I agree with your conclusions, clearly what we are seeing tracks with the near rim. But my point is, the aggregate of what we're seeing is consistent with a "window" or "keyhole" on the near rim through which different features are observed over time from the far rim.

Until we are close enough to measure the parallax associated withl recognizable features of the "beacon" as Oppy moves, I'm not sure how we could disambiguate features on the near rim, from a near-rim "keyhole" hypothesis.

Anyway, very nice work.

I don't see any features on the near rim that correspond to what is observed visually. It still appears to me that what we're observing are features on the far rim visible through a gap on the near rim.

Exactly right, Doug. I'm involved in a large-scale experiment which has (with government approval) a two year moratorium on release of the raw data. The NASA/JPL guys are amazingly open about how much information they are willing to share immediately. It makes perfect sense to me to withhold a portion of the "best data". The people who have worked around the clock getting the mission to this point deserve all of the credit in the world, and certainly deserve first crack at their data.

If you want to contrast and compare, go over to the Mars Express website. You mostly just get PR blurbs on that site....

These days gifs are public domain as well

Unisys's patent ran out in June, 2003.