Nice later-in-the-day Navcam mosaic on sol 2852

Latest micro, from sol 2852:

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For the arrays, the dust factor is a net transmission--even light that scatters off the array-dust counts if it keeps going down. For Pancam, we actually track it as an optical depth, since the amount of extinction of the direct solar beam can be measured.

You'd think the dust would be less; sometimes it is. The windows can also be more sheltered from cleaning events--although cleaning events for the arrays may be the worst for the cameras. For the first 1+ Mars year, Spirit had negligible build up ion Pancam; Opportunity had low build up. Most of the dust that ever got onto the Pancams did so during the global dust event in the sol 1250 vicinity. It could have happened over sols, or in a sol, or in a single gust. Impossible to say for sure. I doubt the single gust end member, since that seems so dependent on chance (which way was it looking ...). Both rovers got hit, somewhat similarly, although Opportunity was worse (delta tau ~1 vs. ~0.6). There's a paper in the works with the details.

Thank you Deimos for your much valued insights!

-- Pertinax

Another new micro, from Sol 2858. Interesting feature in upper-left region.

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I think all the blueberries inside are interesting too.

Good catch. Those possibly are berries.

...and, what are those stalactitic-looking thingies hanging on the upper left? Could they be dust dendrites, or are they some kind of unusual erosional remnants?

There are also noticeable holes and indentations.

Another preview of the Greeley pan. I haven't done any individual image color correction yet, any color correction that has been done sofar, has been color equalization in the stitching program itself.

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And a better view.

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James, very nice work !
The circular version makes me wish I had a horizontal wheel on my mouse to make it spinaround.

Here's my version - thanks for the really nice pan.

Phil

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Really like your projection; comes close to preserving scale near the rover.

What projection did you use?

Steve M

Stooke's bogus-malogus projection.

(maybe you could think of it as being something like a stereographic projection)

Phil

Or putting it on the blade of a circular saw or table saw.

Thank you guys for the comments.

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Looks like the sundial gnomon has acquired an indentation. Did Oppy wander onto a firing range?

Oh, I see it. It doesn't seem to show up in 3D, though the resolution is pretty bad at this size.

The 'indentation' is an artifact of the highly reflective nature of some newly deposited (or removed) dust, the filters used, and the Sun angle. (That right eye is full of geology filters, mostly IR)
Here is zoomed dial on that sol in RGB
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besides, a 'real' ding that big would be accompanied by a super cleaning event (or a nearby meteorite slam)

This link to one of Holger Isenberg's automated pancam composites shows some seemingly scoured-out areas between the pebbles.

http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/2861/1P38..._L4L5L5L5L6.jpg

Given the location, wind action must be the most likely suspect to produce such an effect, along with some visual enhancement of apparent flow patterns by the elongated shadows. That is my best guess anyway, but the way the little gully almost undercuts parts of the surrounding crusty material suggests that it must have been a very very ground-hugging wind. Frankly if I saw this pattern in the Mojave I would be more likely to conclude that a beer-drinking camper (or his horse) had recently visited this place on an urgent errand. Someone get me off the hook here.

I updated the Greeley pan with more images taken closer to the rover.

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I'm continuing to monitor Lemmon's fantastic Oppy weather page and I noticed something: the table of sols/opacity near the bottom of the page lists a couple of sols recently where tau dropped below 0.6, namely 2859 and 2861 - on both sols the table gives tau = 0.59. But the graph for MY31 doesn't drop below 0.6 for many sols. Perhaps this is just a matter of resolution on the plot?

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/mission/status_...rtunityAll.html
... Indicates that the Mössbauer integration on Amboy began February 1st. Will be interesting to see when it stops!

Whenever we get upwards of 100-something hours on it! Will take a while. She's an old bird.

What else has been going on in here? Winter ops and MSL have slowed down my shift work with Oppy...

-m

A quirk in the opacity page is that the data happen to get into it via two separate paths, just due to hysteresis. The plot shows individual data points, but they are filtered to only include mid-sol data (excluding, for instance, calibration data taken with a low Sun). The table shows data used in operations, which happens to be a sol-average that is more inclusive. The two are usually identical. On sols with calibration points (or for a recent sol, no mid-sol value), they diverge. The variation should be slight, but the low values in the table are due to the fact that the calibration values are systematically lower and indicating that tau will come down with the recalibration. I'll say more about that in a few days.

Nothing particularly striking, but a shot that renders nicely in 3D from sol 2865, with interesting white-colored bands on a rock.

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Recent one, from sol 2869, and a rock with a little hole sandblasted for eons:

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Keep sending them, Oppy!

New fanciful "nowhere near accurate scientifically, just a pretty picture" view of sunset at Endeavour Crater...

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...created to illustrate new astropoem... http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/the-guide

I took my time with that gorgeous Sol 2847 sunset view, here is my version. (Also an experiment in linking to a Facebook album.)

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1...mp;l=f7c48c16fb

Beautiful job, Don!

Phil

Great job Don!

What a Marvelous Pancam sequence that turned out to be. Thanks to the whole MER team for making that possible.

