 200 days in Endurance Crater. What an amazing mission it had become. Who would have thought the rover could have accomplished so much and still be operating 10 months later?

But then heap on the wonder and accomplishments of the trek to Victoria that seemed so unreachable, but is now ancient history. And now we are on the verge of viewing Endeavour and Iazu craters??? Wow! It's as if Christopher Columbus had hiked across the Continental U.S., explored the Mississippi, then the Grand Canyon, and was on his way to cross the Sierra Nevadas. Just take a minute and let it sink in. Wow. I raise my glass to the engineers who built these amazing little machines.

Maybe it's a lighting thing but the crater on the face of Mt. Cook seems less distinct than before in this latest view. By contrast the slightly smaller one out on the plains beyond is clearly visible here on the far right.

http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/...FDP2352R1M1.JPG

I think it's just that particular filter. A glance back at previous R1 layers from the last two weeks seems to show similar contrast and texture. (sorry didn't have time for a comparison image).

Finally, the lasts images where up, so it possible to finish the Sol 2279 color pan


The view is starting to be great ! This inspired me some letters insertion to form the word "Endeavour" inside the crater (and a new header for my site).

Great work as always Ant

That's fabulous,...
Just imagine HOAV...
Go girl...

"Road to Endeavour" blog updated:

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2010/...ls-of-endeavour

Thanks Tesh and Ant for your great images.

You're welcome Stu

Sol 2280 L257 view. I think that is a part of the approach movie they plan to do.

NASA's sneakily put out it's "super resolution" view of Endeavour's hills...

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?rele...ml&rst=2653

And we have some official names to start using, too...

Hope you don't mind me using your gorgeous panorama for this, Ant...

Click to view attachment

And our destination has a very appropriate name, too!
Folks from North Queensland know Cape Tribulation quite well.
Don't be deterred by the word tribulation. Captain Cook was in a bad mood that day.
Cape Trib is paradise!

Here is a nice new image from NASA:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pr.../20100629a.html

OK i'm really confused. From this information it seems like we are headed to Cape Tribulation. This is great, exactly where I want to go. But What about A.J.S Rayle's May 31 MER Update where it seemd like the target was the little hill north of Cape Tribulation (which I don't think we can see yet)? See also Climber post #456. If our target is north of Cape Tribulation, why is it not named on the map?

Anyone know where we are headed?

A little comparison between Cape Tribulation on Earth and on Mars.
Click to view attachment

We can't see our destination yet, so it's not going to show up in the images.

Phil

Wow Astro0. That's uncanny. What ever made you think of making that comparison?

Now that the naming convention for Endeavour seem set to be for places related to Australia and Cook's 1769-71 voyage, it seemed only fitting that I get to know these locations a bit better.
I just Google-imaged Cape Tribulation and this one jumped out at me. The undulations of the hills in that view were eerily similar to Oppy's current view.

Sorry Ant, this reminds me totally on a scene out of 'So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish' from Douglas Adams: Arthur, Fenchurch and Marvin are searching the God's Final Message, and they find it on a planet, written in gigantic letters (in front of some montains?): "We apologise for the inconvenience".

"Arthur takes Fenchurch to the planet where God's Final Message to His Creation is written, and they happen across Marvin, who, because of previous events, is now approximately 37 times older than the known age of the universe and is barely able to continue. Marvin, with Arthur and Fenchurch's help, reads the Message ("We apologise for the inconvenience"), smiles, utters the final words "I think... I feel good about it," and dies happy." (Excerpt from Wikipedia.en)

I don't now if Opportunity was ever so depressed like Marvin, but she is also about 25 times about her lifetime ...

Whoah.... that is just downright spooky....

They got it all wrong! Hicks is on the OTHER side of the crater...
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&id=17513

"I had the ambition to not only go farther than man had gone before, but to go as far as it was possible to go."

Captain James Cook

Hmm...Fractally-sculpted landscapes are eerily similar, even between planets.

(Great catch, man! This is indeed remarkable. )

Some background on the names...

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2010/...e-faraway-hills

Nice!

Phil

Take THAT Captain James T. Kirk.

Oi! Don't dis the Kirk Unit.

The new superres is just stunning!

