The Top of Vera Rubin Ridge Part 2, Site 67-73, sol 1944-2297, 24 Jan 2018-22 Jan 2019 Options

[PaulH51]

Drive during 1944, L-NavCam pan roughly stitched in MS ICE be should be good to help pinpoint the location. (the plan called for a 25 meter drive south)
(delete after proper version is posted)

[Phil Stooke]

Paul's sol 1944 panorama in circular form.

Phil

[elakdawalla]

New thread! Please keep sharing sol 1943 self-portrait work in the previous thread, and carry on discussing the ongoing mission here. Curiosity should be driving east across the top of the ridge for a little bit, chasing interesting CRISM pixels, before driving down into the valley. If we're lucky we might see a little action with restoring the drill to service, too.

[Ant103]

Sol 1944 Navcam pan Do we have a name for "the Valley-Behind-the-Ridge" (my temporay proposition for this place) ?

[Gerald]

The most common informal name seems to be "Phyllosilicate Trough", see e.g. here.

[HSchirmer]

The most common informal name seems to be "Phyllosilicate Trough",

Since Phyllo means "sheets/dough" and silica means hard, are we going to get placenames based on pastries?

[Gerald]

The phyllosilicates form a large class of silicate minerals, with the clay minerals as a subclass. Phyllosilicates have been identified by CRISM in the Phyllosilicate Trough (see e.g. fig. 6 on page 1723 in the paper).

[PaulH51]

Drive on 1946, here is what I could salvage from a rough stitch of the available L-NavCam's, hopefully it may assist in refining the location (mods to delete when the full version is posted)

[Ant103]

Incoming !

Still some pictures to complete it, but Sol 1946 is pretty, we have a good view on "Phyllosillicate Valley".

Edit : complete

[Phil Stooke]

For location purposes I did a rough patch of Damia's panorama and made a circular version:



Phil

[PaulH51]

A long distance RMI mosaic, roughly assembled from 9 overlapping images acquired on sol 1948.
The early pointing data on Joe Knapp's image page suggests that it is located Southwest of the rover, if confirmed then it could be a valley Mesa or a section the north side of 'Phyllosillicate Valley'.
I see a possible candidate on the NavCam images, but my monitor is poor (like my aging eyes). It could be mentioned in the weekend plan, but I've not found it yet. Thankfully we often get associated MastCam context frames with these image sets, hopefully we'll see it soon so we can establish the actual location.

EDIT: As often happens, another image from this set has come down which extends it to the left side a little. I wont flood the server by posting the updated version. Maybe we will see one of those rather nice pansharpened versions (hint) providing the MastCam images have enough detail

[PaulH51]

Looks like a nice drive (>20 meters?) on sol 1949. MS ICE does not want to play ball with the available images, but there is a lovely view West of the rover's tracks as it drove back onto the top of the ridge. Looking forward to seeing the full pan with a nice view of what awaits us in the valley.

[Ant103]

Sol 1949 Navcam panoramic. Just one missing frame but a very nice view.

[Phil Stooke]

I roughly patched Damia's panorama for location purposes - here is a circular projection of it.

Phil

[Art Martin]

I thought this might look amazing in 3D. I wasn't disappointed.

Curiosity Panorama 1949 Anaglyph

[PaulH51]

The wide exposure variations once again defeated MS ICE on the sol 1950 post drive L-NavCams. I managed to salvage this small section, hopefully it will assist in narrowing down the location until the full version is posted.

[Ant103]

Don't give up Paul. Maybe try a different stitching software.

Sol 1950 Navcam panoramic. The visibility is so good we can nearly touch the mountains of Gale crater rim !

[PaulH51]

Don't give up Paul. Maybe try a different stitching software.

Beautifully crafted panorama Damia I do hope that one day I can learn how to use some different software... Thankfully there is always lots of inspiration in this forum

[elakdawalla]

The wide exposure variations once again defeated MS ICE

I have sometimes found that I can encourage ICE to work by doing some preliminary exposure adjustment to better match adjacent frames.

[PaulH51]

I have sometimes found that I can encourage ICE to work by doing some preliminary exposure adjustment to better match adjacent frames.

