I think they're harder to identify in the etched terrain, but personally, I'd say there are more craters within the etched terrain than the annulus.

Doug

They take four images centred on the expect drive direction for the next drive sol... the one you post is the 'eastern' most looking image, and the last - http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...TCP2365L2M1.JPG - is 45 degrees right of that, looking much more southward.

Between them, the 4 images centre on the nearest part of Victoria crater. Perhaps we're going to head a little more east with the next drive,

Doug

That is extraordinary stuff. Stunning

Doug

A bit of stitching...interesting stuff.

Doug

Well - to get it wrong by 180 you've got to go through 90 at some point

It is.Fact.

If your eyes tell you otherwise, then you need to alter your perception of the image. There's stuff that's open to interpretation, and there's stuff that isn't. The angle of illumination falls in the second catagory.

As for haze - this is a polar region, and the polar regions have a lot of clouds around, it wouldn't be unusual to have some thin high cloud over this sort of area.

Doug

Panic not Tesh - I think I'll be able to keep up on your behalf

Doug

imho - the terrain will be like this if not a little better right the way up to the rim just about.

like THIS
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...6F0006L0M1.HTML

for another 300 metres

and then the last 50m or so to be a little like this
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...0P1829L0M1.HTML

A look-back like this
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...02P1825L0M1.JPG
in, say, 10 sols time would be my expectation.

Doug

They don't suddenly disappear.

And if they did - why would that suggest that the people who built the camera and have operated it for nearly a decade have got the illumination angle wrong by 90 degrees?

If these were features of any height, we would see shadows extending down and to the right much as we do with dust devils...

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2006/07/17/
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2006/07/05/
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2006/06/08/
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2006/03/16/
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2006/01/20/

We don't see that. We do, however, see streaks that point not in the direction we would expect a shadow, but in the direction of the prevailing wind. The artists impression is a best, a huge dramatisation and at worst, complete fiction.


Doug

The Pancam tracking site had all the Pancam info.....just none of the engineering camera stuff on top of it....not unusual - it's happened before. I'm suprised we don't see more of it given the schedules of the scientists and engineers, with one team 4hrs apart from the other.

It's easy to imagine science obs being scheduled, scripted, passed over to JPL, then everyone at Cornell goes home, the JPL team script up the science AND the driving imaging, and then it takes until the following day at Cornell for that driving imaging stuff to be acknowledged and put into their DB, even though it's already happened on Mars. I don't know how it really happens, but it's a thought.

Doug

Looks like my speculative interpretation from a few days ago could be quite accurate - James Caird area terrain, transitioning to Fram area terrain.

If they were brave..if they had a few more Whrs...they could set a new record here.

Doug

Two options -

They ARE driving but the engineering camera data didn't get through to the db

OR

They're just taking drive direction images in a different direction.

Doug

That's several sols old....

Sol 912 - 10:38am

Doug

Ooo - don't let me decide - at least these ideas get some support - I'd come up with something that'd piss EVERYONE off

At least, I'd try to

Doug

The clue is in the title..

ZERO SECOND.


It's an artifact of readout, not a long exposure or motion.


Doug

I don't know what would make you think it didn't look like bleed....because that IS what it is An exposure long enough to do that would be HOURS long, and we know that your average Navcam exposure of the sky isn't black like this one

I'm not sure of the technical aspect, but I like UG's story - it sounds reasonable. If the readout starts at the bottom of the image that we see, then the bottom half of the image would never have been touched by the sun, whereas everything above it would. with some intelligent programming, one could use it to find the actual sun position I'm sure.

Doug

Wondered how long it'd be till someone spotted those

I asked Jim about them - he says that Justin Maki is the guy to ask BUT....

Both obs were called navcam_sun_zero_second_msl_test

MSL will have Navcam's similar to MER's...and they've done those two obs ( 914 and 908 ) to find out how good Navcam might be at the sun-finding observations they currently do with Pancam for pointing purposes - the aim being to unload that need from mastcam onto msl-navcam. I'm guessing the clue is in the title w.r.t. exposure - it's pixel bleed causing the streaks.

Doug

Nuhhuh.....I think they will MC doesn't think the difference will be much, but I think we'll be suprised, with twice the number of pixels on the ground downtrack, and 6 times as many across track, and a sort of 'colour' into the mix. OK - so it wont resolve 25cm/pixel (but the test images were damned impressive).....but even if it's only 50cm/pix - that's three on the ground for every CPROTO pixel.

Doug

71m at 5cm/sec is 23.6 minutes, or 47.3 minutes @ 2.5cm/sec

Not sure what you're doing with the maths there.

Doug

6 of those puts us at the rim.

Doug

We're not far from terrain that looks even better - i.e. free of any noticeable ripple all together. Perhaps 3 drives of 50-60m and we will be on stuff that is like the terrain we had between Eagle and Endurance. THAT - I would blind drive on...this stuff, I wouldn't be quite confidnent in it, I'd still want quite regular slip checks.

Doug

I think it actually does.

"A Planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape and ( b ) is in orbit around a star and is neither a star nor the satellite of a planet."

Doug

Ooo

"By Sol 282 of Spirit and Sol 263 of Opportunity, we generated timely topographic products including 76
orthophotos and three-dimensional DTM, and five three-dimensional crater models,"

Well - we've seen 2 of the crater dem's (Eagle and End) - perhaps we'll get them for Fram, Bonne, and Missoula - who knows how much will get released!

Doug

Looking at Stellarium, (and I'm guessing it's accurate) - both those times are a no-go for Western Europe sadly

Doug

913 looks like insitu obs, with 914 being a drive sol.

Doug