To illustrate what a difference a proper treatment of the raw images makes, here's a comparison between my average of the 16 superres jpegs and the official result, both at 2x:
Click to view attachment

I'd add that the identifications of the newly named features agree with Canvin's inverse polar from several months ago. No surprize there!

It's like a veil has been lifted.

Fred,
I agree! The super-res from JPL shows the beauty of working with calibrated data vs. the jpegs!
Maybe MSL-Curiosity could post up calibration templates/recipes and raw data in near real time?
I could wait a week between jpegs and "first-approximation raw data".

cheers

It's often hard on Mars and indeed Titan to appeciate the size of objects as there is not often anything man made to provide the scale. Remember when we saw the "cliffs" in Oppy's landing crater, and they were like a few cm high in reality, so Ants' comparison is awesome !

Some new view here :

Sol 2282


Sol 2283


Sol 2284


PS : the hires view of Endeavour from the NASA is amazing. And giving names to some part of the rim give a new dimension to this exploration .

We all now know where we're heading - "Cape York" - and we all know that that feature isn't visible yet. But where will it appear on the horizon when it does become visible..? I have an idea, which I'd like more knowledgeable people here to check..?

Okay, purely by lining things up from this NASA image...

Click to view attachment

... and using Google Mars...

Click to view attachment

... I reckon "Cape York" will appear somewhere around... here...

Click to view attachment

..?

Anyone agree / disagree? All input appreciated.

To answer your question literally, where will it appear WHEN it becomes visible, we need to make two guesses; 1) which exact route we will be taking in the future 2) how the finer points of rises in the terrain will come into play, knowing as we do that the subtle elevations we see in Google Mars are not necessarily true. As far as I can tell, Cape York from our present perspective lies almost directly beneath the higher crater on the slope of the far rim. If it appears before we get to Santa Maria then it's going to be slightly farther South than the rim crater, which is about where you've chosen Stu. If it doesn't appear until after Santa Maria (very unlikely) then it will be quite a bit farther South relative to the background.

My guess is that we are going to see it rather soon, I'd say 1500 meters farther along the blue line than where we were on sol 2286. In your image it would then appear at the left tip of the oval you've drawn.

Hmmm. Food for thought there, Dan. Thanks!

(munch munch munch)

Maybe something like this..?

Leave room for your dinner young man!

Very close though I think there is going to be a very distinct peak.

Over on the left, yeah, I did wonder about putting that it but it's been a long day and I really can't be bothered, to be honest! I'll leave a more accurate version to one of our more accomplished image mages. I need to catch up on sleep after a weekend of camping - next to the loudest family of Geordies on the planet - and drooling at all the stuff in the Dr Who exhibition...

Edit: oh, you HAD to go and plant that seed in my head, didn't you..?!

Ok, maybe more like this...

Click to view attachment

Can't wait till we really do catch sight of Cape York.

In the meantime, I don't think anyone has pointed out that we now have a good view of the as-yet-unnamed hill directly north of Cape Tribulation. Here's a very crude lineup with the new hill circled:
Click to view attachment
Cape York is lower than this new hill, but just how much is hard to say...

VERY nice catch Fred, that had completely passed me by. That's another piece of the jigsaw filled in.

BTW: way too big to post here, but here's a rather view of Cape York I made by stitching together some crops of the "anaglyph" view of a HiRISE image...

http://roadtoendeavour.files.wordpress.com...-york-in-3d.jpg

The subjective impression I got from looking at Nirgal's 3Ds was that all of Cape York is lower than the plains outside Endeavour. In that case it wouldn't be visible until we're almost there, on the lip of the Endeavour depression. Oh well, there's only one way to find out . .

EDIT: A relevant link here. http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&id=20818

That crater on the inner wall of the eastern rim... it's actually bigger than Endurance... That's an Endurance-sized crater, blasted out of one of the walls of Endeavour, and we're going to get better and better views of it... how cool is that?

Click to view attachment

Since we previously had a "Rimshot Crater" I propose the name "Broadside Crater."

Too bad there is no one here with the skill to make a DEM out of that and then create one of those Quicktime thingies where you slide the button back and forth to change perspective. Probably FAR too difficult for anyone who's a member here.