Thanks Tim, glad we're in agreement about what we are seeing.

Parts of Iazu are only a little further than Cook on the far side of Endeavour, ~20% further off the top of my head (not at my machine ATM) certainly close enough to be visible if it is in our LOS - which is possible if it's rim is higher than Endeavour's as Google Earth suggests.

From the azimuth it could be either, it's in the direction of the extreme west edge of Endeavour and the centre(ish) of Iazu beyond.

Maybe, but is a lot more hazy than the other West rim feature and Cook on the far rim which imply it's considerably further away. Looking on Google Earth it possible we are seeing the crater beyond! Iazu crater according to Google, does appear to have a more pronounced rim than Endeavour.

What I find most confusing is that the Resolution mosaic was taken after the drive. It would have been much better taken before the drive when Oppy was much closer to the crater. I'm sure all will become clear in due course.

We don't know yet.

Discussion of this type should be posted in this thread rather than here in the route map thread.

I was expecting you to pull more features out of the noise.



I think so.

And here is that image overlaid on one of those 'inverse polar' orbital images I've made in the past. (where each column of the image is one line of sight from our current position)



I'll leave Rui to draw any lines and do any wild speculation, but...

I see three distinct features, twin peaks, Cook and then on the right, a feature that coincides with the most prominent feature on the west rim; where we are heading!

I think now might be a more appropriate time to say "Land ahoy!" eh, Stu?

James

P.S I'll try and do this with a better orbital image at some point.

Quick 10x Phil-o-vision and contrast stretch of the horizon L2's

Wow! Nice.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...93P2421R2M1.JPG

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...93P2421R2M1.JPG

Well that was a little unexpected. North-West?

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...93P0675R0M1.JPG

Thanks Ant - welcome back


I've been waiting for the rest of the Ranger Crater pan. However I've just checked the PDT and it looks like the second tier has already been deleted from the rover without being downlinked. So we are left with a long thin 19x1 image.



Click image

James

The Huygens image is actually greyscale - all the coloured versions out there are artificial.

Correct. Sol 1816 ~40m SSW from a quick check of the tracking data

Which pancam is that? Twin peaks and Cook are far to far apart to appear on the same pancam image.

EDIT: Actually, given how hazy the Twin Peaks are, we may struggle to see the more distant Cook at this time.

I'm with Rui on this one - If anything the 'Twin Peaks' are less distinct now than when we were at Victoria.

They are quite hazy now, but look at the raw image Rui linked in post 1 of this thread they are quite distinct, as is 'Cook'. Of course the added hazyness does give a better impression of distance.

Doesn't really matter though does it, it's just nice to have them back on the horizon again.
Looking forward to seeing 'Cook' again as well sometime - it'll be nice to have a beacon on the far rim for a change.

Don't count on it. Those peaks are on the north section of Endeavour - almost due east from Oppys current position.

She is headed to the west rim and with the route we are taking I don't expect her to get significantly closer to those peaks.

Don't worry though, I'm sure we'll get some very alluring peaks to aim at sometime soon.

There are lots of online printers these days that are reasonably priced - I just put the 1.3m x 1.0m size quoted for that map into a poster printing site I've used in the UK before and get a quote of £39 (~$55 US) Not too bad for such a large photo quality print.

I've been a bit out of the loop recently, learning how to be a parent! However I think I've mastered the important 'hold baby in one arm while using the other to process MER images' technique.

Cobble survey from sol 1811



James

So I did - fixed.

Thanks Emily.

I thought it might help visualise our progress and speed towards Endeavour by plotting Opportunities position every 100 sols on a large map.

Now we're at sol 1800 here is the first one.



and with the ripple map overlay



James

Here is a first draft of a Google Mars file with links to all the Opportunity images I have created over the years.

http://www.nivnac.co.uk/mer/Martian_Vistas_Opportunity.kml

You need to have Google Earth open and in 'Mars mode' else the links will be in the Atlantic.

Click on an icon to bring up a thumbnail image then click on image to open the relevant entry on my site in a browser.



Comments, corrections welcome...

James

Personally I think we should avoid using ships for our own informal names to reduce the possibility of there being a conflict between the two. i.e. ending up with same name for different objects.

I could easily see a different crater getting the official name Lightning - and that would get confusing.

I vote for sticking with Mini-Endurance.

Porcupine maybe? I can't see any other reason to continue SW. May be quite an interesting target - and photogenic as well, I'm getting bored of these endless ripples again now.

That is because the old one is still in your cache. Hold the shift key while clicking reload.

It took a couple of weeks for the Internet Archive to index the site - the earliest record is from the 20th Feb 2004:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040220210240/....rlproject.com/