Hell of a View, Where exactly was it? Options

[CosmicRocker]

For a long time I have been curious about the fabled, "Hell of a view" location. Although I was expecting it along with the rest of you, I wasn't actively looking for it at the critical time. So, I decided to look back to define its location. It appears to me that "Hell of a View" (HoaV) was topped by Opportunity on sol 785. It is difficult to pick exactly when she began to descend from HoaV, but it was between sols 787 and 814. If anyone wants to count pixels to more precisely define it, be my guest.

I am attaching a montage of horizons, screen-captured with MMB at a constant magnification. It is captioned to note how the appearance of Beagle crater changes with respect to the horizon, as Opportunity changes in elevation. I have another montage combining Phil's most excellent route map with a stretched version of the original HoaV profile. Stretching the profile between Eagle and Beagle confirms a location for HoaV in about the same place. I just do not have time to upload it on dialup tonight. I'll post it tomorrow. Sorry.

I thought it might be fun to see who, if anyone, recognized the event when it occurred. Kind of like a reverse poll, where it is too late to hedge your bet. Searching the forum for relevant posts is difficult, but I came up with a couple of links. I suspect there may be one or two comments that I missed, so post your links here.

As we left Erebus behind, RedSky asked where HoaV would be. Phil and centsworth_II made pretty good predictions for the time. http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...amp;#entry45719

On this low-fi view of the forum, I discovered that Chmee seems to have recognized the topographic topover on April 14th, 2006. A little later Dilo agreed, and noted that Opportunity was descending. That was around sol 789. http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...;f=2&t=2417 Their recognitions are the best I could find, and so far, the winners.

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[BrianL]

For a long time I have been curious about the fabled, "Hell of a view" location. Although I was expecting it along with the rest of you, I wasn't actively looking for it at the critical time.

My gut feeling is that HoaV never happened. HoaV to me means coming over a rise and having the view take your breath away. Kind of like when we peered into Endurance for the first time. I was expecting from the profile that we were going to look down into a valley with this monstrous crater taking up a good chunk of the real estate. Maybe not quite as dramatically as viewing inner basin from the top of Husband Hill, but you get the idea. When you have to go back and count pixels on the horizon, I have to say it wasn't a HoaV.

Brian

[chris]

Ho-hum of a view perhaps...

Chris

[Bill Harris]

The Heck of a View was rather underwhelming, wasn't it? At the topographic high on Sol 785, the view back to Erebus was non-existent and the view forward to Victoria was nearly that.

I expected to see Erebus with a backdrop of the "North Erebus dune field" and Endurance on the horizon to the North and a greatly foreshortened Victoria surrounded by a dark and smooth ejecta blanket to the south.

At least we'll have good views once we get to Beagle and Victoria...

--Bill

[Bob Shaw]

To be honest, I never reckoned the MOLA altitude figures were going to be accurate enough to provide anything other than a sort of CEP for the high point. A guide to the area generally being about as high as it would get, but that'd be it. Then, if you were at something other than the true 'peak', you'd barely see anything. And that's what happened!

Bob Shaw

[ElkGroveDan]

Let's look at it this way. For those of us expecting an enternal reward some day, a really nice view would be part of it. Those of us who were naughty and don't get our eternal reward, we get a "hell of a view".

[stevelu]

Ah, I tuned in to this discussion thinking that we had started discussing this (Victoria is finally fully visible as a crater!):

<img src="http://static.flickr.com/65/185713976_d454b027a3_b.jpg"><img>

For me, that definitely qualifies as the helluva view/takes my breath away moment.

[stevelu]

Oops.

Let's try that again:

[atomoid]

I was unbelieving... are we actually looking down into and seeing the inside of the hazy far wall of VC here? are we already almost there yet (or is VC really that big)?

Here's another good shot at the upper left.

the dark stuff of the Apron just ends abruptly, as if it drops off into the void of VC... makes The Becon look to be on the FAR SIDE!! if thats indeed it (ive lost track) ...but im still skeptical. it must be some kind of trick... if not, then it sure is one HECK of a View!

