Check out the edge of the bright material under the rover in my polar pan just above... and follow that edge towards the lower right. It looks to me like the bright layer is being eroded back from a previously more etensive coverage of the area. The edge is sharp, and outward from it the rough surface consists of disaggregated fragments of the bright material. I suggest the Dagger is just a place where that disaggregation and erosion has extended along a fracture. There are smaller fractures on each side of it, visible in this and the previous polar pan.

Phil

Phil,

Referring to your polar pan, I observe to the right of the dagger's tip a feature that looks like the beginning of a new dagger. It's curious that there is only one dagger visible on Cape York. How old is the dagger?

A problem I have with Mars is the extreme antiquity of its surface features. My intuition based upon terrestrial geology is largely inappropriate when trying to understand Martian geology.

You're right, that could be a baby dagger! But don't forget the one at the very northern tip of Cape York, called Mount Goldsworthy - it's less well developed than Whim Creek but similar and parallel. As for age, I don't know. I assume it takes at least tens of millions of years for these things to form.

Phil

You forgot: shadow of our intrepid explorer. And: PERFECT composition!

This must truly be considered one of the iconic images of Oppy's trek.

There's no colour version, is there? I guess they jumped the creek before it was taken...

A part of the creek in 3D:

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Wonderful sand-worn table sprinkled with blueberries, down there in the creek, taken before Paolo plunged the rover thru it, using it like a half-pipe! How much air did Oppy catch on the other side?! (By the way, thank you for all your enlightening comments in this forum, and to the many other contributors with deep knowledge on these topics!)

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Is it me or are navcam views a lot cleaner and more dust free than was the case back in (say) 2008?

It really was a minor bump getting off the curb so to speak. We did have some safety checks in place (we always do) but I'm sure that a drive like this would undergo much more scrutiny on MSL although teh vehicle performance is pretty similar, if not better, than MER. Today we are doing a 1x1x5 MI stack (single stack, five layers deep), no extras with stereo. We will have a meager pass so we might not see much on the next downlink. The really good news is that the manuever they did on ODY today was successful, that means that Oppy will drive tomorrow or in the next few days (always around Whim Creek) and that MSL shoudl have her bent pipe for EDL (I think).

Paolo

Thanks for these, I don't carry around red-blue glasses but it's great to see these features in 3d.

These Whim Creek images are great, among the most exciting to my novice eye. Thanks to the imagery wizards here and especially to Paolo and the others from the team that give us the benefit of your insight and experiences.

Here is that wind worn rock in the creek, before we jumped over to the other side

The narrow dagger-end of Whim is to the right, so it looks to me that the predominant wind direction is blowing sand through that rock from the left ? Which is roughly north to south. If that's true, (big if) it's opposite of what I thought

Or is sand just bunching up on the rock, being blown from R to L? (where is Phoenix's 'tell tale' when you need it!)

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Great news! (I think)

Indeed very good news if ole ODY can relay EDL. Let's hope it will keep out of safe modes, despite being a bit flaky lately. JPL engineers have proved masters at coaxing out max. performance from elderly assets at Mars, so I think and hope it should work.

Paolo, I'd like to echo the thanks for your outreach effort, despite your busy schedule rovin' on Mars. To outside ears it sounds as if you rover drivers have reached a level of confidence and experience with the MERs that will be really helpful for the SUV you're soon getting the keys for. When a 25° drop over a dagger's edge is 'no big deal' I think it shows that you will be able to drive MSL aggressively and safely and thereby maximize this new asset we'll hopefully soon see in action. How would you summarize the influence of 'MER driving school' for the adventure ahead?

You're surely welcome to peek over the shoulders of the resident imagery wizards here in the Oppy den. And also to come and visit three floors down, in the MSL lounge, if you find the time...

Grazie mille e ci vediamo sulla superficie di Marte!

I have been driving Scarecrow for the past few weeks in the Mars Yard at JPL and while it retains most of the same behavior as MER, it has some differences that I will need to keep in mind. The new grousers on MSL wheels offer much more traction than MER's and it will turn very useful for driving on bedrock. Fortunately, the terrain where MSL will land should not be too difficult (keyword "should"!) and we will have time to refine our skills in driving our new car on Mars.



