Don't think we'll tarry too long at this crater, so in advance of Oppy heading east I've made a pic of Santa Maria with some labels, which I hope we can use in our discussions as we look forward to Oppy's arrival at that fascinating-looking crater. No names, just labels for features.

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

And, as always, just for fun - not claiming 100000% scientific accuracy - here's a pic showing Endurance (top), Santa Maria (middle) and Victoria roughly to scale...

Click to view attachment

... and finally, a "zoom out" series of images I've wanted to make for ages...

http://roadtoendeavour.files.wordpress.com...11/zoom-out.jpg

Looks like we have a proper name for "Waypoint crater"...

"Nearly 100m over the weekend. Today, the last 50m to Intrepid Crater, so we can image it. After that, I think we're Santa Maria-bound." (Tweeted by Scott Maxwell)

Hello Intrepid:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol2415

I'm not bored seeing yet another crater. I'm really looking forward getting to Santa Maria, hopefully before... Santa Claus!
We're "only" miss another 15 "100m's drives".

Off topic posts moved to the Kitchen Junk Drawer thread.
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=6771

Sol 2415
100 degree FOV:


60 degree FOV:

Intrepid in anaglyph form

Click to view attachment

Intrepid looks really shallow.

Always strikes me how often these small craters in Meridiani don't look like craters to me from Oppy's viewpoint. They often look like very conventional small eroded depressions & associated knolls that I wouldn't notice twice in many places on Earth.

One wonders.

Some historical background to Intrepid crater...

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2010/...-martian-crater

It looks like a sink hole from limestone country to me.

Nah, sinkholes don't have raised rims.

John

I think if you look back at Apollo images of craters seen at the surface, except for the fresher ones they also look eroded, shallow, irregular etc. (having been pitted by small impacts and showered with ejecta from nearby impacts). These are craters, no question, partly filled with wind-blown material or with rims distorted by superposed drifts.

Phil

They are doing a Phobos transit observation today - oops, no, looks like it was yesterday.

Phil

Images of Paramore double crater (taken on sol 2409) just in on Exploratorium. I made this panorama (my first!).
Click to view attachment

Very nice job! It inspired me to make a version of it and then do a vertical stretch - the previous ones were looking more towards the west, this one looks south.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Oh, I don't doubt for a nanosecond that Intrepid & the other small features are craters, Phil. Their appearance does make me wonder how many small-scale unidentified impact features there are on the Earth, though. With our aggressive erosional processes it'd be all but impossible to identify such things consistently, but it's interesting to think about.

Phil - thank you for that.

Just so I'm not too disorientated - what/where are those (hills?) in the top left?

Neil

Yesterday's Phobos transit (during my pre-lunch telecon, after Opportunity's UHF pass) was the second and last of the season. Preliminary indication is the images will be quite good when they finally make it down (possible annular shot AM 2410, good grazing sequence PM 2415).

That'd be Iazu crater.

Wouldn't objects small enough to make craters of that size decelerate to terminal velocity in Earth's atmosphere and not produce craters?

Is this Golden Hind or Yankee Clipper? 1N342132857EFFAVH9P1876L0M and following images, sol 2410.



Oh, wait, I realized where I could figure that out. It's Golden Hind. They took pics of Yankee Clipper but they're not on the ground yet.

The terrain is giving me some amazing 2004 era deja vu.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P1803L0M1.JPG

Deja vu or not I'll happily take it! It's smooth, safe, and speedy!

I hear you though, one could almost expect to see the lander in either GH or Intrepid .


-- Pertinax

Nice one! Look forward to you doing more :-)

Good job! Welcome to the image-processing Lodge...

C’est tiguidou

Thanks for your good words about my first panorama. Usually, you guys are too quick, and when I check the new posts, the job is already done. I hope I can once in a while add my modest contribution to this fantastic adventure.

Oh, don't worry about being" scooped"! It's not a race to see who can post the latest image first; I think everyone here just wants to contribute to the 'whole' by posting their take on a particular scene. My images aren't - as is well known by now - as accurate scientifically as those posted by others; I go for a more artistic, more aesthetically-pleasing take on things.

