Journey to Mt Sharp - Part 4: Beyond the Kimberley, Sol 634 [May 19, '14] to 706 [Jul 31, '14] Options

[anticitizen2]

New sights! Anaglyph pan album for 655
http://imgur.com/a/V5peX

And the stretched version
http://imgur.com/a/TGs8x

I finally managed to 'see' a crosseyed image this weekend, so now anaglyphs feel like putting the training-wheels back on the bike

[dilo]

Great views, anticitizen2!
I think we are seeing the two (already highlighted) circular features in the central frame, probably Curiosity will visit them in next days...

[Phil Stooke]

A quick guess as to our location on sol 655. I will update the map later. (EDIT - I changed the attached file and corrected the location)

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

According to https://twitter.com/Matt_Heverly/status/476343275683454976, Curiosity just passed the 7 km mark. Joe's drive log has us over 300 m past that. It's hard to reconcile everything, but I guess I have to go with the project.

Phil

[elakdawalla]

Hmm. Might that number correct for slip?

[Phil Stooke]

Yes, that's what is going on, we always have this conflict between numbers.

Phil

[algorithm]

Following on from my previous post (#156), am I to conclude that this is a sequence of shots from an 'autofocus assist' laser?

The other question I had was that if the images were captured minutes apart, why does the ripple effect appear the way it does?

Were they taken minutes apart or just received/uploaded minutes apart?

[fredk]

Yeah, from what I read the CW laser is used for autofocus. The laser fires and the secondary is stepped through some range of travel, while the returned intensity is monitored. I think the maximum intensity corresponds to the in-focus position. But someone may correct me/elaborate on this. Normally the CW laser is used for focusing but no images are taken/returned while it is running. But it looks like they decided to do that on that sol, maybe to check the alignment of the CW laser.

I assume each firing of the main laser blasts the dust farther out. When the images are combined into an animation it looks like a smooth outwards ripple-like motion, but in reality it happens in short bursts with each main laser pulse.

I think the timestamps correspond to the time the images were taken.

[anticitizen2]

Yesterday's pan album is now complete with the images of the tracks: Sol 655 and stretched

Today's view is even more exciting! Sol 656 anaglyph album
Sol 656 stretched anaglyph album

Here are the 655 and 656 drives from the HazCam
And the drives anaglyph'd

The first segment of the 656 drive in the NavCam
Two pairs of images looking ahead at the circular features - http://i.imgur.com/293DjsA.gif

[Gerald]

... perhaps to check the alignment.

This presumption appears to be correct. Here the processed PDS previews of three Sol 283 alignment tests:
Targets Sulky_CCAM, East_River, and Long_Island.
Raw ChemCam images contain ghosts and smearing, most obvious for images of bright objects in a dark environment, as in these cases.

Metadata about the ChemCam images confirming the alignment tests can be found in file msl_ccam_obs.csv of this PDS directory.

Excerpt:

283,CR0,422611899,CR0_422611899EDR_F0060082CCAM02283M1.IMG,Image,East_River,ccam
02283,No,5.27021,3.033,1.238, , , , ,1,1, , , 11:25:38:094,6,82,6,Single obs,alignment test,,,,,,Flat Rock Surface

[fredk]

Thanks for digging that up, Gerald. I guess they wanted to test the alignment over a range of target distances.

[Floyd]

Trying to keep speculation here rather than Map Thread, it seems Marco's northern route is not northern enough. We are now northwest of where the yellow route turned south to join the green provisional route. Does it now look like we will not be joining the green route any time soon, but rather loosely paralleling it 200-300 m to the north?

Marco, maybe you could do a new look ahead from where we are now.

[Ant103]

Sol 657 Navcam panoramic after such a long drive

[jmknapp]

Dustbowl ahoy!

[charborob]

There seems to be a problem with your anaglyph. Try this one: