Haha, that's excellent!

Just for fun...

Ever wondererd how big Endeavour crater is compared to Gusev crater, landing site of Spirit..?

This big...

Click to view attachment

Thanks, Stu. And the Phobos shadow is a nice touch, too.

That shadow's real

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=167079

Great comparison, Stu, you compulsive science educator, you (and the shadow's nice too! )

I never thought otherwise, Stu!

On another topic, if you look at Tesheiner's route map, the latest drive (2428) took a bit of a jog to the south. Looking closely, there's an Anatolia-like feature between the 2427 and 2428 locations, and the jog took us around it. I'm a bit surprized they took this diversion, since the feature looks pretty harmless to me along a straight route. But obviously a short diversion is a small price to pay for reduction of any risk. There are several more such features ahead, so it'll be interesting to see how they make their way around them...

One possible route, Fred...

http://twitpic.com/3aegob

(handy for people who don't have / can't use Google Earth/Mars)

Actually most of the Anatolia-like features are in one specific area, and Oppy can skirt around that without too much trouble or time. It's pretty much a straight road to Santa Maria now, unless Oppy spots any beautiful shiny meteorites off to either side -

Oh, alright. Just me then...!

Very handy map Stu!
Thanks Fredk for the explanation. I was about to ask is this kind of trajectory was for technical reasons. It makes sense now.

A colourised look back at some of the 'pebbles' imaged on Sol 2419 (Nov 13th)...

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Nice, though, a question: why does one have a "UMSF" watermark, and not the other?

Well spotted!

I've got a lot of Outreach talks coming up before Christmas, and am just trying something new for my presentations: I'm showing people I talk to that some images are 'official' NASA images, and others are ones I (and other people here) have "made" using the raws. I'm hoping it will show people just how much good work is being done by people in the space enthusiast community with the data NASA (and other agencies) releases so generously. Not blowing any trumpets, just making the point that anyone and everyone can use the raw data to participate in the exploration, you know? It'll either work or it won't. Worth a try.

Ah that makes sense. It's not too obvious so as to take away from the image. It's well done.

Just messing about... A hint of what we'll see before too long?

Click to view attachment

One of my favourite bits of Endeavour's rim is the north part (the first part of Endeavour we saw, some 4.5 years ago!). Here's an average of 4 pancam frames, the L7 and R1 frames on sols 2417 and 2424, and magnified 2x:
Click to view attachment
We're starting to see some nice structure.

Edit: Btw, it looks to me like we're starting to drop in elevation. A month or so ago, we could see the distant plains on the far side of Endeavour to the right of the north rim peaks, eg see this image from 2393:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...IZP2422R1M1.JPG
In my new image above, it looks like the near rim of Endeavour is now blocking the view beyond.

Have all of Endeavour's capes/major features been named? A search for annotated images doesn't show a name for this northerly one...

Nice image fredk! Stu's pointed out the similarity in size between Endeavour and Thira. I have long thought that the resemblence doesn't stop there - something he may have been hinting at also. Here's the corresponding part of Thira for comparison with your image: http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http...=1t:429,r:1,s:0

Some more bloggy thoughts on what we might see when we reach Santa Maria...

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2010/...-at-santa-maria

This is an image of Santa Maria from HiRise (PSP_004289_1780) that I attempted to clean up a little bit
Click to view attachment
cheers

Very nice! This is what it might look like with a lower sun...

Phil


Click to view attachment

That's an excitingly messy looking crater! Oppy will have some fun here.

Best I've been able to make so far...

Click to view attachment

Stu, according to your ~wonderful~ blog, it appears unlikely Oppy will dive in to SM. Just a few photo ops, let her take a couple deep breaths and off we go. I cringe thinking about the risks involved, but what if she finds something special inside?

Well, she'll only find something wonderful inside if she actually went in, and I get the impression there's not much chance of that. All eyes are on Endeavour now, and the possibility of finding and studying phylosillicates there is just too much to risk by taking detours into craters, or stopping too long to look at meteorites or other rocks, along the way. I think they'll take a good look at Santa Maria, driving at least part of the way around it to image it from different angles, but they won't actually go in. If you look at the images being posted here, by various people, there's a LOT of dust piled up in that crater, and quite a few blocks on the slopes too. With Endeavour now so close - relatively speaking - I very much doubt they'll risk taking Oppy into SM. But, of course, all this is just my own personal opinion, based on recent blog interviews with Scott. If Oppy gets to SM and finds something too good to pass by there, well, you never know! But my money is on a pretty thorough photo shoot of the crater, a chance for Oppy to rest her wheels and the MER team to take a breather from driving, and then off we go.

