Time for another topic, me thinks.

figuring this "Perseverance Valley" thread should populate with said content...are we there yet??

Here are some stereo views from sol4786 images of presumably water-carved topography downslope of the spillway
(ICE didn't deal well with the contrast scope so at left is anaglyph of 3 pairs, crosseye of left portion, crosseye of right portion, at right is a parellel of most lumpy section).
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The pancam images for the past several days show a ground texture that looks like it is cemented together and really interesting textures. Maybe some of the image wizards can put these images together for all to see. We won't be getting too much back for a while, but channel already looks very interesting.

nice to see MI images being taken again sol4787, these look set up to stitch for stereo pairs so heres the stitch and one of its sub-pairs in crosseye/anaglyph
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I'm not so sure about the terrain being cemented. The RHAZ show quite visible cleat marks indicating the soil can be compressed by the cleats. To my untrained eye, this looks more like gravel. Anyway, parking brake is set, we even turned the RF wheel a bit to keep things according to MDOT (Martian Department of Transportation) regulations. See yoou in a couple of weeks.

Paolo

OK Maybe not cemented, but some of these slabs look polished--almost like glacial polish. Does this look like polish by running water to any of you?

Hi floyd,
we have seen what a couple of million years of low density Mar's wind can do to 'fluted' rocks.
I think the environment there is alien enough that we cant quite appreciate the processes
On Earth you be hard pressed to find a dozen 'craters' due to fast (compared to mars) erosion (rain, winds, quakes, tectonics, oceans)
These could be stream cobbles or wind eroded ...
I am waiting on Grotzinger .et al to weigh in.
But it sure is fascinating! Awesome image!

See you around town, fellow Bostonian!

That surface does look a little different to my untrained eye. There is work to do here!

Perseverance Valley indeed seems to differ somewhat significantly in the bedrock and consistency of the soils, comparing relatively similar filter#2 views from Marathon sol4122 with its more pillowy bedrock and angular shards versus the more pebbly and sheared surface seen here in Perseverance sol4791.

That observation, at least in this very limited sampling, doesn't completely hold up when perusing a sampling of MI images at Marathon sol4131 vs Perseverance sol4787, but still some interesting differences are apparent and despite the better focus and exposure of the more recently acquired MI, it seems like the muddier fines have been cleaned away here. I'm curious whether any of this owes to winds in each locale, inferring that here in Perseverance we might expect better solar panel cleaning events? since if seasonal patterns are consistent the images linked are just about 1 Mars year apart.

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Different all right. Parallel-eye stereo.

Are there some berries on that grooved fragment? It's hard for me to tell.

Different, but attractive.

Different indeed.

I wonder if we're seeing the effects of a few tens or hundreds of millions of years of wind scouring on harder than usual bedrock.

We're starting to see some clouds as we head towards winter. Here's an navcam animation from 4793:
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This is a stretched difference of each frame from the average of the frames.

The road ahead.

The Pancam L2 images taken between Sol 4785 and Sol 4793 stitched together.

Jan van Driel

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Hi Fred,
The originals have that bright 'half moon' in the lower third of the frames (which I think you chopped off)
What is that bright area?

It is caused by the dust of times. ;-) The small hood we have in front optical element only partly occludes the Sun. Therefore, even when the Sun is outside the field of view it will illuminate the dust which causes diffusion and enters the optical path. Most of the dust was accumulated around Sol 1200+ (2007) but during the years the wide have cleaned up the front elements quite a bit.

Paolo

https://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status.html#opportunity

Looks like Oppy has insisted on a two-week vacation during Solar Conjunction!

Catching up on some night sky imaging from 4784. Here's a stack of three frames to increase the S/N by sqrt(3):
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I don't recognize the field...

Taurus, just below pointy end of the Hyades. Kinda random. A rare night comm pass allowed free astronomy, but no moons were up. Still useful as practice and will add a night opacity datum..

http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-top...nce-valley.html

Monthly MER Update from the Planetary Society. Also has a nice star photo.

