I don't think anyone is saying CY *isn't* part of the rim; all these references to 'shelves' relate to its location and visual appearance, not its geology, as I've read them anyway.

My little red flag is far behind us now - Oppy drove over it, then turned round and skidded over it a few times more for good measure before carrying on - but today's pancams show something interesting (gif image below, please click), just wonder if anyone has any thoughts..?

Click to view attachment

Hmm, possible I suppose, but my gut feeling is that Cape York won't appear so high against the far rim (i.e. we'll see a lot more of the far rim than we ever have before, before we see any of Cape York.) Too early to say for sure, tomorrows drive should tell us more about the location of that bump.

Thanks, that's what I thought too, James. The peaks of CY will look a lot sharper and more obvious once they clear the horizon. I think that after "Approach Crater" the terrain is quite bumpy, with a few mounds and rises that are going to fool us. I'm using that big farside crater as a guide, too. The sooner we see that thing clear the horizon and start to climb higher, the better our chances of seeng CY will be.

Centsworth - this is more like the real topography:

Click to view attachment

Phil

Phil: So we are just at the left side of your picture, and all the next drives we will really get better and better views. I think this will be fantastic days / weeks the next time, even if Cape York refused to be a gigantic mountain...

The crater wall crater seems now to be getting bigger, so we should be now just before the peak of this ridge on our last trek to CY.

Hmmm...

Although the "Bump" lines up nicely with the spot on the horizon where CY's peaks should appear, I don't think it is anything to do with CY. Looking at the ground around and ahead of "Approach Crater", using the IASViewer, there's a filled-in crater just a little further up the road from Approach, with some quite tall dunes in it, which may be our Bump..? And a little farther ahead, but further over, there's a kind of a ridge/dyke feature which may give us false readings as we appriach...

Click to view attachment

Note: all just "having fun doing it" speculation. Any scientific accuracy is purely coincidental...

Looking at the Cape York peaks in IAS it seems to me we're looking for a "twin peak" to pop up above the horizon, with a small peak to the left of a larger one.

Click to view attachment

Fascinating part of the journey, absolutely fascinating...

In Philovision! Thanks!

You mean the So..journer

I'm going to just jump right ahead of everyone pointing out how hard Cape York is to see, and declare that we won't see Cape York until Opportunity is parked on its summit and extends the MI looking downward. Even then it will need to be a stack of 12 over-exposed images..

There. I should have been a Yorkshireman.

Just a hunch, but I'm joining in with ElkGroveDan on this one.

I agree with Phil's diagram - thanks for making those, guys, I'm sure that helps a lot of people here.

About Stu's new bump: here's an average of the L2/R2 frames, 3x Philovision:
Click to view attachment
My thinking is that new bump is just some subtle topography very close to Approach Crater, rather than farther away as Stu suggested. The ground past AC curves downwards (convex up), so I doubt we'd see any features farther away yet. If you scan the horizon away from AC, you can see more "bumps" and "dips" - that local horizon is now so close that little ripples could stick up like sore thumbs.

"little ripples could stick up like sore thumbs"

That's 'cause they are frantically texting 'look out, there's a rover heading straight for us!"

Phil

"sigh" I'm starting missing The Beacon "Sigh"

Maybe Cape York was just painted on the crater wall?

Are we nearly there yet?

Neil

Centworth_II: I wasn't trying to suggest that Cape York wasn't part of the Endeavour rim. It clearly is rim rock protruding through the Meridiani sediments. I was trying to use words to describe exactly the scenario that Phil posted. The sketch works better.

Still not enough (public) data to determine thisol drive length but based on the local time of the hazcam shots (around 2pm) I would say they actually drove for 120m-150m and not 80m as previously reported.

Edited: 80m.

I make it about 500 m to my predicted visibility line (depending on the exact path taken), so only another 3 or 4 big drives. I'd probably guess the errors in my line placement are at least something like plus or minus 100 m, just to hedge my bets.

The dark blue contours in the image below are every 5 m, and the faint blue lines are every 1 m. The view of the dropoff into the crater at the same time as Cape York becomes visible should also be pretty nice.

Either way, not long now!
Pete

Click to view attachment

Sooo close now. I took a raw approximation of that visibility line (hope you don't mind) and plotted it on Google Mars together with the route till now.
Click to view attachment

Within spitting distance! Martian spitting distances are likely much longer than on Earth as the lower gravity and huge pressure differential between the air in your mouth/lungs and the atmosphere will aid in the transport of the saliva.

Thanks a lot for that, Pete. From that map, I estimate slopes into Endeavour of around 5 or 6 degrees in Botany Bay. The steepest parts of the inner/east side of CY are around 12 or 13 degrees. Those slopes are easily maneuverable by Oppy with six driving wheels.

Of course this depends on whether there's an overall tilt to your map, but given the very small slopes your map gives out in the plains, any such tilt should be very small.

Meanwhile, the horizon has dropped again after the sol 2654 drive:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...2M2.JPG?sol2654
The rate of drop should accelerate now...

Indeed -- CY is only a few meters high, if that. (Maybe somebody knows the resolution of the elevation maps out there?)

Stretch of new horizon view...

