You didn't bring a beagle along, did you?

Ah.

No.

After what happened to the last Beagle sent into space by a Brit, I thought it best not to.

I'd say almost 7 years driving experience at Meridiani! They've driven through old filled craters before. I agree it's not obvious, though, that it wasn't filled with Purgatory-style dust.

Hot pixels.

That little crater was extremely shallow, so it presented far less of an obstacle than the zillion drifts that have been crossed in the last 2 years.

Phil

Nice panoram
Click to view attachment

Panorama of Intrepid.
Click to view attachment

Edit: Peter59 just beat me by a few seconds.

Dear All I'm new here, although I've been reading news and information posted on this forum for a long time. It is a great source of information for me

I do not wanna be boring with these panoramas but ...below are my two latest navcam colorized compositions of craters which Opportunity has visited lately. I tried to make colors to look similar to Eagle crater surroundings:

Yankee Clipper
http://www.flickr.com/photos/55907406@N08/...in/photostream/

Intrepid
http://www.flickr.com/photos/55907406@N08/...in/photostream/

First of all, Kris, welcome! Good to have you here!

Secondly...

WOW! They're beautiful!!! Especially love the Intrepid pic, that's really nice.

Looking forward to seeing more of your work!

My go at the latest panorama: http://twitpic.com/368p42/full

Now this 3D view is pretty special, I think...

http://twitpic.com/369217

Intrepid in the foreground, and Endeavour on the horizn - for the first time, I think, actually looking "distant and solid" in 3D...

Adding to Stu's post above, here's another view of Intrepid in headache-inducing anaglyph vision
Click to view attachment

From Opportunity update: "Total odometry is 24,946.12 meters (24.95 kilometers, 15.50 miles)."

Opportunity is now just 1 mile short from surpassing Apollo 16 Lunar Rover travel distance record of 16.50 miles (26.55 km).

Coincidentally we are little less than 1 mile from Santa Maria (approx. 1.5 km in straight line) according to Scott Maxwell Scott's tweet.

(On the other hand: Apollo 16 Lunar Rover traveled only about 2.8 miles (4.5 km) from landing site)

no walk back limit for the MERs, or coms limit like there was for sojourner.

Nav Cam panorama featuring Intrepid Crater Sol 2412 on 05-Nov-2010.

Click to view attachment

Hazcam fun mucking around on a Saturday avo - which is now all gone!!! Sol 2415 on 08-Nov-2010 looking back at the tracks into the 'desert'

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Quick Anaglyph of Intrepid Navs Sol 2145 08-Nov-2010 for Red-Green

Click to view attachment

For full res http://picasaweb.google.com/10220631534056...974775277908514

(Stu )

I'm having a fun self indulgent day doing lots of experimenting with pics. Intrepid Crater is beautiful to look at so I thought in addition to Pan Cams I would share this b/w rough stitch of Nav Cams from 2145 on 08-Nov-2010
..........which I am starting work on as a full pic but may not finish for ages as I am going to be v busy the next couple of weeks.

Click to view attachment

For full res download go to http://picasaweb.google.com/10220631534056...985812322927618

What record?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_2

"Lunokhod 2 operated for about 4 months, covered 37 km (23 miles) of terrain, including hilly upland areas and rilles"

Still a long way to go before Lunokhod 2's distance record is surpassed.

Any sign of Phyllosilicates?

IIRC, we've still got several km to go before we encounter those. The next few months are likely to be similar to driving across western Texas...kinda long & monotonous.

You all may be interested to know that I've had this same conversation within a science/operations team. I was showing off some especially nice products that I noted were contributed by "amateurs" through this site. There was an objection to that description, since what I was showing was easily better than some comparable pipeline products we had at the time. The term "amateurs" meant, to some, that the work was "amateurish"--maybe that it was done by people paid to do it, but who did it sloppily--while what I showed clearly was not. I clarified that I meant strictly that it was done by people not paid to do it, who did it for the love of doing that sort of thing. This site is a great place to learn that an amateur is unprofessional only in the narrowest sense of being unsalaried, and need not be one bit unskilled or unartful.

My own interpretation of Intrepid Crater... A lovely place indeed on Mars. Enjoy !
Click to view attachment

I probably shouldn't have used word record.

Point was Oppy is close to total distance traveled by LRV 16 (surpassing somewhere around Santa Maria) then LRV15 (17.3 mi) and LRV17 (22.3 mi) followed by Lunokhod 2 (23 mi)

Yes, will be interesting to see if she gets out to 37km.

Well, it was an Apollo record... an Apollo 16 record... (looking for other qualifiers as I type)... Of course, having a driver actually on the rover is kind of cheating.

