Exactly. And some rocks may have been also weathered for billions of years on the same spot... We have no equivalent on Earth...

The 2x1 mosaic and (IMO) the whole rock field visible on it was named "Stoughton".
AFAIK, all the rocks on this site have been named upon several lithotectonic assemblages on eastern Canada. From Volcanism of Eastern Canada:

The white stuff seems to be coating a lot of rocks in this area..it is necessary to know what it is!!

Your enthusiasm is commendable. Hopefully it is paired with an equal amount of patience.
There is a quickly growing list here of things that are 'necessary to know'. I too would like to see the top of Tisdale 2 investigated, especially after a good brushing.

Um... You didn't get that my "NASA map" with all those numbered 'Tisdales' was a joke...?

Maybe he did - in the absence of official names for the rocks here, we'll take anything on offer! I actually like the idea of Tisdale n, for n > 0. At some point individual names gets silly.

It's impossible to tell if someone is being funny or sarcastic or ironic on the internet without gratuitous use of smileys, winks etc etc.

I think most people here got that my labelled map was a joke...

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=178052

The "* not really" and big smiley were something of a giveaway, I think.

A compilation of the different rocks imaged by Opportunity so far, with the temporary nomenclature defined by Stu.

Stu, you've created a monster.

Nope, I haven't defined anything. Those numbered Tisdale rocks were all named and numbered by the MER team, you can see that on the Tracking site.

I guess we have to be clear here. Tisdale 1 through 5 are labels from the tracking data, and so are 'official'. At the moment, anything above 5 only appeared in Stu's joke post, and was just a little joke. The names in neo56's post are accurate as far as we know right now and were not defined by Stu.

Adding: And to completely kill the joke: as Tesheiner pointed out, the area over there is apparently called "Stoughton". So Tisdale's days are numbered. (Sorry.)

Well, I thought it was amusing, Stu.

Just a stab in the dark, but I was wondering if the porous white material could be related to the "popcorn" we saw back at Endurance crater.

Oops, sorry for my misunderstanding I thought only one rock was called Tisdale and those with numbers had temporary names given by members of UMSF.
Anyway, what's relevant is not their names but what they are made of. I'm looking forward the first results of the APXS analysis.

Hmmm...

Press Conference

Sneak attack presser. Everyone panic.

(This post is not at all sarcastic.)

I don't think we have to worry

Quote:
"Opportunity, still very active, reached the rim of Endeavour crater on Aug. 9. The arrival gives the rover access to geology different from any it explored during its first 90 months on Mars. "

Perfect time for a "Let's catch up with Oppy" press conference. A page has been turned. Long drive behind her, arrival at a shiny new place, sparkly new science targets to find and then study, a whole new landscape to share with people... makes perfect sense to me.

Sorry mate.... it went right over my head.
duh@me lol, I should learn to read stuff more carefully before I post.





Thanks Tesheiner,
actually i prefer the full name of 'Stoughton-Roquemaure' given in the quote,
sounds like a type of blue cheese.

One thing I love about this pic is how it reminds me of that maze of fake windswept rocks that the Robinsons always seemed to land next to, in the old Lost in Space TV show. (It saw some use in the original Star Trek as well.)

These rocks are far far more interesting, of course. Still, I expect that, just over the hill, Oppy may find an abandoned but still functional alien machine (don't pull that lever Oppy! leave that for Will...or maybe Dr. Smith), or a family of culturally-stereotyped aliens with colored skin

"I think the big block on the right is Tisdale 18"

I thought it was El Capitan 3792, but I may have lost count.

Phil

A false-color look at Tisdale 2 from sol 2697:



The flicker gif loses quality because animated gifs only support 256 colors, and the anaglyph definitely loses most of the color with your red-cyan glasses on. I suggest opening the left and right images - the first two images - and flipping between them manually. I notice you can see the reflections change between the two viewpoints; these rocks appear to be shiny. (!)

Holy crap! I didn't even know about this!

Can you say "take an extra long lunch break"?

-m

Just call it "Big Joe 7012". But I think they are way too creative at JPL and NASA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rocks_on_Mars

El Capitan is one dangerous (and very large) rock ---14 earthlings have perished visiting its environs this year! I'd keep Oppy away so she doesn't lose her footing and fall over a cliff or get swept over a water fall.

Looking across Odyssey with Ridout on the rim, in pancam anaglyph:
Click to view attachment

"Stoughton" (sols 2699 and 2701)

I'm wondering if the telecon press conference happened as advertised? At 11:20 PDT, I noticed the tail end of a press conference on NASATV that featured Squyres, Callas, etc. At 12:40 I tried to tune in to the advertised audio conference but it didn't seem to have any link posted. Maybe the NASATV event was a replacement for the telecon?

Press conference is tomorrow at noon Pacific time -- roughly 20 hours from the time of this post,

It's tomorrow http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pr.../20110830a.html

"Ridout" 3D portrait...

Click to view attachment

...and a rather yummy "Great Things To Come" colour view of part of the Staughton pan...

Click to view attachment

"Trailbreaker" Sol 2702 Pancam false-color anaglyph. (Don't know exactly which rock "Trailbreaker" is, or whether it's the whole area.)

Some of these shots are just

un. real.

Love it. The MER folks love the flicker gif's too, so we don't look like idiots with the anaglyph glasses on.

-m

Just seen this entry on Scott Maxwell's twitter:


And that's today, sol 2703. Actually, she may be moving right now.

I bet for the bigger one at the background.

If it was the one at the foreground (center left) the imaging sequence would be named Tisdale-N+1.

The complete Navcam L0 view taken on Sol 2695 and Sol 2697.

Jan van Driel

Click to view attachment

"Trailbreaker" (sol 2702) again



I should probably point out that the green channel in the right image is synthesized, so color changes between the two frames shouldn't be taken as real.

I'm very impressed by the quality of your synthesized green channel, we can see barely no color changes on the RGB !

I'm doing it with some custom code. Basically I create a table of how red and blue values map to green in the left image, and use the results in the right image. It works pretty well up to a point, but one can see color changes in small areas where the actual green value in the right image differs from the average expected value.

30 minutes to the press conference ...

Started? I only have music at 3:33--OK now on

Did anyone get the http://go.usa.gov/032q correct, this is wrong

Wait til 3:34!

Phil

Started.

Visuals and other info here:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/telecon/20110901.html

"Cape Tribulation is kind of screaming at us to go to it after we're finished at Cape York."

New press release: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/news/mer20110901.html

"This is different from any rock ever seen on Mars," said Steve Squyres, principal investigator for Opportunity at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "It has a composition similar to some volcanic rocks, but there's much more zinc and bromine than we've typically seen. " ==> Steve said: Maybe altered by hydrothermal water, maybe through impact of Endeavour.

And now, time to go to even more interesting rocks : the phyllos !

Interesting process, impressive results.
Your color flicker gifs look great.

Not to worry, Matt. You don't look like idiots to us.
Click to view attachment

Kenneth Chang has an enthusiastic article in the New York Times ("Mars Rover Discovery Elates NASA") ("mission scientists giddily described that rock"), which was for a while prominently displayed on the paper's home page.

Oh my goodness, confusion returns.

"OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Finishing Work at Tinsdale 2" http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/sta...tml#opportunity

This must be a mistake.