Out The Crater.., on to the Heatshield Options

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

Is this panorama intened to provide a record of Oppy's journey in the crater?

edit: LOTS of NavCam images coming down, a complete 360 by the look of it. Is this the pan they were planning to do or was that going to be with the panoramic camera?

.... some pancam subframes of the heatshield in, are we seeing features on the distant horizon here?



One of the better images, with slightly less pixel bleeding:

[mook]

.... some pancam subframes of the heatshield in, are we seeing features on the distant horizon here?

I don't think so — or they would turn up on the other frames. I think it's just haze / out-of-focus horizon.

[CosmicRocker]

I was kind of looking forward to looking back down and seeing the tracks of where Opportunity travelled inside the crater. But apparently the perspective is not good from the current location. Do you suppose they might move her to a different location on the rim before doing the panorama?

[CosmicRocker]

.... some pancam subframes of the heatshield in, are we seeing features on the distant horizon here?

I think that is pretty much the same horizon in all the subframes. It is just less distinct in the L3 (red) than it is in the L5 (green) filter. The distant surface is more reflective in the L3 than it is in the L5, too.

[djellison]

I was kind of looking forward to looking back down and seeing the tracks of where Opportunity travelled inside the crater.  But apparently the perspective is not good from the current location.  Do you suppose they might move her to a different location on the rim before doing the panorama?

Looks to me like they've done it - a full NAVcam panorama. Not Pancam. No point in another 3 sols of UHF being lost to the third colour panorama of Endurence crater.

And yes - I see no reason why one wavelength wouldnt spot the etched terrain off in the distance and bring it out very brightly - it shows up - like most rock in the area - very bright in the UV.


Might we be seing that feature even from this distance?


1m/pixel of the next few sols driving.

[akuo]

Those distant features were well spotted. I guess the atmosphere around meridiani has cleared during the last 5-6 months. Oppy had a very limited visibility inside the crater :-).

I think a partial pancam panorama would be useful at this moment. They did one when leaving the Eagle crater to record the adventures there. Also they are probably now in the highest position around the plains that they will be in some time. It would be worth it to do a panorama at least around the horizon to see if anything else has come up through the haze.

[djellison]

Those distant features were well spotted. I guess the atmosphere around meridiani has cleared during the last 5-6 months. Oppy had a very limited visibility inside the crater :-).

I think a partial pancam panorama would be useful at this moment. They did one when leaving the Eagle crater to record the adventures there. Also they are probably now in the highest position around the plains that they will be in some time. It would be worth it to do a panorama at least around the horizon to see if anything else has come up through the haze.

Well - when comms conditions are not great - shifting >200Mbits of data just for pretty pictures isnt too good an idea

I'm sure a full pancam panorama will follow when we get to the heatshield - and if there's anything to be seen on the horizon ( which they're probably wont ) - it'll be seen from there as clearly as it would have been from a couple of metres higher on the rim of Endurance. We can see from the pancam pics taken yesterday that looking toward the Heatshield - there's nothing you can see in the distance really.

Doug

[tedstryk]

It is too bad they don't take a full resolution pan in one color, and then bin two more colors 2x2 or even 4x4...sort of Galileo style color. Or even a red-blue pan with synthetic green. This would give us a high resolution pan to study, as well as color data on a broad scale.

[akuo]

It is too bad they don't take a full resolution pan in one color, and then bin two more colors 2x2 or even 4x4...sort of Galileo style color.  Or even a red-blue pan with synthetic green.  This would give us a high resolution pan to study, as well as color data on a broad scale.

They use adjustable compression of images in the rovers. By using sufficiently high compression, they can get the same size reduction as with binning. For example some of the navcam images from friday (I think) were very compressed. Pancam images are quite often compressed quite a lot. Image scaling to half-size has been also used, but mostly for hazcams and navcams.

[tedstryk]

Yes, but combined with binning they could make the images even smaller. They could still be used to produce a rough color view to overlay over full resolution images.

[djellison]

They did that a LOT early on - infact, for both rovers the mission success pan from the lander base was done with L2 at full res and L5 and L6 2x2 binned

Doug

[pioneer]

How far away is the heatshield?

[tedstryk]

I wonder why they cut back. It would seem that it would be a good way to expand basic color coverage.

[azstrummer]

Why the need for a pan? My word, they did tons of panning prior to heading down into the crater. Doubt much has changed. Anyway, great news it got out successfully. Time to go for a record a day on distance traveled.

[tedstryk]

Perhaps for "Before and After" coverage showing the wheel tracks in the crater. At the very least it would be a good publicity stunt.