[X] My Assistant

[jmknapp]

A fellow on Usenet (Eric Pouhier) had the idea to animate MI images on those occasions where the MI stays in the same place on successive days. The grains and even a spherule (2nd image below) move!



Taking his cue, I made this similar movie of the full MI images:



FULL SIZE 1024x1024 2MB animated gif here

From these two images taken 25 hours apart:

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Image info for: 1M132267282EFF05AMP2937M2M1
Spacecraft: OPPORTUNITY
Camera: Microscopic Imager, dust cover OPEN
Spacecraft clock: 132267282 (seconds since January 1, 2000, 11:58:55.816
UTC)
Product type: EDR full frame
Site number: 05
Drive number: AM
Command sequence number: P2937 (PMA or remote sensing instrument) MI
Producer: MIPL/JPL
Acquisition time (Earth): Thu Mar 11 03:42:35 2004
Time zone: EST
Acquisition time (Mars): Sol 46 11:35:19
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Image info for: 1M132355456EFF05AMP2957M2M1
Spacecraft: OPPORTUNITY
Camera: Microscopic Imager, dust cover OPEN
Spacecraft clock: 132355456 (seconds since January 1, 2000, 11:58:55.816
UTC)
Product type: EDR full frame
Site number: 05
Drive number: AM
Command sequence number: P2957 (PMA or remote sensing instrument) MI
Producer: MIPL/JPL
Acquisition time (Earth): Fri Mar 12 04:12:09 2004
Time zone: EST
Acquisition time (Mars): Sol 47 11:25:46
-----------------------------------------------------------------------


Joe

[djellison]

Are these likely to be pre and post APXS or Mossbauer?

Doug

[jmknapp]

Well, let's see, there's the mark from the MI probe there in both images, but I don't see evidence of the Moss plate impression or anything else.

The second image, where the spherule mysteriously had moved, was taken at 11:25, sol 47.

According to an update that sol:

"On sol 47... Opportunity finished remnants of activities from the past sol's research at 'Berry Bowl.' The sol started with the hazard avoidance camera taking a picture of the "Berry Bowl" area as a context picture. The miniature thermal emission spectrometer then performed some 'sky stares' of the atmosphere. At 11:30 Local Solar Time, the robotic arm started moving. It picked up the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer and moved to a new location nearby, then switched to the Mössbauer spectrometer. Both spectrometers are searching for clues about the chemical composition of the mysterious 'blueberries.'"

My program to dump the image info is sometimes a few minutes off from the Mars time reported on the JPL website--they give a time of 11:32 for that image. So that was taken just about the time that this activity was taking place. But this was the old location, the same one as Sol 46.

But they had done the same kinds of activities the previous sol, 46:

"On sol 46... Opportunity performed a series of activities including microscopic imaging of the berries and placing the Mössbauer spectrometer on the berries to analyze their chemical composition. The miniature thermal emission spectrometer later made multiple atmospheric observations."

The lower berry seems to have been pushed along (sand piling up a little in front of it), so I presume the IDD did it, but it must have been a very light touch for the IDD to just disturb it and only it, displacing it about 1mm?