Click to view attachment

That's a lovely map, Pete.

The contours imply that we can reach a point with a view of Cape York by staying at the same altitude was we currently occupy, and driving south-east -- i.e. no need to cross another 1 metre contour. Don't forget that the height of the camera mast helps us to see it earlier. So it's basically a flat drive, with no more "up".

It also shows, if accurate, that the summit of Cape York is about 11 metres lower than our current height.

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&id=24764

Damn' guys, I forgot to tell you: the sun is actually shining from the top of this picture, not the bottom. What you refer to as "Cape York" is of course a depression on the rim of the crater...

Quick mapping between what we see at the horizon and what we know (from the map):

You may not be far wrong, Oersted!

I'm starting to see Cape York as less of a cape as viewed from our approach side, just a sort of flattish shelf jutting out into Endeavour crater, with sculpted ends at north and south. I think when we do see it, we'll be looking down on it, and there will be almost no height to it, except near the north end. Most of the feature's relief is on the east side, inside Endeavour crater, not visible from our approach direction.

True, Kenny, but I think it will look impressive from the south end!

Phil

My impression is that it will look somehow like Home Plate.

In my head - a very busy place, as you all know - I see this view appearing in a few days...

Click to view attachment

Yup - that's all it will be. Ambitions of hills and hillocks are going to be somewhat smashed to pieces.

Thanks for peeing on our chips, Doug...

It's not going to be Everest, for sure, but the HiRISE images show some vertical relief, so I hope we're going to see some pretty decent ridges and crests at least. The two "peaks" on the northern side show promise. But I think the main attraction of CY - apart from the science, obviously - is going to be the view *over* it into and across Endeavour.

They show lots of albedo changes, but stereo HiRISE shows you just how much vertical relief there is - and it's only a handful of meters over quite a large area.

Well, I don't know about anyone else, but after trekking across all these klicks of flatter-than-flat Meridiani wasteland I'll happily take your "handful of metres", especially if phylosillicates are lurking within them

It'll be what it is... a part of the rim of unreachable Endeavour, a viewpoint straight out of our dreams, and possibly a gateway to incredible discoveries... and the start of a whole new scientific adventure for us all.

High or low, narrow or wide, ledge or crest. Bring It On.

It will be a fantastic view.
Home Plate has a diameter of 90 m, Cape York a length of 760 m, so it will just be more impressive.

And what it is...isn't post 835

You think that's maybe why I said "in my head" and put a great big silly smiley after the obviously fantasy picture, hmm?

OK, since rampant speculation is so much fun, if utterly pointless, here's my prediction for the record. This is the view from around Approach Crater. I've tried to get the geometry roughly right - this is presented at pancam resolution. I'm pretty sure this is how far below Far Rim Crater and far horizon that CY will appear, but CY may look even wider and there may (hopefully) be more obvious topography. (CY will extend way outside the frame to the right, but we won't see that part at first.) The grey area with ?'s is the to-be-revealed inside of Endeavour (a lot of which we've already seen from back before SM).
Click to view attachment

That's brilliant Fred, really thought-provoking. I always trust your takes on these things.

I don't think the speculation is "utterly pointless" tho; at the very least it's just good harmless fun, a way of killing the time before we actually see and then drive up to CY. I also think it's great that there's still so much interest in and passion for the rovers as we enter this new phase of the mission.

Using Earthly analogs, here's my prediction for what Cape York probably looks like from one perspective (absent the aqueous erosional features). This is a hillside in the Mojave Desert of similar approximate dimensions as CY. Though I suspect Doug is going to have a go at my plate of french fries too.

Attached below is Google Earth kmz file for this location: 35°30'59.69"N 117°23'34.54"W

That's a very nice analog for what's in my mind. It is as if viewed from high above the interior of Endeavour, looking west. Opportunity will descend from about the centre of the skyline, and move down and to the left, stopping at the lip of the steep change in down-slope.

Based on the latest discussions, one begins to suspect that our first indications of CY will come from the Front Hazard Avoidance Cameras (after having unwittingly driven over it, backwards you know).

Don't forget the power of Philovision! It's capable of turning the humblest molehill into the tallest mountain!

Yeah, by the time I've finished with it your eyes will be hurting!

Phil

I see that the next driving sol will be 2656 i.e. tomorrow.


I can't attach compressed KMZ files either, but only non-compressed KML. It seems to be blocked by the Invision SW itself.
Is there a way to enable it?

Yup - to stop people attaching garbage, the attachments are limited to certain extensions. We've added a few in the past - and I just added KMZ to the acceptable list.

Just one picture of Vesta and everyone forgets Mars and Opportunity

First drainage culvert under a ripple I've seen. The creatures do nice work.

Another Earthly analog: the Nördlinger Ries in Germany. It is an 15 million year old meteorite crater. And its diameter is about 24 kms (Endeavour 22 km). The depth is now only 100-150 m.

Here is a view from the top: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Ries_WorldWind_SW.jpg
And here is a view from one side to the other crater wall side: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Ries_280805.jpg

Just replace the blue sky through a red sky, and all plants through red stones and sand, and you have Endeavour crater as Oppy will see, soon!

Sehr schoene! und interessant ...