I did try that with this batch, maybe I overdid the lightening of the darker images... More practice needed

[Ant103]

Sol 1950 Mastcam34 driving direction pan. Looks like some new features are visibles here.

[Phil Stooke]

Damia's panorama in circular projection - rover tracks are visible at lower left, on the edge of the dark-floored depression.

Phil

[neo56]

Postcard from Mars: with the particularly low atmospheric opacity these days, we have a crystal-clear view on the distant rim of Gale crater. What a vista!
This is a section of the sol 1950 NavCamR panorama with an extended sky.

[ngunn]

A stupendous view indeed. It would be a particularly good one on which to mark the whole route travelled so far. I'm especially enjoying the reminders of earlier parts of the journey, such as the reappearance of the little hill to the east I used to call 'Dumgoyne' now seen from above whereas we were looking up at it from Yellowknife Bay.

[neo56]

A stupendous view indeed. It would be a particularly good one on which to mark the whole route travelled so far.

Here it is! I used the recent JPL Press Release as a reference.

[PaulH51]

Here it is!

Very nice Thomas I'm so pleased they named some new features, particularly the large crater in the western rim wall, it's long been a landmark for me to decide where the rover was pointing. I hope they continue to release the names of the vales, gorges and Mesa's etc in the months and years ahead, it makes it so much more enjoyable to follow along and the share the mission with others.

Meanwhile on Mars: sol 1955: 5 frame RMI mosaic of 'Bloodstone Hill' (roughly assembled in MS ICE), I guess there could be more images, but this is all they had when I processed these

[HSchirmer]

I have sometimes found that I can encourage ICE to work by doing some preliminary exposure adjustment to better match adjacent frames.

Well, you might try a "suture" - a small image created from the edges of adjacent images, manually matching scale and exposure.

This roughly re-creates the "identify 3 match points" that was common in old camera stitch software.

[PaulH51]

Thanks. I'll see if I can find out more about that 'suture' process
EDIT : No drive on sol 1957, but the rover took another NavCam 360, so I have deleted the roughly stitched pan I posted earlier as it's the same as the one posted on 1950

[HSchirmer]

Thanks. I'll see if I can find out more about that 'suture' process

The other suggestion, see if you can dig up a copy of Canon's Photostitch, circa 2003
that had the incredibly useful ability to set manually forced match points.

I've got the .iso somewhere....

[PaulH51]

One of the telephoto RMI mosaics from sol 1959, roughly assembled in MS ICE with a little pre stitch processing on some of the frames. The 1959 mission update states that some of these long distance mosaics were checking various steep slopes to look for evidence of grain motion downhill.

[Ant103]

Sol 1957 (and 1959, one frame) panoramic.

[PaulH51]

Looks like they have completed the long awaited drive to the NE on 1962, path looks like a dogs leg, but the point to point may be around 50m. Still playing with ICE

[neo56]

I stitched a couple of MC100 pictures focusing on the foothills and outcrops on sol 1957 and 1959. Photos are taken at ~12h local time, so not a lot of contrast.







I also combined a recent RMI mosaic taken on sol 1961 with a MC100 picture to show the location of the outcrop that was imaged:

[Phil Stooke]

Great pictures, everybody - what an amazing place we are coming to! The next few years are going to be spectacular.

Phil

[Ant103]

Sol 1962 Navcam pan :

[PaulH51]

Potential Drill Site?
L-MastCam arm workspace: Sol 1962 (MS ICE) minimal processing, some nice surface details on the exposed bedrock
Fingers crossed they get the all clear to drill... Been a while

[neo56]

Gregory Dubos, who works at JPL on Curiosity, recently tweeted (@astroptere) that his team is currently preparing a new drilling attempt.

[Phil Stooke]

Damia's new panorama for sol 1962 in circular form.

Phil

[PaulH51]

Gregory Dubos, who works at JPL on Curiosity, recently tweeted (@astroptere) that his team is currently preparing a new drilling attempt.

