"Nipissing 1" on sol 3128. Not exactly sure what happened here. I guess the technical description would be it got smooshed?

Take that, Nipissing!

By chance I was at Nipissing a few weeks ago. Not this one, the other one.

Phil

Huh. Got crunched REAL good, didn't it?

That is surely of some interest.

The part I can't figure out is it looks (especially in stereo) like it kind of got lifted up and fell over somehow. Does seem maybe a little bit interesting.

I was at Cape Tribulation a few weeks ago. Very lush and verdant.

There is an Opportunity briefing December 4 at 10:30 am PT. 1:30 EST 18:30 GMT/UTC
Archives should be found at this link:
http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

This is being streamed by AGU and I haven't been able to determine if it will be archived. Although I imagine it will.

Participants:
Steve Squyres, principal investigator for Opportunity, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
Diana Blaney, deputy project scientist for Opportunity, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, working on Mars since January 2004, has spent
recent months examining outcrops in an area on the rim of Endeavour Crater. There, the rover
has found unusual textures and orbital observations have suggested the possible presence of clay
minerals. This briefing will offer an update about what has been found so far during these rover
investigations at “Matijevic Hill” on the crater’s western rim and outline plans for continuing
work by Opportunity.

Watch live here: I do not think you need to be registered.
http://live.projectionnet.com/agupress/fm2012.aspx

http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

Anything that's streamed by NASAJPL on UStream will always be archived there.

Thanks for posting info on the Opportunity briefing, stewjack. That definitely made my day.

There is another briefing/lecture anounced on the AGU website.
Whipple Lecture: P33F. Clues to a Hot, Wet and Violent Ancient Mars: Spirit in the Columbia Hills and Opportunity at Endeavour Crater ? (Video On-Demand) ?

Not certain if non-members can access Video-on-Demand, or if the Whipple Lecture will even be streamed live! I am not a member of the AGU. I just searched the website out of curiosity.
http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/events/whi...ideo-on-demand/

5 Dec 2012 2:40 pm - 3:40 pm (pacific time I guess)

Did Steve in that conference ever mention how long the APX takes to do a run nowadays? From the amount of sampling they plan on taking, I think Oppy could spend a -lot- of time being still during the coming months.

The material used in the APXS is curium 244, which has a half-life of 18.1 years. So even after nine years the instrument should still be about 70% as effective as it was upon landing (ignoring other kinds of degradation). It's use of the Mössbauer which has been suffering in recent years- it uses cobalt 57 which has a half-life of only 271.8 days. AFAIK they will no longer be using it.

Would love to demand that video Anyone know how to see it ?

I'm not certain why they would call it "video on demand" when it seems to not be available at all. You would think that if you were required to be registered and log in they would tell you so. Maybe I missed something at the web site.

The good news is that past lectures have been archived here. I wonder how long it will take for the archive to be updated with the 2012 lectures.

Steve said the Mössbauer is dead, they ran out of Cobalt a long time a go.
He skirted the question about the APX time, but it's working pretty much as normal, as other people have pointed out the half life of it's source is 18.1 years.

AGU videos are at http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

I believe the 'video on demand' are available 48 hours after???

If go to http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/scientific...s-and-sessions/
the Dec 3rd and some Dec 4th vids are now available by clicking on the meeting link.

Craig

Now Available on YouTube
Whipple Lecture: P33F. Clues to a Hot, Wet and Violent Ancient Mars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYtkTbF5gRs...layer_embedded#!

Also
http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/events/whi...ideo-on-demand/

Note: The actual lecture starts approx 13:00 min into the video

That was fascinating. Squyres is a great speaker, and that lecture explained a lot of things that I could see in the imagery but couldn't quite make sense of. I feel a lot better knowing that they haven't figured it all out yet, either.

Time for a new thread (this one was becoming too big). Please keep posting here anything pre-sol 3153 but use the new one for the latest stuff.

BTW, the former thread "East side of Cape York" has been split in two. One with the former name covering from Whim Creek to Matijevic Hill and another one (this one) for the first survey covering from Kirkwood to Sandberry.

A preliminary version of the Matijevic Panorama



False color:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...M5P2276R2M1.JPG

The above area near Kirkwood from a Sol 3066 pancam image has some interesting accumulations of spherules. In particular, it seems to show something like "berry bowls" of newberries. Is that surface too rough to be used for IDD work?

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Some stereo closeups from the context of the Sol 3066 image in the previous post.

Distant dunes and crater view changing with time, obviously part of a long-term survey:
Click to view attachment

Airbag

It had been a while since I fired up MMB2, and I was struck by this most colorful sol 3135 collage with all viewing options enabled!
Click to view attachment

Airbag

LOL (plus slight cringe)... yes, there are some longstanding issues there, not the least of which is 'auto-mismatching' of images. Midnight Planets is already handling it somewhat better, although progress is slow:

(For folks who haven't been following MER for years, I should probably explain that the color variation is mostly due to how the individual grayscale JPG images are automatically brightness stretched for the web. Eventually I'm hoping to process the 'real' image data from the Planetary Data System and eliminate that problem.)

I've noticed that some of the "auto-mismatching" of images in MMB is due to the wrong images being used when the RGB composites are generated. Some of that is unavoidable, since we often get images with dropouts early on, which cause some of the generated images to have areas with strange colors. This is readily corrected by waiting for the final image versions, manually deleting the earlier versions of images in the raw image directories, and then telling MMB to regenerate the composite images for the sols affected.

That alone will significantly improve many MMB panoramas. (I used to do this religiously, but after all these years it is getting tedious, and sometimes I just live with the patchwork quilt panos. ) Some of the mismatching, however, is not so easily corrected, and requires one to manually correct certain images and put them in the proper directory, which I didn't do for this attachment.

Click to view attachment
...loving Midnight Planets, by the way...

Sol 3224 micro.

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Nice micro...here's the rest of the image

Click to view attachment

Another gust out in Endeavour (each frame of the gif is the average of a left/right navcam pair to reduce noise):
Click to view attachment
Is this summer gustier than last, or did we just not look carefully enough for the signs last summer?

Fredk, I'm glad you're spotting these things. I'm wondering if you ever go into the PDS data to look for these once the data are out. If you do, is there a substantial improvement in quality?

I know the raw images let us see what's going on *right now*, but I do wish more people would work on PDS versions -- the longevity of the mission is such that 6-9 months doesn't seem nearly as long as it used to.

Can you please elaborate on the PDS versions? Are they images not as compressed? Where can they be found? Thanks!

Funny that I mention that this morning and then I get an email announcing that the latest release came out today! It covers Sols 2971 through 3060.

To access it, use the MER Analyst's Notebook. I know there have been discussions about using it on this forum. Have a look around. Or just click around at the Notebook -- you'll find certain features very easy to locate.

That's right, they are uncompressed, and calibrated. Find them in the Analyst's Notebook.

I suspect that for many people the problem is time: we have 3060 sols of Oppy PDS images! It can take enough time just keeping up with the new images. But I agree it would be very cool to revisit many of the great images from this mission.

Myself, I'd been thinking "when Oppy finally bites the dust (gasp!), that'll be a good time to start digging into the PDS". Fortunately, that hasn't happened yet!