[David S.]

I may be completely off but aren't those twin peaks on the horizon supposed to belong to the north rim of the big crater on the ESE ? I think we're not looking at VC here, which should be a little more to the right in those pictures, but the north of the apron slowly rising toward the real rim of Victoria, and what you describe as the internal far rim should be the plains behind. No ? I could be wrong and that wouldn't be the first time

[lars_J]

I was unbelieving... are we actually looking down into and seeing the inside of the hazy far wall of VC here? are we already almost there yet (or is VC really that big)?

Here's another good shot at the upper left.

the dark stuff of the Apron just ends abruptly, as if it drops off into the void of VC... makes The Becon look to be on the FAR SIDE!! if thats indeed it (ive lost track) ...but im still skeptical. it must be some kind of trick... if not, then it sure is one HECK of a View!

No, I think that's just the far horizon/landscape. VC isn't *that* big.

But I think the inside of the VC crater is becoming visible - there is a thin sliver of a vertical wall visible just under the dar streak you mention. It looks sort of like Endurance creator looked from the landing spot.

Remmeber the the VC crater is sloping away from our viewpoint, so it is only now that we are getting close enough to start seeing into it.

[SFJCody]

I may be completely off but aren't those twin peaks on the horizon supposed to belong to the north rim of the big crater on the ESE ?

Sounds plausible. 200m high hills should be visible from over 30km.


Of course, if we had the exact distance & the height above the horizon in pixels then (assuming the horizon is perfectly flat) we could calculate the height of the crater rim. Any takers?

[atomoid]

Ok, i was completely nuts, dont listen to me. If i had pulled back to see a context image, and then consulted Teshiener's latest map (where would we ever be without him) it shows VC should be directly behind CC (er, Beagle that is). So it looks like were not higher than VC at all. As expected, we cant see down into it at nearly that high of an angle. the dark apron drop-off area is the top of the east apron edge contrasted against the lighter plains farther behind. Now if only Oppy had a derigible sky-cam, then we might be able to get the image i entertained we might have.

[CosmicRocker]

I may be completely off ...

Oh no, you're not. Those are the twin peaks of that big crater to the SSE. Most of Victoria crater was not visible in the sol 873 pancam set. The darker wedge just below the horizon and growing from left to right in stevelu's images is the southeastern side of Victoria.

[CosmicRocker]

My gut feeling is that HoaV never happened. HoaV to me means coming over a rise and having the view take your breath away. ...

Well, it did actually happen, but your point is well taken and worth mentioning. It really wasn't the view that some were expecting. The MOLA data that created the map that the profile was derived from had relatively widely spaced control points. So much detail is missing, that the map and profile are misleading to people who are expecting to see things like Victoria's rim in the data. That level of detail is just not there.

Ho-hum of a view perhaps...

Yeah, I can't argue with that. That's probably why it mostly escaped notice in the forum at the time.

The Heck of a View was rather underwhelming, wasn't it? At the topographic high on Sol 785, the view back to Erebus was non-existent and the view forward to Victoria was nearly that. ...

Underwhelming is probably the best one-word description. Though the view from those "lofty" elevations wasn't impressive, the identification of the actual high point was a significant event. I'm still not certain that I agree with your contention that the bedding is so close to horizontal that the elevation high corresponds to a stratigraphic one. I've seen local dips all over the map along this long traverse, but it seems to me that the average is a slight dip to the south.

Regardless of who is right about that, it would have been important for the MER team to recognize the elevation high and take a number of bedrock observations there, as we've mentioned. I checked back into the archived Opportunity updates (http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status_opportunityAll.html), and it does appear that they stopped to smell the roses more often than usual after sol 791.

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I think these are the original posts where the story of "Hell of a View" may have begun, but it might go back to an earlier post from alan. If anyone can find that, please post a link. Look here. There was a large (18 MB) pdf file linked to in the posts there. Later, a topographic map and a profile were extracted from the pdf and posted. I will add those images as attachments to at least show the captioned profile and the map it appears to have been derived from.

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