We have a much higher viewpoint from the crater's rim now. New distant features across the plains should come into view with the pancam, yes?

... and we're going to drive around the crater a lot, don't forget, giving it a thorough photographic examination.

You're welcome

(If anyone's wondering, I use a little shareware program called 'RedGreen' on OS X to make my anaglyphs. It allows the creation of red/blue, red/cyan or red/green 'glyphs. I use red/cyan by default).

Thanks Vikingmars

@Stu : yes, it still okay . And you were pretty right about the train, except the noisy student. It was in fact my little brother .

Oh boy... look at that...

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This is becomming GREAT by looking at the preview thumbail pan of Stu

I've made this picture from the navcam pan, put it in a wide angle-like camera view. Add synthetic sky and colorized it.


For non frenchspeakers

Wow you can tell something exciting is happening when people start playing with the stamps.

I can play that game too.

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Unfortunately we've dropped quite a bit more in the last few weeks than we gain climbing up the rim of SM. Our best view of the far horizon is past, until we reach Endeavour and start climbing the rim, of course!

Very nice, James. Makes mine look like it was done with crayons!

Just think of what we'll be able to do when the uncompressed versions of the stamps are released on the PDS next year! I can't wait.

And if they do a superres pan, we could maybe double the resolution of the thumbnails!

But seriously, a truly hard-core rover panorama maker would take the hue and saturation information from James' thumbnail pan and drape it onto the higher resolution lightness of a navcam pan...

I would like to say thanks to all the awesome people in this room discussing what's going on here at Santa Marie. I also would like to say to all the photo guru's that your all doing a great job with the Pictures I'm seeing here. I'm looking for a background image for my laptop here. Any suggestion to what image might fit a laptop screen perfect?

My next question. Has there been any discussion regarding what type of science we might do here. I have a feeling we are going to drive around the whole crater and I see only one area on the far side where we could drive in just a little. I can see us looking at a few rocks, bedrock, soil sample and more. I think we will be here until March before we head east? Should I start another post called Science at Santa Marie?

Thanks and Happy Holidays everyone.

Crocodile Tail in 3D...

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Stunning, just stunning...

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Oppy livin' close to the edge..!

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Looking back at the sol 2452 position from sol 2454:


Looking at the sol 2454 position from 2452:

Yes, STUNING is the right word.

Sol 2454 full pan


I like the lightings, with the shadow of the mast .

Awww, you've ruined it now... in my mind it would look more like this...

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Wow... Please tell me you didn't just knock THAT out on a train...

Ha ha ha Stu, no. Not this time. Just with the laptop on a desk (in the dark of this night)

Hands up everyone who'd like to go and kneel down beside this beautiful thing and take a closer look at it right now...

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Stu, that lovely 3D really tells me like few other images from Mars what a deeply alien place we are exploring. And why? Because of the details. Look at all those small pinnacles and filaments jutting out, looking almost like excretions. In an Earthly desert they wouldn't last for a month, they'd be worn down by sand blowing along the ground. So, as the big picture seems somewhat familiar, the details give away the fact that we are FAR away from home. That more than anything else is why we need super-res colour pans. If you'd find ubiquitous walls covered in such mega-panoramas more people would support exploration of Mars.

@Stu: Me! Me! Me!

Seriously. I think that I see some of those crystal casts like we saw 'way back when in Eagle Crater, albeit a bit larger. Bet this critter might be a bit crumbly.

Just gorgeous aren't they?

How I gazed upon thee in wonder,
Oh beautiful otherworldly excretions!

(Hmmm we should probably leave the poetic language to Stu.)

Navcam crop and anaglyphed. An impressive view!
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My Sol 2454 panorama:

Another fine viewpoint

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perhaps my article may be of interest. ken

Powerful Mars Orbiter Directs Opportunity to Clays and Hydrated Minerals
http://www.universetoday.com/81789/powerfu...rated-minerals/

Bobby, try Ant 103's gorgeous color pan on the page above your question. C'est magnifique!.

And Stu, I love your close-ups of Crocodile Tail. It appears that little block on the ground to the left of the main rock was dislodged from the brighter spot on the upper left of Crocoldile Tail. It evidently didn't come off when the rock first fell there. The weathering is much lighter where it came off. So it must have broken off much later. But as Oersted pointed out, erosion and weathering are very slow on Mars. What would have caused that piece of the rock to break off? Could a minor meteoroid have done the trick? Or is it the Occam's Razor hypothesis: it was weakened and perhaps fractured when it first landed, and the eons of erosion finally caused it to separate from the parent rock?

David

New blog update with a couple of pics too big to post here...

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

So are we going south or north around this sucker

P

Looks like we're heading south, around the crater rim, going from the "drive direction" notes.

When will they be able to transmit such a huge batch of photos?
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Here is a thumbnail preview of the complete first Santa Maria pan:

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James

Well, clearly nothing to see here, is there? Let's move on...

James... seriously...

I've made a lot of 3D pix during the MER mission, but this view is definitely up there with my favourites ever... amazing detail on the slopes opposite, and the foreground rocks are so rugged it's like being there...

http://twitpic.com/3hru3g

You're overdue for some verse here Stu . . . (please ignore my suggestions above)

Oh, it'll come; the martian muse hasn't tapped me on the shoulder just yet. She will tho; I can sense her nearby. I think she's just behind that rock over there...

In the exact same way they've done for nearly 7 years as demonstrated here
http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_ins.../panoramas.html
or here http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_ins...nt/mosaics.html

Over the next few sols, as they do every time they take a large mosaic.

Mike's simulated views with rovers in post #166 are really cool. I'm putting together my Year in Pictures feature for the Society website now -- to be posted early next week -- and clearly I need to include a piece of a pan from Santa Maria. There's lots of good stuff to choose from already posted here, but I think it'd be really fun to have a view with a rover model artfully dropped in. Is anybody interested in volunteering to put something like that together for me? Or a group effort?

Guilty!

Found myself with a spare hour this evening and seeing as I'm going to be away for Christmas (if we can get out through the snow!) and probably wont get to have a crack at the real thing for a week or so, I thought I'd see what I could do with what we have:



Emily, if we don't get the real pancams soon it might look nice with a rover model at Oppy's current location on the right if someone wanted to drop one in.

James

Ooh, that would make a nice Christmas card! Seems like a great spot for a UMSF holiday party too (it's been a long time since our BBQ).

I'd love to have a go at that SFX image of Oppy on the rim of Santa Maria, but unfortunately I'm away from my computer/software until well after Christmas
Hmm, and Emily, thanks for the reminder...I'll have to restore those links to the UMSF BBQ when I get back as well.

Loved watching all the work being done by others at this amazing stop on Oppy's journey.

James, that's stunning!

I know people have done MI + pancam colour, but is this the first navcam + pancam thumbnail colour?

Spectacular new navcams from 2451 are down. I love the longer shadows and depth in the cliffs on this one:
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Had to look up my 3D glasses again, but well worth it fred and stu!

Thanks.

I'm not sure, I have a vague memory of doing something similar a long time ago, but it might just have been the idea rather than actually doing it!

Added 4 images to the Navcam Ro view
of Sol 2451.

Jan van Driel

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Vikingmars aka Olivier de Goursac has done the same process with Vikings pictures : low res color pans overlayed onto a hires black & white pan. The result is just simply beautiful .

The Pancam view in the drive direction
on Sol 2454.

Jan van Driel

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