The colors appear in some of the smoggy-houses of parliament series, no?

Stu - I like your version best. Red-brown foreground and steely blue-grey sky is exactly how I picture it: the colours of a terrestrial sunrise turned on their head.

Wow Pertinax ! I just love your watercolor interpretation... Let's build together a Mars "Impressionist" exhibit at Musée Marmottan (where Monet is exhibited)

Wow!!! Stu or AstroO--we need a poster with 4 (or more) panels of sunrises. The last painting of Pertinax looks like a Mark Rothko.

You know, if we all set off walking now we could be there in a few hours...

Click to view attachment

... and a looooong panorama of the rim of Endeavour... http://twitpic.com/3sip5r/full

Well this probably won't be of much use to us for at least a few weeks, but it's something I've been meaning to try for a while. It's a 1m HiRISE stereo DEM (images ESP_018701_1775 and ESP_018846_1775) of the Western rim of Endeavour Crater, which includes most of the driving terrain from Santa Maria. As usual, I couldn't have made this without the fantastic HiRISE images and the great support at the USGS.

So first a quick screen grab of the DEM overlaying a CTX basemap. Victoria's up near the top, and unfortunately Santa Maria is just off the stereo coverage, otherwise it would have been a nice test of the method.
Click to view attachment

And then the obligatory 3D perspective view, combining the HiRISE and CTX DEM, which at 20 m/px is a great basemap.
Click to view attachment

The terrain is so (thankfully) flat around here that it really is difficult to bring out the detail without zooming right in and losing all context. Nonetheless, hopefully it'll be useful during what's left of the drive
Pete

Wow, Cape York is no more than a molehill!

Cape York was one of the first things that caught my eye too. I need to check whether the DEM is ok around there - the general flatness of most of the scene means that there are some processing artefacts when up-close, but they are generally easy to spot and avoid.
Pete

Purely for fun, and not in pursuit of any scientific insights or accuracy, I have been messing about with making 3D views of Endeavour crater using Google Mars. Turned out pretty well, I think. Too many pics to post here, too large too, so I'll invite you all over to my place to take a look. Comments appreciated.

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2011/...ur-of-endeavour

Hey Stu, I notice you are increasingly trying to divert traffic to your site, what gives?

And, oh, btw, those are wonderful 3D images, thanks a lot!

Not trying to divert, I just didn't want to be selfish and post half a dozen big 3D images here, taking up bandwidth, etc. Much easier to just post a link to my blog and let those who want to look at them look at them there.

Glad you like the pics. Just messing about really.

Wonderful 3D images Stu! I think first 3D images of the Endeavour, which I saw and it's definitely very interesting target. Long life to Opportunity!

Very ingenuitive Stu.

As always, Love your work and your effort in every project you do here, Stu!

Thank you for the wonderful pictures!

Great work, Stu !
I for myself havn't been much into Anaglyphs yet ... but your work really inspires me to try more anaglyph 3D processing in the future (BTW: I have now ordered "real" 3D glasses for better anaglyph viewing because those cheap "paper-made" glasses never seemed to work quite right for my eyes

Wow, really liked that! Thanks Stu!

Thanks everyone for the very kind comments, much appreciated.

When is THAT crater (the big ole far rim one) going to be named ?
Surely now a purposeful navigational beacon...(without a name)...

I'm also wondering when the southern member of the trio that includes Endeavour and Iazu will be named.

We are now about 2 km nearer to Endeavour crater than we were at Santa Maria. Was there any change in the horizon? I didn't see more details yet. Is it just to dusty?

If you are talking about the hills seen on the latest batch of pancams, note that they are on the far side of Endeavour which is more than 20km away so these 2km make no difference. They will stay more or less at the same LoD.

Yes, I know that. I just think the distance to the north of Cape Tribulation shrunk from 7,5 km at SM to 5,6 km now.

Grrr.... you made me wonder about that, too, MoreInput!

Here you go... animation flicking between views of the Western Hills as seen from the edge of Santa Maria, and from the middle of the Mercury Cluster... we could see a LOT more of the hills from SM, because of the extra altitude there...

