Well I think the view from Low Ridge is one of the best of the mission, there is just so many sights all around.

Boring!? What planet are you looking at Stu?

--

I'm off on holiday now - but I couldn't leave without giving you guys a little McMurdo present.

Only half size and there is quite a bit of contrast mismatch but it's the best I could do given virtually zero time.



I'll do a corrected, full size version (and colour 3D) when I get back - the "grout" should be done by then as well.

Bye for now,

James

Sol 898 route map.



A short drive to position Oppy nicely on the 7 o'clock ray for IDD work.


P.S I'm escaping from Sydneys winter tomorrow, off to the tropics, so this will be my last route map till the 16th, by which time Tesh should be back anyway.

James

Well no new images today (just tau) by the looks of it.

Tomorrowsol should be good though

Good Idea.

Note that contrary to popular belief, the McMurdo pan isn't finished yet. Look what's up for sol 919:



Filling in the gaps to the solar panels,

James

Me too, and they *are* called "Drive Direction" pancams in the tracking database.

I have no idea why they would do a drive in one direction and then, in the same sequence, take drive direction pancams back the other way!

I suspect that someone has made a mistake in the sequence and those pancams should be 180 degrees the other way -- oops!

James

Your right - good tip. How strange. I never noticed that before.

Don't usually play with the navcams (only doing it now while I help out with the route map) just pancams, and use the left out of habit.

Thanks,

James

Route map for Sol 896.

The navcams.

Some tracking data is up for 896!

We've gone NE - straight toward Beagle. About 17m - that should put the rim within 5m or so!!

Note that 108 degrees doen't really mean anything useful to the drive direction.

It's the centre azimuth of the navcam pan, but that pan is 6 frames wide thats ~220 degrees. It *may* indicate the direction of Beagle *after* the drive, meaning we're heading toward the west side - but I wouldn't put any money on it from that navcam pointing!

James

My version.



James

Without many of the navcams ploting the 891 position is tricky.

But using the tracking database, the size and bearing to Beagle and some parallax to Beagle, here is my best guess - should be fairly close I hope.



I won't have time to do tomorrowsols drive (Saturday late morning here in Oz, and I have visitors to show around) But hopefully we'll be right of Beagles rim anyway.

James

891 Pancams

Nearly there.

Quick sol 891 navcam stitch of Beagle.



Wow! this place is going to be great.

I was trying to work that out a few days back - my best guess is in about a week to 10 sols. I think we'll be at Beagle through this period which should end around 20 sols from now so it shouldn't have much impact on things.

Just being thorough I guess - this is a new material it's got to be worth MB/apxs'ing it - even if MB does take an age these days.

Also, it makes sense that if it's only two sols to Beagle that we stay here and get as much science done before dashing across at the last moment to get the initial Beagle data at the weekend. We're going to be sitting around for a sol or two gathering the initial pan of Beagle - better if that's at the weekend.

The tracking site suggests that it is the other way around.



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Good news - after the excruciatingly long Mossbauer (and now apxs) on Jesse we are off again Tomorrosol



Two sols to get to Beagle before the weekend (I think) - should be doable - at least to get close enough for a nice pan to plan the attack.

James

Updated colour 3D McMurdo pan



846 raw images used to make this - I'm beginning to question my sanity!

Only quarter of the full resolution as overlaying and aligning two ~100Mpixel images is a bit of a challenge for my computer! - I'll wait for the final version and just do it once.

James

Yep, that's Beagle (or Corner as we initially called it) crater.

Route map updated to sol 885 - Small (2.6m according to the tracking database) drive for weekend IDD work on "West Hillock"

Great minds think alike eh, Ant. I've been working on a new McMurdo version recently as well. I noticed that it's been nearly a month since my last update!



To sol 902 (91 pointings) - full resolution version is available.

Enjoy,

James

It's not a geology term, it's a rover term. He means it's like Anatolia

I still don't understand the reason for using the least accurate point on the map (the last position) as your primary reference when there are so many other real features around that can be seen both on the map and in the images. Furthermore I don't understand why you would rather use sub-degree angle changes between two cameras 20cm apart when you can use angles of 100's of degrees between features seen on the ground. Back in the badlands when there was nothing around that was exactly what we were doing, and when we get out onto Victoria's apron it may be the right thing to do again. But here, in possibly the most feature rich area in rover history, it makes no sense.

If the 883 point was 7m further south the features just do not fit, hence that position must be wrong wrt the MOC image, end of story. It doesn't matter how far we drove on that sol, that's not what the map shows, it just shows a sequence of rover positions wrt the MOC image.

Anyway, moving on to 884 - I hope we all agree on this position.



Fairly obvious - but I've double checked the bearings to the features around just to be sure.

James

In the first image yes, the second shows Delta.

You mean somewhere near my point based on the tracking data alone?

Problem is, the angles are all wrong down there. Everything fits nicely up here.