I'm wondering what all the proper motion streaks are, especially the sideways ones. Meteors in the Mars atmosphere?

Thanks, Deimos.

Marsophile, the steaks directed from 11 o'clock to 5 o'clock are stars trailing during the exposure. Everything else should be cosmic ray hits.

Here's the field as calculated by Astrometry.net
( http://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/1693971#annotated )

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http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...Z0P2543L2M1.JPG

Near-perfect layering?

My guess is that it's an erosional texture as seen in the MI images from the same sol.

Phil

I guess, since oppy moved immediately after conjunction, the auto mode reset she had was no big deal.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P1956L0M1.JPG

This image may provide some perspective on the channels and their relationship to the surrounding landscape.

sol4809 MI stitch, with bonus anaglyph highlighting the obligatory ICE stitching artifacts.
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The Navcam L0 view on Sol 4816.

Jan van Driel

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Mi cam view taken on Sol 4809-4810.

Jan van Driel

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This is Jan's 4816 panorama reprojected into a roughly maplike geometry to give a view of the surroundings. The lower right (southeast) corner is still bad in this version. The tracks cross a small crater.

Phil

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Click to view attachmentMy take on the sol 4809 stereo mosaic.

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Parallel-eye stereo.

pretty good view down the 'cascades' sol4825 cross/anag
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Oppy is moving down into Perseverance Valley
Cant wait for the explanation about what we are looking at here....
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What a "groovy" picture.

I concur. It IS groovy! Also it seems to contain some grooves. A stereo version will be particularly interesting.

Phil

a collection of sol4831 pancam crosseye/anaglyphs of groovy view, the 'moguls', plus a wider pano of that from the previous location.
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downslope stereo view for sol4841
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lengthly september edition of the Planetary.org MER update goes into a lot of detail about driving and energy production challenges... plus a huge 15MB "Sprained Ankle Panorama" (why so-named?).
I've never heard much discussion regarding the current state of Oppy's battery charge capacity after all these years, here we are almost 14 years in now using workarounds to so many ageing issues, yet (mercifully) there seem no worries with the batteries!

here's a sol4843 stitch anaglyph and crosseye of one section of the upslope dusk images
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Maybe because of the LF wheel problem up there?
Check out some discussion in this post.

Possibly we are becoming blasé about Opportunity's performance, leaving the astounding achievement of the 45 kilometre mark unremarked. Looks like it is going to be a long slow winter for Opportunity with power generation hovering around 280 Watt hours at this time.

Thanks for reminding us, so Oppy slogs past another kilometerstone with no fanfare, not even in Crumpler's latest post from last friday, i think thats equivalent to traversing about 70% around the entire Endeavor ridge, so i guess we got a while before we hit that one, i am perhaps too complacently confident that will happen! to help celebrate here is a stereo of the latest MI pairs from sol4857.
And thanks fredk, that info about the battery was very illuminating!
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Sol 4859 Lpancam panorama:

This new drive back uphill was discussed in the latest PS update:

cross/anaglyph/parellel views of the in-place weathering exhibit sol4875
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Oppy drove back uphill a bit in Perseverance Valley. Here is a stitch from Sol 4879 (10/15/2017?)
I ran it through a slight rinse in my De-Convolution Machine ...
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Popping a wheelie with the RR wheel after a short bump on 4883:
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Wow! That's radical. Don't think I've seen that before. I only see a trail from the wheel on the right. Was it pivoting?

The 4883 drive looks like a very short bump upslope, towards the direction we're looking in the image I posted. We're sitting almost exactly on our tracks from the downslope drive on 4831 (check Phil's map) and the obvious track is from that drive. It's harder to see the track from the other wheels I guess because of the bigger rocks on that side.

It's been awhile since I have worked on images.

Sol-4884


Full Resolution
https://www.flickr.com/photos/43581439@N08/...285461/sizes/o/

Falsecolor

https://www.flickr.com/photos/43581439@N08/...962043/sizes/o/