Distant vistas, Endeavour, Iazu, and beyond Options

[fredk]

I'm over here!

Here's my take on the latest view of Bopolu. L6 and R1 registered and averaged to reduce jpeg artifacts. Linear contrast stretch and 3x vertical stretch (bottom). No smoothing/noise reduction apart from what happened during rotation.

Much better than our views on previous sols! I wonder if the improvement is just a more fortuitous auto stretching of the jpl jpegs, or if the sky is clearing too.

[Bill Harris]

I think it's a case of increasing atmospheric transparency-- remember the crisp views of Endeavour/Iazu just a few days ago at Sol 2170. And it's only going to get better...

--Bill

[jamescanvin]

I've taken the image fredk made and tried to do some feature mapping on a reprojected HRSC image of Bopolu. I think this should be pretty close, the Google Mars 3D matches pretty well with what we see (also included) which gives me some confidence I'm in the right ballpark.



James

[djellison]

And it's only going to get better...

If it's down to atmospheric opacity, it's almost certain to get worse and better and worse and better..

[fredk]

Nice job, James! That GM view is really convincing.

[Bill Harris]

If it's down to atmospheric opacity, it's almost certain...

True, atmospheric transparency will have it's ups and downs, but starting the trek downhill, the view will be getting better...

[SteveM]

True, atmospheric transparency will have it's ups and downs, but starting the trek downhill, the view will be getting better...

I'm puzzled by that comment; although we will be getting closer, usually the view is best from the top of a hill.
Steve M

[Phil Stooke]

What about the view of the hill?

Phil

[fredk]

The views should improve in the coming months because we're heading into winter, when the transparency's best. I doubt the tiny changes in elevation we'll do will make much difference.

[Tesheiner]

We should also take into account that the route will turn due east and head directly towards Endeavour once we go past the twin craters. After that point, the view should also start to become better in terms of resolution.

[ngunn]

Slight downgrade and smaller ripples should also help.

[ngunn]

I was delighted to find a nice 4-frame horizon pan among today's images and I've assembled a paper copy. Bopulu is on the right and each of the leftmost two frames contains one prominant dark horizon feature. The one in the second frame looks like the feature Phil identified here:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&id=20656.

From our current position I reckon the twin craters should be about 7 degrees to the left of that, but the two dark horizon features are about 15 degrees apart. In short, I'm not really sure of the identification of either of them, or where (or if) the twin craters actually appear in this view.

Help!!

[Tman]

I get these values from the position on sol 2181. The feature at 181° should be a part of the twin craters.
But it seems to me it's just the left rim of the left crater (from the viewpoint of Oppy on sol 2181) and because of the twin craters cover about 5 degrees in this image your 7 degrees could roughly match nevertheless...

[ngunn]

OK, but that's a little unexpected since from fredk's earlier post below it would seem that the twins' most prominent feature is the mound smack in between them and the rest of the leftmost crater doesn't show at all:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&id=20655

Of course if the feature that Phil identified (tentatively) is actually something rather farther away then a 15 degree angle between it and the twins midpoint could make sense. But Phil's identification was quite convincing . . .

[fredk]

I'm not sure what features are twin craters or if we can even see them yet, but the features I ID'd in the image you posted above can't be the twins. From our current viewpoint, they should've parallax shifted to the left compared to the distant feature much more then they have. So it seems all of these features are quite a bit farther than the twins. I guess it's not too surprizing the twins are hard to see, if they don't have much in the way of raised rims.

Edit - I agree with Tman that the feature at azimuth 181 degrees is about right for Twins.