Conjuction is February 4th, so assuming we arrive at Santa Maria by the end of this week, and taking the blackout period to last about a week after conjunction (it's actually not sharply defined), that gives us 8 weeks to spend at Santa Maria. Let's hope there's something interesting there!

If it's just the same old meridiani bedrock, I suppose they may just decide to drive off after the holidays. That'd give us a few weeks headstart on the drive to Endeavour. Although then they'd have to sit somewhere even more uninteresting over conjunction.

Probably but maybe not necessarily? I'm still wondering what this area is, and it's just to the southeast now. (Three years later and here we are. Wow.)

I was hoping for this. A fourth panel to complete the left end of the magnificent whole-body Santa Maria portrait has arrived: http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...2NP2360R2M1.JPG

Nobody can complain about the rate of forward progress of late and I like talk of lots of data. Is there still a chance of a colour version?

Nice. I haven't done an actual stitch for a while:

Full length version of the Santa Maria portrait...

http://twitpic.com/3fo75f/full

Despite trying I can't get rid of the dark areas betwen frames, unlike others here do, but pleased with this anyway, and looking forward to all your cleaned-up versions :-)

Its amazing how quickly Santa Maria has appeared. A few weeks ago it was just a tiny vague feature in the pancam images.

Did you notice the Mars Globe on the Sundial? (from this image: 1N345428754EFFAZ2NP0653R0M1.JPG)

VERY nice, and thanks for letting me use it as the new header on my blog!

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com

This is entirely coincidental discolouring of the pancam calibration target over the course of the mission.

Here's the sun dial as brand new:
http://www.astrobio.net/articles/images/sull_sundialg.jpg

Before the final approach, a regional anaglyph of the environment (1/4 of full size) might be of some interest. It's evident that Santa Maria is located on the (near) slope of a basin, probably an ancient double crater, and thus is tilted away from us. At the lower right part of the unusual terrain is visible.

Oh, I know! But I do like the coincidence.

It will be interesting to see that close up. Notice how there are several of what look like heavily eroded craters in the dark stuff, with the insides of the craters lighter, like the surrounding plains.

And, since we should turn to the SE after Santa Maria to head towards Cape York, it's a good bet we'll drive right through some of those dark areas.

That's very nice - thanks for the anaglyph. You can also get a good sense of the basin and Santa Maria's position on the near slope from Phil's recent stretch.

According to MER Pancam Data Tracking Web Interface there was another 100 meters drive today!!!

I can't wait to see how SM looks from less than 100 meters now!

Stu,

after downloading and before stitching, use an Anti-Vignetting programme to remove most of the dark
areas.
I use MRCAntiVignetting.

Jan van Driel