Hmmm. Well, according to jmknapp's raw image browser, using the "sort by lag time" function the soonest any Mastcam image has ever come down (thumbnail or not) is 25 hours.... so there we are.

You could take as Malin's indirect complement to this forum. If that series had come down today, one of us (I know I'd be all over it in a second) would have had that film rendered in about 5 minutes. Can't blame him for wanting to be the first, it's his baby. Hope we get more of these of films!

Damien's (Ant103) much better at seamless stitching of Navcam mosaics than I, but I just had to see this one ASAP.... so here's a quickly stitched anaglyph of the Sol 60 Navcam panorama. Gives a pretty good impression of the lay of things around MSL today. Phil's "sea lions" can be seen in this one too just above and to the right of the RUHF antenna. I'm fascinated by the long "petrified tree" looking formation on the ground in front of them. You can see it even better in the Sol 54 MC100 mosaic. What the heck is that? It looks for all intents and purposes like a fallen log...very strait, very long, and even looks very round...hmmm. Here's a closer look at it.

Sol 59 Front Hazcam - looks like they've backed up several meters from the Rocknest drift...

...makes for a nice stereo pairing too, especially zoomed in....

Nice view just down of the landscape behind MSL from the rear hazcam - Sol 56:

Horizon flattened animated anaglyph GIF of the Sol 58 arm and turret manuevers from hazcam. I left it pretty large (1300x939 pixels, 4MB) so it may not begin to animate till fully downloaded, but I think the large size is worth the wait...



... and for anyone so inclined, here's the even larger 1800 pixel wide Full Resolution Version (7MB)

Holy cow, there's some absolutely stunning geology going on all over this one, especially the slabs of up tilted rock from the extensively exposed formation in the center. And those two "sea lions" Phil mentioned a few posts back at far left center... What the heck are those? Wow!

Here's my full res version with some white balancing and level adjustment added to differentiate the varying geology a bit:

"Where to go" seems the more likely to me. This has to be the most challenging few Sols of the mission so far for rover drivers I'd think. From the relatively flat perch of Sol 53 & 54, getting down to down to the geologic tri-junction target area through the rocky, undulating terrain and potentially hidden sand drifts looks pretty tricky. Judging from the recent anaglyphs of the area I'd think they're being very careful choosing thieir route. Phil's new Sol 55 route map is up now and it looks as if they're well on their way.

Nice ones Ronald! The terrain and Mt. Sharp from the hazcam perspectives of late is quite fetching. Here's that nice Sol 55 dune drift anaglyphed...

The animated GIF anaglyph version of the Sol 54 turret deployment...



Overall I find this animation quintessentially inspirational. Not only seeing Curi in action - but framed by the vast undulating landscape of Glenelg and Mt. Sharp as the backdrop - it just typifies the ambitious spirit of exploration at its very finest. Kudos to NASA and everybody associated with creating MSL and getting it safely to the surface of another world. Well done.

...and the turret animation in anaglyph format (includes the 5th frame from the same sequence, though MC was aligned a bit differently...):

Here's a stereo image of the area in question (MC34 & 100 Combo)...

Looking into Glenelg area anaglyph of the Mastcam 34 & 100 overlap from Sol51. I like that we're starting to get some 34 & 100 simultaneous combos now. This one's pretty eye-popping I must say...

"Humongous Anaglyph III"
Sol 45 and Sol 23 MC100 with a 210 meter wide baseline... Yup. Elvis has now left the building...

20016x2267px 6.85MB


The times of day were different, so the shadows are a bit mis-matched, and with such a wide baseline, getting the correct red-blue separation is tricky because close and far objects require lots of eye adjustments. But I could tweak for weeks. Better to share....

I second the Wow's! Joe the search page is just stellar. Cannot thank you enough. MSL living just got much easier. If you're ever putzing around with adding improvements it'd be a nice feature too if the results for a given image could somehow include a "flag" of some kind indicating whether a corresponding left or right match were available (especially helpful with Navcam). Knowing what's obtainable (or not) for anaglyphing would then be a breeze. Thanks again for the great job.

