James, your work is incredible! Thank you for sharing your skills!

OMG!

I am glad I have lived to see a view like this from Mars.

Thank you, James.

James, fantastic work. I assume this is 2/3 of a 360 degree view? Or is this the essentially complete pan?

I think that's got to be the whole pan, since we're not using flash at the moment so whatever's down now is all we're getting. The latest update says "The project plans to implement the masking after an independent review is held later this week."

But wow, what a view!

Thank you everyone for the comments on it.

On Sol 3902 we drove about 20 meters, so I took it at that point the pan was done so I then wrapped it up. The latest update also says that it was going to be a 360, so for what ever reason I'm assuming they terminated it early. My guess is a mix of ants in their pants to drive and get a better view of Marithon Valley and the preparation for masking off the flash. I was secretly hoping for a 360 pan with the possibility of a rover deck pan. But we can't always get what we want I guess....it's a wonderful view regardless.

While driving on the crest Oppy will be still high above the plains : they can image the missing horizon with PanCam L2/L5/L7, so that we can have a 360° pan for the far features...

Boy did I bite the dust! It had not occurred to me that the image of the RAT was part of the summit pan.I was looking for that missing pointing.... http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia19109

Just when we're discussing elevations, the latest traverse map includes an excellent elevation contour overlay! (And gives the summit height to the mm: -1379.857 m! )

Great map! Here are a couple of Navcam horizon sections from sol 3909 - with a considerable vertical stretch - st show the distant features. I think the sky is clearing a bit, but there's a long way to go.

Phil

Thanks fredk for the link to the map, and thanks to the professionals who produced it and made it available. It's exactly what we need. Phil - can you provide a context (or azimuths) for those horizon views? I've been looking hard at one part of the the horizon but I can't locate it in your images.

Finally, a pancam view in the right direction . . I think that's Miyamoto on the left, big and very faint with a smaller hill in front of it.
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...BXP2351R1M1.JPG

Phil's stretched images reminded me of something. While Opportunity is near its current "mountaintop" location in dusty conditions, is it possible that at sundown it could image the mountain-shadow phenomenon that visitors to the top of Mauna Loa often can see?
http://darkerview.com/wordpress/?p=8766
The physics being the same on both worlds, I suspect that it could, since the "point" is more of a trick of perspective and viewpoint than of the steepness of the slopes. But perhaps the altitude is not enough to obtain that perspective.

I've had a crude go at tweaking brightness and contrast to bring out the outline of Miyamoto.

http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_ins...847B_P2445.html

Doing anything in color much beyond that time will be hard as fringing between filters will dominate the effect. Navcam might be able to pull something off.

Just curious. Marathon Valley has been a key objective for years and now it's potentially a few days drive away. Are there any other targets of comparable interest within a few months drive? Curious about the next big goal and the overall mission strategy after this.

<edit: sorry this is probably not the place for this discussion, but I am not seeing an obvious way to delete it>

ADMIN: No need to delete, we just moved it from the 'map' thread to here.