Good spot Thomas
The possibility of using the drill at this location is also addressed in the sol 1963 mission update

[PaulH51]

The 1965 mission update calls for a 360 MastCam mosaic, maybe to support that they have also acquired a NavCam set of the Rover deck Should be an impressive panorama from this vantage point.

There is also a nice candidate for another iron-nickel meteorite in the arm workspace, the team are going to be here for a while if the ground is suitable to attempt drilling, so maybe they will give it a zap to see if it is iron, I hope the coating on its topside is not dust, maybe wishful thinking that is a ferrous oxide, or maybe where is was in contact with a rock (if it was buried in the sediments)

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Phil Stooke]

This is part of Paul's workspace mosaic (with a little patch), posted earlier, annotated with recent activities.

Phil

[elakdawalla]

FYI (from Ashwin), the smaller pile (upper one in your view) is the sieved (fine-grained) sample, the larger pile the unsieved (coarse-grained) sample.

Curiosity update forthcoming.

[Phil Stooke]

Thanks, I was trying to decide which was which.

Phil

[PaulH51]

Go For Drilling at "Lake Orcadie" Link

[Phil Stooke]

Suffering through a bit of an image diet here, but it looks like we had a successful drill on 1977. Here's a comparison of images 2 sols apart.

Phil

[PaulH51]

Suffering through a bit of an image diet here....

Good eyes as always Phil
Looks like the drought may have been eased, with the arrival of 100+ L-MastCam full frames from the 360 pan acquired on sol 1965, although I would rather have got the NavCams from the recent pre-FED & FED activities. But we did get a bonus in a sol 1971 RMI of what appears to be (to my amateur eyes) suspiciously like another iron meteorite candidate in the current workspace
The 360 pan frames are all Bayer encoded, so I cant do them any justice, hopefully the image wizards here will be able to use those and the NavCam Deck images to make another masterpiece

[Phil Stooke]

http://www.midnightplanets.com/web/MSL/ima...02E01_DXXX.html

Told you! There it is.

Phil

[Explorer1]

High five to the whole team! The drought is (almost) over!
Only step 1, though, as this press release explains.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7070

[PaulH51]

...Only step 1, though....

Great news, really looking forward to the next steps in that process

[PaulH51]

Going to try drilling again, need to be deeper to obtain a sample, but first the DRT and APXS will assess the new target (Lake Orcadie 2) roughly 7 inches to the right of the first hole. Link

[Phil Stooke]

Sol 1979, DRT at Lake Orcadie 2.

Phil

[PaulH51]

Checking-Out the Phyllosilicate Trough to the SW of the rover (Telephoto RMI mosaic assembled in MS ICE, sol 1981)

[PaulH51]

Three of the recent ChemCam targets from sols 1980 & 1981.
A lovely looking vein (calcium sulfate?) A revisit to 'Black Cuillin' and yet another candidate iron meteorite (judging by the bright laser spots)... (mosaics assembled in MS ICE)
I think I may need to make a list of these candidates

[PaulH51]

Felt compelled to make the GIF (looks like a little movement in the sand grains below the target)

[fredk]

Checking-Out the Phyllosilicate Trough to the SW of the rover (Telephoto RMI mosaic assembled in MS ICE, sol 1981)

Thanks for the mosaic. There was another sequence on 1980 looking at a crater out in the plains to the north:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/pr...CCAM04980L1.PNG
I haven't found the exact spot but it should be in this frame:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/pr...NCAM00297M_.JPG

[PaulH51]

Thanks for the mosaic. There was another sequence on 1980 looking at a crater out in the plains to the north:

I believe it is the 'Crater on Peace Vallis Fan' identified on Photojournal PIA22208 Link and Photojournal PIA22210 Link (see fig1)
MS ICE did not want to work for me with those images, but Neville Thompson assembled it and published it on Gigapan Link.
The acquisition of the long-distance images of the 'Peace Vallis fan' was also mentioned in the Mission Update for sol 1980 Link

[Phil Stooke]

Not quite... it's here:



(took a while to find it)

Phil

[PaulH51]

Not quite... it's here:

Good eyes Phil (as always)

[Phil Stooke]

Sol 1982... looks like the drill happened. To my eyes it looks like it made only a small ring of tailings, suggesting only a small drill hole, possibly stopped early.

