So now I've had an evening in front of my computer rather than speculating from work, I have come to the same conclusion as Fred. Spirit Point is STILL below the horizon.

Here are my ID's of the horizon features on a reprojected HiRISE image. It also shows what is just over the ridge in the same direction. (Each column of pixels is a line of sight from Oppy's current position.)

I agree marswiggle, I was just looking at Peter's contour map again and I think that while we are now seeing the SP end of CY we can't quite see the crater itself as it on the inside slope (i.e. it's on the other side of the mound Fred pointed at)

What are you unsure about? I think we can see all of CY now with the feature Fred ID'd as being Spirit Point at the end. To the right of that are mounds/ripples on the edge of Botany Bay.

I think Fred is right, that looks in about the right place. Stu yours is too far right, way past the end of CY.

For those of you not following me on Twitter two bits of news: Another ~65m drive tosol and that large ripple/dune/mound has been named 'Pathfinder Mound'

Cape York now easily visible even in the the navcam stamps.

Just on the west side of it I think. Wrong side to see Cape Trib over it. The dune could be blocking the view of Cape York.

Waiting...

Looks like ~65m from the tracking data.

I wouldn't personally have said "under the horizon" but over/below/beyond would all be equally acceptable to me. (Note English was never my strong point!)

Back on topic, Stu is right I didn't see anything to suggest they are going back. Furthermore as new drive direction pancams are planned I think tosols drive is more than a bump to reposition at this outcrop. I'm betting on a longish drive and if we make it past the little crater ahead I think most of CY could come into view. An exciting afternoon/evening ahead!

Yeah, maybe, however my thoughts are the other way around: it looks exactly as flat and featureless as I was expecting for CY and I wouldn't expect a distant (and hence very large) feature to be so flat and straight.



I think we can still only see the northern half of CY. SP is still over the horizon at the moment.

Reposting after an admin clicked the wrong button!


Wow! And look at how much of Cape York we can see now!

http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/n/...N5P1944L0M1.JPG

Yeah, I had changed my mind and deleted that part of my post just a couple of minutes after posting it. Initial excitement got the better of me.

Some nice driving to get to a good looking outcrop. Expect IDD in the coming sols on this.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...N5P1214R0M1.JPG

I wondered if tosols drive would be a short bump to get to a bit of outcrop that Matt Lenda had said the science team were interested in IDDing. There was a 'work volume' observation planned which reenforced that idea. However it looks like ~120m has been put on the odometer, that's some bump!

James

Some data is now in the tracking database - looks like about 85m. Expect images in a little over 4 hours...

Just a heads up that tosol (2667) is a driving sol - expect images in around 12hours time.

Here is an attempt to match the distant features in the sol 2664/5 navcams with a reprojected orbital image, similar to those I did way back.

A point of trivia: Those hills on the far left (the north rim, twin peaks as we called them way back when) are at a similar distance to Victoria crater. That's how far we've come!

James

My version

Confirmed. You can see the dark promontory that we've been able to see for years in the middle of it.

Maybe. I've actually sat down at my computer a couple of times thinking about doing some feature mapping but decided it would take more time than I had. Maybe tonight...

RE the pancams. They were actually taken, just not listed in the PDT beforehand. The one pancam image we have is from it (seq P2368) the other two are on the ground so we should get them later today.

More data now in - drive was about 105m

Here is a quick 5x Phil-o of Cape York from tosols navcam view

BTW, looks like the drive faulted out (Fault images taken (P1254 & P1354) and no turn in place) given the time the images were taken, I'm guessing it was at the end just before the turn for comm. Not sure how far the drive was as the site id was reset and no intermediate data is available yet.

Cape York much more visible now even in the in the Navcams

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P0693R0M1.JPG

Phil, your right. I've changed my mind back again!

Here are the hills in question at pancam resolution.
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P2368L2M1.JPG

I haven't had the time to do a proper feature comparison (yet) but I would guess that those are part to the south-west rim quite a way beyond Cape Trib.

EDIT: Actually looking again, I'm inclined to change my mind. They probably are the very nearest peaks of the Cape Trib range that point toward Cape York.