Click to view attachment

Thanks alot for this animation, Stu!

Reminds me of views of the Channel Islands from the California coast. From farther back (elevated) you see low points on the islands; closer to the coast (sea level) the mountains look like separate islands.

Nice Pancam view of distant rim on Sol 2588, this is an elaborated version (this is the original):
Click to view attachment
Could someone identify the bright crater on the left?

Go to the end of this thread http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=6897 where we're discussing this right now...

Nice view of the western hills tosol...

Click to view attachment

Thanks for that view Stu! I've been watching it grow with great joy.

I've been wondering if the controllers might do another super-res photo of them during a stop (like the idd one we will have now) on the off chance we loose the rover for what ever reason. Or would the time and downlink be too expensive?

Just sayin.

I can't see any benefit to such a thing. The resolution, even with super-res, is still orders of magnitude less than we see thanks to HiRISE.

According to the latest update the plan is to move on immediately - no mention of IDD work.

About the superres, I'd like to see one, but these days we're viewing the western rim more and more "end-on", so the rim is getting very foreshortened, and so the planners may think it's not worth it.

I think the report is talking about moving on immediately after Skylab. Scott indicates that the IDD work is to be done following the next (~90 m) drive, presumably over the weekend.

That's exactly what I've been thinking, Fred. The view of the western hills from Cape York is going to be pretty much "end on" and won't be as striking, I think, as the view across the crater to the eastern hills. Even though they'll still be what, 20km away, we'll be able to see them to their bases, with all the smaller craters on their slopes, which I'm really looking forward to. But then again we'll see subtle, close-up details in the north sides of Byron and cape Trib, so thete'll be lots for everyone I'm sure!

We left the area; that's confirmed by the "telemetry". Images should be available in 15min.

Calling the pancam team . . .

It's time to scan the SSW horizon again to check for possible visibility of Miyamoto. We've travelled far enough eastward to see round the left hand side of the topographic rise that obscured it after its first period of visibility, but soon we will descend too far for any hope of distant views in that direction. There may be more to see than previously - or nothing at all. Let's take a look!

Today we have (I think) a full pancam horizon scan. I immediately took a look at the south-to-southwest views to see if I could spot the 'Mule Ears' or indeed anything else in that direction that might recently have come into view. The images are small and there aren't many pixels to work with. I'm not sure if the filter is optimised for distant views - The Endeavour far rim looks pretty faint in them. I don't even know how to fit compass bearings to the images. So I didn't hold out much hope of finding anything.

Nevertheless there is one faint possibility that I'd like checked out - a couple of blips amongst the noise on the far right horizon here: http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P2281L1M1.JPG
The rightmost one is directly above a small but prominent bright spot in the foreground. Unfortunately that part of the horizon is cut off in the next image. Most probably nothing, but it would be interesting at least to check out the bearing.

I think the problem is the season - we're now well into southern summer, and the sky is pretty hazy. You can see how hazy by comparing the Endeavour far rim with views from around an Earth year ago. At their best those very distant southern features (Mule Ears from Miyamoto and Bopolu) weren't easy, and I think all of our sightings were from the last local Martian winter, when the skies are normally much clearer.

But these full 360 L1 albedo pans are done fairly regularly - the last one was 2636, so it might be worth comparing the south views from other such pans.

What I'd love to see is a climb up Cape Tribulation and a 360 degree pan, during the depth of winter, with crystal-clear skies...

Good idea to check previous, but holidays are about to intervene for me. Don't go spotting anything exciting till I get back.

JUST FOR FUN, wondering if we might see something like this when Oppy eventually goes "Over the top"...

Click to view attachment

Ooo. Here's hopin'!

I'd say that's about right....

Here is an attempt to match the distant features in the sol 2664/5 navcams with a reprojected orbital image, similar to those I did way back.

A point of trivia: Those hills on the far left (the north rim, twin peaks as we called them way back when) are at a similar distance to Victoria crater. That's how far we've come!

James