Phil

Nice Mr. Viking!
you inspire me to take on blending...any tips in 140 chars or less

Hey nice work Viking - particluarly love that well matched stitching

Updated my blog with some new pics, if anyone wants a look...

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2010/...esting-intrepid

Some very interesting dark rocks inside the crater...

Click to view attachment

('nowhere-near-real-colour' image)

... and if anyone's wondering how much bigger than Intrepid Santa Maria is, here are the two craters side by side to the same scale. Intrepid is at the 10 o'clock position.

Click to view attachment

Another view of Intrepid (pancam L5 filter)
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A colourised version of #129. Doubtless other UMSF members can make a better stab at it
Click to view attachment

Judging from the excellent animations that Nick and others have shown us, I wonder how long the powers that be will choose to spend here?

If they feel this crater has anything new for them to investigate there are a number of very interesting and it would appear reasonably accessible sites for them to look at.

Just wets the appetite for what Santa Maria and Endeavour may have in store for us doesn't it?

Neil

Judging from Maxell's comments, we won't be staying at Intrepid:

And this followup:


On another topic, it's been a while since we've been able to see distant views of our tracks like this:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...1M1.JPG?sol2412

Another (colorized) interpretation of Intrepid Crater... I just love the hills range in the background. Enjoy !
Some pics taken at sunset casting loooong shadows would have been just great also (just an idea to our excellent Pancam team)
Click to view attachment

I love it too! excellent work, vikingmars.

Thanks Dilo. I'm also monitoring the northern tip of Endeavour crater (see mosaic hereabove) since its 1st sightings on Sols 790 and 804 and traced back to Sol 774... (herebelow).
Click to view attachment
Now we have it on plain sight !

It was mentioned that we could encounter different rock types as early as Santa MARIA!! I'm assuming they must have some data from orbit to have mentioned that possibility!

Wow... who would have thought that humble little Intrepid would have given us all such a photogenic viewpoint! The hills just look incredible from here...

That was undoubtedly the plan. However, he's just updated his twitter site. No driving until Wednesday now.

Neil

Not really. Whenever he talks about driving it means drive planning.
Opportunity should have already left the vicinity of Intrepid by this time but the images are still on the queue.

I'm now dreaming of 2 pics at Intrepid Crater :
- a low sun panoramic picture with long shadows on the rocks and dunes ;
- sunset and dusk pictures with the Sun setting behind the hills...

The hills are to the east.

The sun sets in the west.

OOOOPs ! You're right, of course :
Must be read then "- sunrise and early morning pictures"

Hi Vikingmars,

For the sake of trivia and pride, I think the first sighting was about a week before on sol 782, again noting the sol 774 image. I've been fond of keeping an eye on those distant peaks as well, even though I lost track of them for a little while. Bill's animation from a little while back was fun in reviewing our view from then 'till now.

Also, not quite the low sun vista you were opining for there was a nice sunset sequence (pancam_twilight_L7R4) taken on sol 2411 starting just before 17:41 LTST, which lasted through just after 18:07, with the sun sinking from ~5 degrees above the horizon, to ~2 degrees below it. I think I'll try and animate it later today, though I really look forward to seeing the calibrated version.


-- Pertinax

Great Pertinax : you beat me with your Sol 782 pic ! When I traced back from Sol 790, I did not see this one...
Now, I can barely see it even a little earlier on a Navcam pic on Sol 765... (herebelow with PhilOvision)
Click to view attachment
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...YQP0695L0M1.JPG
Thanks also for the sunset pics link. My dream would be also to have a much larger pan taken with a grazing Sun. I really look forward to see your animation

Nice catch on the sol 765 view! I'd looked over the preceding sols data a few times back in 2006 and again just a few months ago. I'd never stretched them though. Again, nice!

I'm with you on the wish for both the low sun angle pans. I think one of the best and dramatic panoramas taken by either rover was Spirit's low sun angle pan at Low Ridge.

I played with the sunset images with the following result:

Click to view attachment
[also posted at at Youtube here]

Images used are from the L7 filter. Interpolated video converts the original images taken every 75 seconds to sequence with a frame every two seconds at 30 fps, resulting in one second of video equaling one minute on mars -- that is if I didn't do something stupid!

I have the full sized version if anyone wants.


-- Pertinax

My version of the Intrepid Crater mosaic.



James

Excellent as always!

I could not believe my eyes : so smoothly done !
As if we were witnessing a sunset on Mars !
GREEEEAAAT job, Pertinax !!!

Yes ! You are absolutely right about the dramatic feelings of low-sun angle pans on Mars. Herebelow was my Sol 813 interpretation for Spirit. Just imagine the same kind of illumination on Meridiani !
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=52380

We had exactly that back when there was plenty of time and power and little to do, late into the hiatus at the Olympia outcrop during the IDD trouble.