Geomorphology of Cape York and Solander Point, Examining Opportunity's destination at Endeavour Crater Options

[Stu]

Everyone, say hello to Cape York... in colour...



Larger version on my blog: http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2010/...-york-in-colour

[CosmicRocker]

You have to be very careful when looking at elevations using Google Mars. As I and others have pointed out, most of the topographic information used in Google mars is based on the MOLA coverage, which is not uniform, and typically not very closely spaced. Large stretches of Endeavor's rim were not sampled at all by MOLA shot points, so elevation maps derived from them do not display accurate elevations where topography is changing rapidly between MOLA lines and sample points. Emily posted a very nice kml file that will display those shot points in Google Mars. I think it was in the Distant Vistas thread.

One area of Mars that has higher frequency elevation coverage in Google Mars is Victoria Crater. That area has been populated with a digital elevation model based on more closely sampled points, probably based on a HiRise stereo pair. If you look at Victoria Crater in Google Mars you will see much more topographic detail than most anywhere else.