Room for everyone, and no winner's medal for being first. Just enjoy walking alongside Oppy as she approaches, gazes at and then passes each new wonder on the road to Endeavour*...





* Hmmm. Good name for a blog, that...

A modest anaglyph of Golden Hind, a modest crater
Click to view attachment

"Yankee Clipper" I presume...

Click to view attachment

Metadata says yes.

Promised notch in the Sun:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...8M1.JPG?sol2410

Couple quick ones: 90 degree FOV from Paramore with the next two craterlets, Golden Hind and Yankee Clipper, visible on the left towards the horizon.



Little look back at Yankee Clipper while looking for dust devils (so says the image tag anyway):

Phobos transit (animated)

Huh. That's kind of different; the transit is much more clearly seen in the secondary reflection. Thank you, Hungry.

Sure looks to me like Oppy drove right across a crater Link
Click to view attachment

Floyd - yes, it did, and you can see it in the route map here:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/tm-...B_Sol2412_1.jpg

- the stop before last on this map, looking back.

Phil

Oh, neat, I never would have spotted that if it weren't mentioned here!

Just another look at the Phobos transit.
Rather than try and pick it out of the glare, there was a reflection (for want of a better word) off to the upper left on the image.
I pulled that out and after hideously tweaking it, enlarging it etc, created this animated gif.
Click to view attachment

Thanks, Astro0; I spent a few minutes trying to do that and gave up.

It's been a long road... getting from there to here...

Click to view attachment

Really really agree. Good on you for saying that Stu, especially as you're one of the main contributors who has been posting here since pretty well the beginning. I really appreciated your comments when I first got going. It motivated me to do more, squeeze time in in the evenings and keep learning!! This is one of the great things about UMSF.

Also I think your site is great...... I visit it from time to time - It keeps getting better and better and more and more comprehensive as you keep learning and expanding your skills and knowledge. It exemplifies what a passionate amateur can do.

Wikipedia - An amateur (French amateur "lover of", from Old French and ultimately from Latin amatorem nom. amator, "lover") is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without pay and often without formal training... and reflects a voluntary motivation to work as a result of personal interest in the activity.

Yes, it's oft inferred or assumed that amateur is the opposite of professional, when it's not. The driving difference, is a salary.

Another transit was imaged...

02415 17:32:23 p2735.01. 1 0 0 28 4 28 28 pancam_phobos_transit_L78R28

Here's an animation I made from the thumbnails on the tracking site...

Click to view attachment

Wow!
I was thinking drivers are avoiding such crossings at all costs - old filled craters might be filled by fine dust, making them dangerous sand (dust?) traps. Is't Spirit sitting in a buried crater trap right now?

I wonder how rover drivers determined that it was safe to cross this crater?

Thanks Stu - just shows you how the eyes can play tricks! At first glance you'd swear blind that Phobos is curling round the Sun in those images!

(And yes, I know it does over a Martian year before any pedantic fans leap in there!)


Neil

Purely for my own edification, what exactly is that 'reflection', then, Astro0? Is it some sort of artifact produced by the CCD array somehow?

I find something so compelling about that "Tracks" image. From A afarensis to robots on Mars. To think of those early homonids and the vast future before them, how little they could have imagined about walking on the moon or roving on other planets. The image really underscores the stunning acceleration of human achievement: 450 years since the Copernican model of the universe, 150 years since Darwin explained the diversity of life, 50 years since we tackled the void of space... Makes you wonder what we could accomplish, not in the next 100 or 1000 years, but in the next 10 or 20. Inspiring. You might even consider adding POLAND, 395 million years ago to the left of your image!

(Sorry for going off-topic, but I simply had to comment on Stu's fantastic image.)

Back to the subject at hand... hopefully not a stupid question: are those stars or camera artifacts (dust?) in the transit image?

While not Astro0, I hope neither mind my jumping in ....

It is an internal reflection off either one of the three lens elements, the sapphire protective 'cover', or the back of the neutral density filter. If I had to guess which I'd say it's a reflection off the front sapphire cover and again off the inside of the ND filter. Little more than a hand-waving guess though from taking a handful of pictures over the years through welding filters with similar kinds of reflections in some shots !

That help at all?


-- Pertinax