Shark's Tooth sounds like a good name for this rock, but I think the name may have already been taken. I can't remember where, though. I've been curious about these pyramidal rocks since Spirit landed in Gusev Crater. Why are there so many similarly shaped, pyramidal or pointed boulders in this hard rock terrain? Two well known boulders with similar shapes are Adirondak and Humphrey, but we have seen very many such boulders. I've concluded that rocks of this shape are the common result of impact shock waves.

Whatever their origin, the set of stereo subframes that came down today begged me to create an anaglyph view.

I think that the angular rocks seen by Spirit are ventifacts. Ventifacts form in the Earths deserts when rocks are sand blasted by wind first from one direction and then from another. The angle forms where the two blasted surfaces meet.

I collected my only Ventifact from sands lain down in an Arctic desert at Jodrell Bank.

Dunno which sw are you using to make such mosaics. Have you tried autostitch? You'll be surprised by its incredible results.

Tesheiner, thank you for mentioning Autostitch to me. I just downloaded it and so far I'm really impressed.

Have a look to this thread too for some tips: Autostitch.

Still a little more of the site 3 360 degree panorama to come down, but the L7 is all here.

This is just a quick test of the stitch really, so there is a lot of contrast mismatch, but I thought I'd post it to give you lot a quick preview.



James

Pretty "shark" pano anyway
Thanks, it realy gaves another perspective with new land visible.

Outstanding job James! I'm looking forward the color version...

I finished my own version of the mosaic just a few minutes ago!
I used R1 instead of L7 and didn't apply any balance to equalize the brightness difference of all the images (54 pictures is too much to do it manually!!!) so the end result isn't really great. Here is a thumbnail version; the full size is too big (8.5MBytes) to post here.



On a different topic, this current sol (1346) Spirit may start the move towards the west corner.

Tesheiner, thanks for the link to the Autostitch thread. What a great little program this is!
Nice work on those panoramas Jamescanvin, Tesheiner.

I won't argue with that, Paul. Most of the faceted boulders we see in Gusev are undoubtedly ventifacts. I was only suggesting that certain of the tooth-like rocks may have been initially shaped by impact fracturing.

Thanks for the panos, James and Tesh. This one will be awsome in color. We can see the structure of Home Plate very well from this position.

Sol 1346 images are coming down. Spirit left the vicinity of "Humboldt Peak" and moved about 10m to the west.

Here is the latest navcam mosaic (right eye).
The west corner can be seen on the second frame from the left and there seems to be a "nice" step right there. An anaglyph might tell the truth.

"Shark's Tooth Ridge" Sol 1344



James

I notice a lot of parallel alignment (bottom left to top right) among the dark rocks around the tooth. I had assumed these were just boulders, which ought to be randomly oriented. Or are we looking at steeply inclined layering in some in-situ outcrop? A single very large boulder being eroded into small in-situ fragments? Or is it just a chance effect?

I see the alignment. Speaking of "ventifacts", could prevailing wind directions help explain it?