The ~85m drive on sol 3744 was uphill, starting the long climb of Cape Tribulation.

The sol 3744 Drive:

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Puts Opportunity about here on a plot with colour for elevation:

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The view ahead:

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Right! This is where I have it. (proper map update later)

Phil

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A circular view of a partial panorama from sol 3746.

Phil

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Do we know if Opportunity will be traveling east or west around Wdowiak Ridge [name corrected]?

It won't be east. The slopes on the inside of the crater are too steep. I don't know if they want to visit that outcrop but if they do I'd expect they'd sneak up on it from the right (west) where the gradients are less severe

I'm not sure as the Eastern side is actually 200 m from the drop into the crater.

I'd say the east side is doable. Remember this image in a recent Crumpler blog that has a dashed green line following the eastern ridgeline up and then turning west to get behind Cape Stevens. There was no description of that dashed line, but we've also heard that several options were being considered.

The Pancam L7 view on Sol 3746.

Jan van Driel

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OK... I was wrong. I saw the observation name cape Stevens and assumed it might be the rocky ridge south of us. Not so - it was a bit of outcrop near the rover. The big ridge is called Wdowiak Ridge. I will correct the map soon.

Phil

What a picture!
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...__P1955L0M1.JPG

Yeah!

And with this last drive we've really climbed - we're getting back up towards the elevation of Broken Hills, as you can see from these hazcam views:
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A quick circular view of sol 3749. The foreground features give a pretty good location.

Phil

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The Sol 3749 L0 Navcam view.

Jan van Driel

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Did anyone else get a feeling of deja-vu when seeing the navcams yesterday?

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Closing in on Wdowiak Ridge!

A quick circular view of the sol 3750 images to help locate us.

Phil

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The Navcam panoramic view on Sol 3750.

Jan van Driel

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indeed that is a great view in crosseye too!
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Another drive on Sol 3751, and she's passing by.

Still possible to investigate from the top and less risky. We'll see.

That is what i would expect to see.

Phil

Sol 3750
Added 1 image.

Jan van Driel

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I didn't mean that she won't check out Wdowiak Ridge (I don't know); just that she's literally passing alongside the thing at the moment.

really pleasing sky exposure in these sol3751 pics, i can just relax in a beach chair with the cool radiation pleasantly peppering my molecules heres a stitch with a little shadow fill for Wdowiak
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A panoramic view would be gorgeous to see from the Wdowiak Ridge : if it cannot reach its summit, Oppy should rove at least a few tens of meters on it and/or take panoramic pictures from the rim of the crater standing at the beginning of the ridge itself (that may be also interesting to see on a scientific point of view for its geological layers).
Spectacular views help us a lot doing our Mars EPO campaigns in France...
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The Navcam L0 view on Sol 3751.

Jan van Driel

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Incredible view now looking back - we can see that we're higher than Solander Point/Murray Ridge now, and so at our highest point yet at Endeavour:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol3752
A reminder of the early views we had of Wdowiak Ridge - I think this was the first ID of it:
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=176029

The Navcam panoramic view on Sol 3752.

Jan van Driel

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and another view on Sol 3752.

Jan van Driel

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Nice panoramas, as usual! Here is a circular projection.

Phil

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Fredk, many thanks for the retrospectacle of early views of Solander, love seeing those..
nice look back sol3752 (perhaps this view even includes the spot where that photo was taken) and below in xeye, movin' on up!
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Wow, really nice crossed-eyes, thanks atomoid !

Sol 3752-3753

Added 2 images for the complete view.

Jan van Driel

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slightly windtailed rock of interest sol3753 set 90cw rotated for crosseye
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Some interesting information in the latest Crumpler blog.

The plan is to inspect the rocks that have come down the scree slope where we are now. After that there's a nice proposed route map taking us along the south side of Wdowiak to Ulysses crater and then on to Marathon valley.
That's clearly being very conservative - this past winter certainly didn't shut us down!

Perhaps Marathon Valley itself will be off limits during the winter and that is what he is refering to. I really like those Crumpler posts!

Anyone have any information on the Marathon valley contours? I guess that they cannot assume that Marathon Valley and approaches will have the same superb cleaning environment as was the case last winter and Opportunity could well have a stationary mid winter sojourn as was the case on Cape York. Plan for the worst case and be pleasantly surprised if things are better. Couldn't agree more with respect to Larry Crumpler's blog.

The winter at CY was the only one out of six Oppy needed to hunker down, so even without the intense gusts we've had this winter there's good reason to be optimistic for next winter. But of course they must plan for the possibility.

Finally some new images - here's our first real closeup of the rock face in front of us:
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Looks like that image is for the first part of a color panorama. This shall be a scenic one!

The view keeps getting better and better!
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...5M1.JPG?sol3754
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...5M1.JPG?sol3754
See how far you can follow our tracks back to Broken Hills...

This is nice--fun to follow those tracks... Great images...

Really nice shots! Here's one in 3D from the NavCam a few sols earlier:
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Looking forward to more shots from these heights.

Making tracks - sol3754

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Nice stitch, i've been waiting YEARS to see a view like this with an intervening mountain lower than the horizon. but thought we'd have to be higher up Cape Tribulation, pleasant surprise!
would be great to get a super-res of this overlaid with map tracks and SOLs all the way back to the location of Crumplers traverse map Cape York vanatage point.

Thanks, Astro0! Stunning stitch - this is one of the best views of the mission.

Sketching our path would be very cool - not only would it extend to Cape York, but also back across the great Dune Sea, since we could see Wdowiak Ridge from quite a ways back.

My take.



And a false color to better show the tracks.

We bow to your genius. Beautiful!

I bow too.

Phil

Thanks so much James : how nice !

Very good James

My take, in Poscard format