Phil

[PaulH51]

To my eyes it looks like it made only a small ring of tailings, suggesting only a small drill hole, possibly stopped early.

Edit: I found more images of the 1982 attempt, times appear similar, maybe they were going to drill for longer this time?

Better luck next time... 'Third time's always a charm'

[Phil Stooke]

Regarding the Peace Vallis RMI images - we have two nice sequences very recently which I hope somebody will mosaic for us - you may find this new LPSC abstract useful:

https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2018/pdf/2965.pdf

Interesting information on RMI and Mastcam observations including "super-resolution" efforts.

Phil

[PaulH51]

Nice find Phil, would be nice to see those figures used in that abstract at the full resolution one day, especially the "super-resolution" observations

[Phil Stooke]

I've updated the annotated image of the workspace to include the new drill attempt.

Phil

[PaulH51]

Hope someone with more skills and professional applications can have a go at assembling the Peace Vallis mosaics. ICE running on my old laptop will only join these 17 of the 20 in this set from 1981, and that was after much trial and error in cropping away the bright borders (vignetting?) from the overlapping regions before dropping into ICE. No additional processing was done on the images, just cropping and then into ICE.

[Phil Stooke]

Thanks, Paul. That image might seem hard to interpret or do anything with (not Paul's fault! It's the geometry) but look what happens when you stretch it out vertically to counter the foreshortening:

Imagine doing this with all the mosaics of the fan. Eventually you get good coverage of large areas with lots of scope for analysis of the geomorphology.



Phil

[PaulH51]

Imagine doing this with all the mosaics of the fan. Eventually you get good coverage of large areas with lots of scope for analysis of the geomorphology.

That certainly provides a different perspective

[jccwrt]

Taking Phil's idea and running with it a bit: a rough foreshortened-corrected 40 image RMI mosaic, and an animated map-projected version overlaid on the USGS orthophoto image of Gale Crater. Will definitely need to check this out with PDS data once it's released.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[jccwrt]

Double-post just to add another attachment, which has Curiosity's current location as a red X and an outline of the RMI mosaic footprint.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[PaulH51]

Fantastic work on the RMI mosaics guys
Simple animated GIF of the second sample acquisition attempt at Lake Orcadie 2 (1.5 second blink rate)
Source frames (sol 1980 & sol 1983) Margins added to roughly align the frames.
Now time to seek 'Softer Pastures'

[Phil Stooke]

Wow, Justin - fantastic results!

Phil

[PaulH51]

Here is my version of the sol 1984 long-distance RMI mosaic that the sol 1984 mission update refers to as 'a portion of the clay unit that represents part of Curiosity's future agenda'. I have sharpened the images a little before assembling in ICE. There was also another RMI sequence of the PV fan, but I think I best leave that mosaic to Justin and the other experts

[jvandriel]

The Navcam L panoramic view on Sol 1985.

Jan van Driel

[Ant103]

Sol 1985 Navcam panoramic

[Phil Stooke]

Thanks for that nice panorama! Here is a circular projection of it. You can see the tracks leading up from the previous outcrop site to the current location, almost in a straight line.

Phil

[PaulH51]

Nice work on the 360's and the circular projection
Here's the Sol 1985 L-MastCam Workspace mosaic. Unprocessed, only assembled in MS ICE.
No contact science planned on this gravelly patch of ground, so another drive is planned for 1986 heading towards the Northeast

[Ant103]

Sol 1986 Navcam pan is already here



And thank you Paul ^^

[vikingmars]

Sol 1986 Navcam pan is already here
And thank you Paul ^^

Thanks very much Ant103

[Phil Stooke]

Yes indeed, thanks! Here is a circular projection of it which I used to update the map.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

A little discrepancy in names... can anyone throw any light on this situation?

Due west of our current position there is a distinctive crater at the foot of the wall of Gale crater. It seems to have been given two names:

Slangpos: https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2017/pdf/2995.pdf

Slagnos: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA22208


Slangpos looks like the correct name to me (matching the Namibian naming scheme used during the period when the ChemCam RMI mosaic was made, see link). So is Slagnos a mistake, or a separate name?