Very good Italian sir! I will surely come by and look at the amazing job all of you are doing. Often your products are ready before the official ones are. Thank you again for all your help.

Paolo

The Whim Creek mosaics are definitely a highlight of the mission! All I can add is a sense of scale. To help celebrate our long-awaited arrival, the Mystery Men have reappeared to welcome us:
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Thanks to mhoward for the base mosaic and Phil for the polar version which helped to identify locations.

FanTASTIC! Thanks, fred!

Thanks, fred; I always appreciate the perspective we get from the Mystery Men.

Looks like a drive is scheduled tosol (3023); no surprise since Paolo mentioned the possibility.

Thanks Fred, you did it again. Also thanks Stu for your input on RTE blog

Fredk, your mystery men are attaining the status - here on UMSF - of the STIG! - Thanks for putting Whim Creek into perspective. About twice as big as I imagined.

It's always fascinating when rocks shift under Oppy's weight, when it leaves a gap between the rock and the caked Martian dust. Especially in 3D!

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Today's micro:

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Cool, we're "in the creek" on sol 3024 (front hazcam view)

Oppy appears to have driven almost to the southern end of Whim Creek...

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Stu, nice work.
From this view the terrain seems a good bit steeper than from the top of Cape York, looking out across the crater.

.

A little late, but here is my version of Sao Gabriel crater.
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Beautiful!

Some of the rocks of Whim Creek...

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"Rushall", sol 3024. Apparently named for Rushall, West Midlands, continuing the mine theme.

3D view of part of "Rushall"

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How long did it take Mars to carve this...?

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(we really need a "shaking my head in wonder" icon..!)

Interesting types of rocks, the planes ones have light color and the broken, rounded and small rocks have darker color, seems to be fragmented rocks due to the eolian and internal erosion. The other thing that I pay attention is a part of a plane rock is floating on air. Nice pictures from around that zone.

Hey, pretty close to an actual arch there!

This seems like an interesting area.

Large higher-res 3D panoramic view pf "Rushall"...

http://twitpic.com/acqg5l/full

Oh, me oh my! That is an awesome pic, Stu!

My apologies for getting the left and right images reversed in the previous micro anaglyph in post 421, as eagle-eyed CosmicRocker pointed out to me. What I thought were strange dimples in the surface were in fact little pebbles. Here's the corrected version:

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Thanks walfy, it took a lot of work (i.e. messing about with!!) but turned out ok in the end. Looking forward to more WC rocks being imaged like that.

The recent names are gold mines, and Whim Creek's namesake is one in Australia.
So here is a 'whimsy' image of Rushall. The blueberries are now gold nuggets
(how to: I swapped the blue and red frames, instead of RGB its BGR (false color) )
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I find Rushall a really appropriate name: ruscello (that has a very similar pronunciacion) means creek in Italian ;-)



That is so cool!!!

Paolo

This is the Sol-3021 Navcam panorama, after the drive acrossed Whim Creek.

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Wonderful place...

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I just realized that Opportunity is parked right over that Rushall mosaic now, looking at the rocks in the bottom center with the IDD.

Micro from sol 3027.

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I've been waiting for this sequence to finish coming down from Sol-2981.
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And a nice shot of the NASA/JPL logo's to welcome Sol-3000.
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Yeah!!!! It is finally down!!! That's the image I was talking about in Stu's interview! I was complaining that they had sequenced just a PANCAM Tau on Sol 3000 and said we should have had something more so I came up with a 2x1 L257 that should have included the NASA and JPL logos but I also wanted to include an engineering reason so I found an IDD joint configuration so that the RAT bits were in view to assess their status. It is a bit all too dusty but maybe they will manage to do something with it.

The fact that the JPL logo is highlighted by the Sun, that is totally a coincidence

Paolo

It's not coincidence, it's statistics! it's what finaly has to happen when you live for that long!

Maybe a silly question, but why L257 instead of L456 if looking at the rover was the primary consideration? Does going NIR buy you anything spectrally? Just curious.

The sol 3000 logo pancams are L456.

In that case, nevermind. I didn't check the actual raws...