And only yesterday I was just starting to think - "I wonder if I could estimate the slope of some bays using the MOC and Navcams" before seeing your post doing the very calculation. Great minds think alike, as they say.



Yeah I was thinking about that, and I think "Bay H1-I1", etc. is they way to go, unless we adopted some convention where the bay has the same name as the cape clockwise(or anti) of it. But maybe that would get confusing, "Is it the cape clockwise of the bay, or the bay clockwise of the cape?"

James

Very soon we're going to have a hell of a lot of features of Victoria to discuss, so I think it's about time we had some way of telling each other which bits we are talking about. (A bit like naming craters Alpha, Beta.. Zeta, etc)

I know Stu started to label a few features, but only a few, and there are A LOT!

I've tried to divide Victoria into logical sections and given each a letter. Then within each region I've numbered each point of the rim that appears to bend in the opposite way to the curve of the crater, hence numbering "Capes". Some are quite subtle and therefore may not be seen very well in reality but I think it's better to have them all in there.

Here is the map, it is externally linked so should be updated with the latest version. (Now updated with the (half scale) HiRise image)



(Click image for larger version, ~400kB)

So:
A1 is Cape Verde
A2 is The Beacon
P4 is Cabo Frio
and as of the 943 drive we can see the far rim between E2 and K1.

Of course I'm sure that some of the more prominent features will soon acquire more meaningful names, but this should still help us all follow what we're all talking about!

Bays are given the same designation as the cape on there 'clockwise side', thus most of the major bays (which tend to separate lettered regions) then have a "1" designation (making the rule easier to remember). Bay A1, where Oppy is heading first is Duck Bay and the bay that Fredk has measured the slope of is Bay I1. Most of the major bays are marked in red.

JPL's names are also added, as are their numbered capes and bays - in square brackets.
Informal UMSF names are added within round brackets.

James

That's Spirit your looking at! There is nothing up for Oppy.

But your conclusion is probably right there will be no (significant) driving while they test the new software.

I agree Phil. I'm quite glad we've stopped here, gives us the chance to take in the far rim a bit before we get totally overwhelmed by the rest of the crater.

James

Wow - I can't wait to see some L7 in that direction!

That movement was on 936 - hence why Tesheiner's route map says 931/936.

While the PMA moved a metre or so to get that long baseline the rover only really rotated, so the rover center (according to the tracking site) only moved 50cm (just one pixel on the map)

No there wasn't.

We talked about this when it first appeared -

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=66819

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=66855

Some people doubt we can see that far, but it's nowhere near as far as the Gusev rim is from Spirit and it's midwinter when the atmosphere should be at it's clearest.

James

EDIT: Oops, Cross Post.

No, read it again. Duck Bay is where Oppy will arrive and take navcams and pancams of the two capes on each side. Then, on one of those capes the 'Ulitimate Pan' will be taken.





James

Press Release - http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2006-111

Well the upload for tosol (944) has already gone, it's the middle of the sol already. I'm pretty sure the lack of activity tosol is due to the reboot into the new software - because of that I wouldn't expect any driving for a sol or two.

Hopefully we should get the drive direction pancams down later this sol, which would be keep me happy for now.

Cheers Tom.

Here is the whole rim straightened out (kind of reverse polar). Could be quite handy in the coming weeks/months.



The point Oppy is approaching is at the edge, so the far rim is in the middle. Emma Dean can be seen at the top left.

James

Here is the far rim in JPL's navcam image compared with a 'straightened' far rim from orbit.



James

EDIT: Replaced with a slightly modified version

Thanks Floyd - a *very* quick update by JPL there!

There image contains a bit more detail (no surprise!) particularly in areas that are very bright. It is a spectacular match to the MOC image, so many features that look almost exactly the same!

Here is a 3x stretch of the rim in JPL's image



James

Oh the fun of confilicting abbreviations! I meant Oppy's communicating Direct To Earth (DTE) through her high gain antenna, as opposed to using the UHF relay through Odyssey that isn't scheduled till later.

Thinking about it more, isn't this morning link more likely to be for the sols commands to be uplinked rather than for data to be downlinked? I wouldn't expect anymore images till much later today (7+ hours) (Assuming that the data pipeline is working again!)

I'm surprised that there is a downlink now, there is nothing in the relay schedule for about 8 hours. (although I sometimes struggle to understand that data so I could be wrong).

EDIT: Oh I guess you mean we're in DTE - that makes more sense. I wonder if we'll get more images or if it'll just be checkout data after the reboot into the new software.

Just joined the party - wow!

Re: The large 'rock' on the left - others have already mentioned it, but people still seem to be confused. It is not a rock, it is the crater wall on the back side of the beacon.



James

oDoug - Ulysses!

Thanks, good to know it's not just me. 'View New Posts' does it for me too but not every time, maybe 50%, very odd.

What I mean is, over the past week none of the images/data appaers to be making it to Exploritorium or the Pancam data tracking site as it normally does. Instead we've had one or two big updates several sols late. The reason I'm still not sure it is fixed is that there is still a lot of data missing from the tracking site (even though a lot of the images have made it to Exploratorium). I really hope that's just a backlog problem and tosols make it through - I don't think I can stand the suspense!




Here is a quick diagram of what I think is going to happen tosol based on that Kitty Clyde's Sister navcam sequence.



Cyan line is the predicted path - swinging by Zeta (KCS) for a quick 5x1 navcam pan (green) before moving on toward the rim.

James

No, those are all old images so far - that one you linked is from 941 - Cape Faraday.

I'm not expecting any 943 images for 4-5 hours *at least* even if everything is working properly again now (which I don't think it is )

James

Well 'Kitty Clyde's Sister' is one of the boats in the Powell expedition so it must be one of the other nearby craters (probably Zeta?)

I don't want to get anybodys hopes up prematurely but...

The fact that the pan of 'Kitty Clydes Sister' is a 5x1 navcam (180 degrees) would imply that it's going to be taken from right next to it, and the fact that there is another 10x1 navcam implies that KCS is not the end of the drive.

So my guess from that is: Todays drive will be quite a long one, the closest point of Zeta on the way to Victoria is about 40m away, so at least that, and could be quite a lot more!

Just remember - don't get your hopes up *too* much this is still very much a guess using *very* limited data!

James

Can't be as a 10x1 Navcam pan is a standard 360.

I agree with Doug's reading to the letter.



We just don't know, the drive tosol could take us to within 10m of the rim or it could just be repositioning us for a new target at Emma Dean. We'll just have to wait and see what we see.

Isn't it exciting!

James

Well I'm not having any problems with Firefox either (1.5.0.6 for mac, 1.5.0.5 on Linux).

I have had problems with Safari 2.0.4 however, UMSF crashes it quite often. I don't have a problem with any other site. Anyone else had this problem?