Nice Fred, I almost did that one too as it's one of the few latter day MC100 overlaps from the Sol19 and 23 pans. I'm anxiously awaiting the hi-res versions of the Sol 45 MC100 full panorama of Mt. Sharp to pair with the Sol 23 pano to render the foothills to the south and the slopes above. With that baseline it will be stunning. A handful of the upper slopes came in today. Hoping the rest follow soon... In fact, I went ahead and stitched some of the Sol 45 thumbnails together just to do quick check of level of depth it would provide. It's a little wonky to view because the left eye's red band is quite blurry but it clearly confirms what kind of eye-popping results can be achieved with a Sol 23 & 45 pairing when the full 45's are down.

Here is my very rough and preliminary depth test (left eye is the Sol 45 thumbnail mosaic) :



When the full resolution version of this can finally be rendered it'll be "chewing gum for the eyes"...

Rough terrain it is... Hazcam from about 3 hrs ago....(Sol 49)...

Z-axis addicted I am. Seems like all I do of late is check for overlapping MC100's with good baseline differentials. The seven frames just down from Sol 42 overlap with a few frames from Sol 36 of the N. Mt. Sharp foothills. My jaw just dropped when I split the red-blue bands on this one:

Thanks Stu and Ant103. Scary thing is, there are slew of Sol 36 MC100's of the NE flanks of Mt. Sharp whose right side perfectly overlap the left side of this one, but that'd get up into the 30,000's of pixel width. It's tempting though.

"Humongous Anaglyph II"... With the recent arrival of the remaining Sol 23 full panorama MC100's (at last!) a crisp full resolution anaglyph comprised of Sol 19 and Sol 23's MC100's can finally be rendered without the missing frames. I extended the view all the way to the southern extremities of the Mt. Sharp foothills by blending the Sol 37 MC100 images that were never imaged on 19 and 23's pano's to the right side. That section had to be paired with MC34 frames though so the clarity there degrades a bit, but the nice trade-off is the wider baseline deepens the z-axis considerably. There's still a wonky patch or two at the blend point, but after brushing out those pesky immersion breaking MC100 dirt spots and fully blending the sky for good measure, a full screen, medium zoomed, slow pan from left to right makes for a pretty smooth ride...

25100x2500px ~ 8.63MB

Sol 43... Not sure what the science team has christened this one with yet, but "Little Egypt" seems about right to me....



...and a closer look:

Hopefully what we're seeing has been temporarily utilized for a specific purpose, but if not...


Aaarg so true.... over or under saturation cannot be recovered, period. But it's the disruption of the gray level relationships that's most lamentable to me because that's where much of the textural subtleties and thus potentially valuable scientific comparatives reside. I'm not a trained geologist, but even from an armchair perspective, for a particular rock or patch of soil, slight differences in the average nominal gray levels is often the key to identifying similar or disparate specimens and helps in theorizing their inherent characteristics and relationships. And of course the extreme halo effect overall will make seamless looking mosaics a nightmare.

If the reasoning behind this is for the usability of the general public as suggested, perhaps some tweaking is part of the plan and we're seeing the first "extreme" test, after which I would hope that "toning down and tuning in" the level adjustment would be the next move. Hopefully there will be someone in the know here soon enough who can explain the rationale or temporal nature of what we're seeing a bit more.

Very Nice FredK. I'm sure you've noticed as I did that your anaglyph comprises one of the few good overlapping MC100's of the Mt. Sharp flanks for hi-res anaglyphs so far. (Grrrr...). None the less, using the MC34 + MC100 technique we've tried a few times, the full breadth of the 4 new Sol 37 MC100 pictures still makes a killer z-axis treat. Here's the 2D and 3D versions:

Default color:



Enhanced:



And my favorite, an anaglyph:



Yum, yum, yum....

Just down within the hour... Six additional full res MC100 frames to fill out the surrounding areas of the interesting Sol 39 Rock formation. Oh my, there's some truly glorious detail in there...