Please let me know if you have any insight into this.

Phil

[elakdawalla]

Fred Calef says it’s “Slangpos” crater.

[Phil Stooke]

Thanks, Emily and Fred.

Phil

[ngunn]

A little discrepancy in names... https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA22208

A very nice location map (despite the Slangpos error) which I had not seen until you posted it, thanks. One thing: for me the nested link to the 22210 panorama does not work, so for anyone like myself following here and wishing to compare the two here's one that should - https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j...4pSt51gGJFAjI4n

[anticitizen2]

animation of drilling on sol 1982

[PaulH51]

Nice animation

Another drive during Sol 1989. No drive data yet but they performed a series of wheel checks at the onset of the drive, then drove for around 1 hour. I've roughly assembled the available L-NavCams in MS ICE. Edit: Looks like the rover did a turn in place after this small set was acquired.

[PaulH51]

L-NavCam mid drive imaging on Sol 1991. Roughly assembled in MS ICE
EDIT: Midnight Planets reports the drive as ~15.0m ENE

[PaulH51]

A small taste of what is to come in the 360 when all the images come down, It's going to be an interesting traverse across the trough and onto the rounded buttes and mesas of the sulfate unit

Cropped from 4 L-NavCam frames

[djellison]

Sadly I couldn't get enough bits in the plan to finish that upper tier - I only had two frames to spend, and needed three

[neo56]

A postcard from Mars, sol 1981. I love how the late afternoon light enhances the relief of the hills...

[PaulH51]

A postcard from Mars, sol 1981. I love how the late afternoon light enhances the relief of the hills...

A de-bayered Gem, thanks Thomas
Here's a simple mosaic using L-MastCam frames from the recent wheel checks on Sol 1989

[PaulH51]

Numerous small light-toned structures (crystals?) in this sol 1991 pre-drive target? I think it could be called 'Seaforth Head' as it was the only MALI target mission update
R-MastCam link

MAHLI link

[PaulH51]

Sol 1991 arm workspace (L-MastCam. MS ICE raw

[jvandriel]

The Navcam L view on Sol 1991.

Jan van Driel

[Ant103]

My take on this Sol 1991 :

[neo56]

A mosaic of three MC100 pictures taken on sol 1987 showing nice details on the foothills and yardangs.

[PaulH51]

Very nice processing from Jan, Damia and Thomas
Sadly there's some data drop out on this telephoto RMI frames from this mosaic, so this was the best I could do with MS ICE and the available images, hopefully they will be able to command the rover to resend the affected frames? If not I am sure there will be a better version posted soon, maybe even a colour composite (hint)

Looks like this sol 1994 mosaic was targeting the stratigraphy of the edge of a Mesa from the Sulfate unit and a section of the more distant Light Toned Yardang Unit' (LTYu), the mission plan called for two RMI's of the Yardang unit, so hopefully this one could be extended or we have another one to look forward to.

Raw images: link
EDIT: A few images have been resent, leaving just one with drop out, but looks like only one has been enhanced so far, fingers crossed for the remaining image and all to be enhanced

[Phil Stooke]

RMI took a super-resolution sequence in the peace Valley fan on sol 1993. Here's a quick look at it. The images were registered, enlarged 3x, sharpened and merged. A comparison between part of it and one of the original images (the last one), enlarged 3x, is included. Of course, the real PDS data will give better results.

Phil

PS OK, RMI persons, how about doing this for the landing site, maybe targeted to include the bit of the backshell which Doug thought he could see...

[Phil Stooke]

... and Jan's 1991 panorama in circular form.

Phil

[fredk]

That shows really nicely how we're perched on the ridge above some pretty steep cliffs above the plain in the north, Phil.

[PaulH51]

Sol 1993 arm workspace (L-MastCam. MS ICE raw)

[PaulH51]

Another drive, looks to be Northeast (again) probably towards that CRISM target on one of Phil's wide area maps?
ICE is not behaving with the available images, maybe I'll have more success when more come down Link