I just delivered recalibrated data for the next PDS release. Including the more recent data, the tau values look about the same at Ls=0 and fall back into line with previous years by Ls=30. All in all, MY31 so far looks quite like MY27, with tau now ~0.54. The dust coming out of the sky will mean more is modeled on the arrays, since power production is a known. I'm not sure when the update will go live; since it affects other systems, it must be done carefully.

While the panorama fills in... here is a little dune with an interesting rock formation off to the right.
To this old beach bum, it reminded me of rotten planking of a long ago and forgotten schooner sticking out of the dunes of Cape Cod. This was an L456, but the picture look really blue, so I adjusted it...
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EDIT: The old 'figure-ground' perception paradox. What looked like an upraised rock (at first) is actually a falling away down-slope. The dirt is darker (more in shadow, its falling away). The bright apex near the darkest materials is a 'cape' for lack of a better word. oops!

A couple of extended MIs...

Combined Sol 2858 and 2874...
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...and Sol 2805.
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"North Pole"... ( )

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Larger version on my blog at: http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2012/...ere-for-a-while

...where I ask Steve Squyres about plans for Oppy...

* Can you give us some idea of the plans and schedule for driving away from this winter haven? I gather we may be here for another few months - unless a friendly neighbourhood cleaning event gives Oppy a good brush?

Yeah, we'll be here for another few months unless we get lucky with the wind.

* And then? Head north to check-out the tip of Cape York, or backtrack and look for some more gypsum veins? Or is Solander Point - and the hills of Tribulation - calling from the south?

Basically south, I think. We want more gypsum veins, and we'd like to find a contact between the kind of rock we saw at Chester Lake and the kind of rock we saw at Tisdale. And then, of course, there's always the hunt for clays. But I don't think we'll want to prolong our stay at Cape York too much... we've already accomplished a lot here, and there's good stuff farther to the south. We'll see...

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...43P2544R2M1.JPG

Around the middle of the image, near the edge between light and shadow, is that a 'real' ding in the LGA?

No. It is visible in pancam images immediately after landing, such as this one.
That being said, I don't know what it is. Anyone else know?

Hard to spot it on the landing shot, but the location seems to have shifted since ! ?
(would it not appear at the same location every pancam view?)...

Hungry's spot becomes more apparent if the brightness is increased by 800%. However, it is to the left of the location in the prior post, if I am identifying it correctly.

Hungry's is a left-eye image and the other is right-eye, so one would expect the shift to be in the opposite direction if it were the same spot. The two spots must be different, but they could be polar opposites, 180 degrees apart. {EDIT: If I try some other enhancements, I can see a different spot to the right, which could be a right-eye/left-eye shift of the original spot.]

The same mark is on Spirit, so the "ding" is not a random thing, it's manufactured.
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Unless someone can come up with a specific explanation then can I suggest that it's either discussed offline or over in Chit-Chat.
Sadly, there's maybe a few months ahead of pretty much just sitting here, but let's not wander any further OT.

Well, if Oppy is to be becalmed, this isn't a bad area to rest at...

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Oooh, part of the deck in L456. Here's my attempt:
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"Duffer" (sol 2876) quick L27R21 anaglyph

CLEANING EVENT!!!!

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Slight Cleaning of Solar Panels - sols 2873-2879, February 22-28, 2012:

Opportunity is positioned on the north end of Cape York on the rim of Endeavour Crater with an approximate 15-degree northerly tilt for favorable solar energy production.

While positioned for the winter, Opportunity is conducting regular radio Doppler tracking measurements to support geo-dynamic investigations of the planet, in-situ (contact) science investigations of the rock target, "Amboy," including Microscopic Imager mosaics and long Mössbauer spectrometer integrations, and continued collection of Panoramic Camera (Pancam) images.

Radio Doppler tracking passes were performed on Sols 2873, 2875, 2877 and 2878 (Feb. 22, 24, 26 and 27). Microscopic Imager mosaics were performed on Sols 2873, 2874 and 2879 (Feb. 22, 23 and 28). The Mössbauer spectrometer was placed down again on Amboy for further integration time after each Microscopic Imager mosaic. Additional 13-filter Pancam images of foreground targets were taken. In the last few sols, there has been a small amount of solar array cleaning (dust factor improvement).

As of Sol 2879 (Feb. 28, 2012), solar array energy production was 305 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.520 and a modestly improved solar array dust factor of 0.489. A recent recalibration of atmospheric opacity resulted in a re-baseline of dust factor numbers.

Total odometry is unchanged at 21.35 miles (34,361.37 meters).

Here is a recent navcam (Sol 2852). It is just before local sunset. The HGA is deployed and in action.
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I want more!

Cleaning events rules!

The monthly report:

planetary society

I'm curious if anyone's keeping track of the Greeley/extended Greeley pancam imagery - are the new images still filling in foreground soil that hasn't been imaged with pancam yet (at least with all filters), or are they duplicates? Do we have all the ground imaged yet?

Fred: I think they're still filling in the last bits around the rover for the Greeley Pan, and at the same time taking some all-filter images of specific spots. Here's just the images labeled Greeley at the moment. I think the all-filter images mostly overlap this. (North is up.)

I had a T-shirt like that in the sixties...

Phil