Update: new images in... Santa Maria not *hugely* bigger...

http://twitpic.com/3ayz2n/full

Another crater on the road to Santa Maria is behind us.
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...R4P1935L0M5.JPG

Tesheiner,

indeed it was a long time but there was a reason.
First I was retired for 4 years and then working
again for 3 years and buying and moving to a
new house and now I am retired again.

So more time to do stitches.

Jan van Driel

I don't think there will be anything interesting enough inside the rim of Santa Maria to even consider sending the rover in. But that cluster of large rocks off the South rim is interesting. I can't wait for them to start showing up in the approach shots.

This may be a naive question, but I don't remember seeing such ejecta around Victoria crater. Is that because Santa Maria is a more recent impact feature (i.e. less erosion)?

Could be. It would be more interesting if they are of a different, more resistant composition than the typical sulfate layers.

Here is the view from Endeavour Crater taken on Sol 2427 with
the L0 navcam.

Jan van Driel


Click to view attachment

and again ( because the link did not work, my mistake )
the pancamview from Sol 2429 taken with
the L2 pancam.

Jan van Driel


Click to view attachment

Good to see your mosaics again, Jan.

Here's the latest view of Santa Maria, averaged over the L2 and R2 pancam frames to reduce noise:
Click to view attachment
We can see bits of the rim all the way across the crater now, and it's starting to actually look like a crater, to my eyes at least...

Sunset on Mars.

Taken with the L7 Pancam on Sol 2428

Jan van Driel


Click to view attachment

(Stu & Phil, I love your overhead shots of SM!)
Here is Santa Maria in the spirit of Phil-o-vision
source: 1P344180252EFFAXR4P2352R2M1

Click to view attachment

OK, yes NOW I can see it!

..and I join to welcome back Jan

The panoramic view from Endeavour Crater and Santa Maria.

Taken with the L2 Pancam on Sol 2433.

Jan van Driel



Click to view attachment

Small impact feature on the way to Santa Maria, sol 2433. R2 pancams and L5/R2 anaglyph.

Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment

Some Santa Maria-related thoughts from Steve Squyres...

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2010/...ing-santa-maria

Always nice to hear from Steve

One funny thing. Your Wikipedia link says: The term is often incorrectly spelled as "principle investigator", which would refer to someone who investigates principles or precepts. The correct term is "principal investigator", where "principal" means 'primary' or 'leading'.

And you jumped into it with both feet

Oh, thanks... I'm sat here, full of cold, looking like a cross between Swamp Thing and The Creature From The Black Lagoon, with a throat full of razor blades and gunk pouring out of my nose like some kind of Ghostbusters special effect and you pick me up on my grammar...

Kick a guy when he's down, why dontcha...!



(But well spotted, I'll correct the post)

Panoramic view of small crater and Endeavour
in the background.
Taken on Sol 2433 with the L0 navcam.

Jan van Driel


Click to view attachment

Wonder if SM will look something like this, soon...

Click to view attachment

For those who are not regularly following Scott Maxwell's blog on the MERs, here's the link to yesterday's blog entry, basically dealing with the IDD stall 5 years ago while Opportunity was at Erebus crater.

Oh, it also has a nice paragraph at the end.

Awww, that's nice!

But wow... 5 years ago... that's insane...

This may not be the proper place for my question, but I don't want to resurrect an old thread. I've been using the MER filename decoder on this Web page: http://www.greuti.ch/oppy/html/filenames_ltst.htm# mainly to determine the sol number of Opportunity's images. But now it doesn't seem to work. When I insert the filename and click on "Decode", I obtain "NaN" for the sol number, and also "NaN" appears in various other places. Are you guys using any other filename decoder?

Hmmm. Used that same site this morning and it worked perfectly...

Here are the cards we sent (one went to Cornell)

Another nice view of the north rim hills, this time averaged over the 16 L6 frames from 2424, after magnifying 2x and registering:
Click to view attachment

Hecla Crater:

Very nice!

We can see quite a bit more of Santa Maria as of 2436. Here's an average of L2/R2 to reduce noise:
Click to view attachment