Opportunity Route Map Options

[Phil Stooke]

This is another part of an Opportunity base map for route mapping. It's incomplete and low resolution here, a work in progress, but I'll post a complete high res version later.

This is Endurance crater. Two big pans were made from nearly opposite points on sols around 97 and 120 (I'm not looking at my notes here...) I took the first pan, plus a MOC cPROTO image, greatly enlarged, and reprojected the pan to fit the MOC image. This was not from a terrain model, but by rubber-sheeting using a thin plate spline method and 100 tie points. I'm using the geocorrection module in a GIS to do this. Incidentally I really need a good freeware rubber-sheeting program with a spline option (polynomials don't work properly for this). Any suggestions?

The first pan gives great results everywhere except right under the rover where the slope is too distorted. When the second pan is done, it will fill that gap. I'm working at much higher resolution than this image shows, of course.

Phil

[SigurRosFan]

Absolutely fantastic!!

Thanks Phil!

[RNeuhaus]

Awesome picture. I don't see any Oppy's track. Shall anyone point which side is north. I think that Oppy entered into Endurance Crater on the south side?

Rodolfo

[jamescanvin]

Awesome picture. I don't see any Oppy's track. Shall anyone point which side is north. I think that Oppy entered into Endurance Crater on the south side?

Rodolfo

You won't see any tracks as, as Phil said this is made using the first of the two pans made before Oppy entered Endurance.

This being Phils work I would be fairly sure that North is up.

Didn't Oppy enter Endurance from the west side? Burns cliff and 'escape hatch' are are on the south side.

[CosmicRocker]

Damn Phil. That is nice work.

[Nix]

Congrats Phil. A terrific work in progress!

Nico

[Phil Stooke]

Thanks for the nice comments. North is at the top... the pans were made from the west and southeast sides, and Opportunity entered and exited the crater on the southwest.

Here's part of the same image (with a few adjustments) blown up to illustrate the real resolution. This view contains most of the area traversed by Opportunity, but not Karatepe which has to come from the other pan.

Phil

[djellison]

Am I the only one who finds the route around Endurance a little confusing - I still cant pick out Ellesmere, Wopmay etc from overhead views, it's quite confusing.

Doug

[Phil Stooke]

Doug, I'll do some labelling later. It's true the press release stuff has not been great in this regard. But that's where we come in.

Phil

[djellison]

Top stuff :0

Doug

[um3k]

(Yes, it is a word, just not a real one.)

[Phil Stooke]

Let's not overlook the great work of Pando and Dilo and Tesheiner on mapping Mars! And all our panorama-makers, without whom maps are much harder to make.

Here is an annotated version of my last map. There must be many more names, but these are the ones which showed up on JPL graphics and status reports.

In fact, I would be very interested in other names if people would care to add them, from sources like the targeting info etc. Actually, we really need a systematic collection and graphic presentation of all these names used during the mission.

Phil

[jaredGalen]

Let's not overlook the great work of Pando and Dilo and Tesheiner on mapping Mars!

Absolutely right, and that mapping work has attracted almost 97,000 views as of today!! Nice one.

[um3k]

Let's not overlook the great work of Pando and Dilo and Tesheiner on mapping Mars!  And all our panorama-makers, without whom maps are much harder to make.

Phil

True, true. But they didn't do any rubber-sheeting! And plus, there can be only one #1. However, if you prefer the award (ok, so it's not much of an award) go to someone else, that can easily be arranged.

[Phil Stooke]

I appreciate it, um3k, I just don't want to take all the glory.

I'm having a hard time getting a map of the west outer rim of Endurance to come together. But eventually...

Phil