[X] My Assistant

[Tesheiner]

After a drive on sol 619, Spirit has finally reached the true summit of Husband Hill, almost touching the summit rock.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Bill Harris]

The Naming of Names (2004-05)

This story is about later waves of immigrants to Mars, and how the geography of Mars is now largely named after the people from the first four expeditions, rather than after physical descriptions of the terrain.

This reminds me of the story about The Naming of Names on Mars in the Ray Bradbury novel "The Martian Chronicles". Note the date in the story.

Google "martian chronicles""naming of names" (include quotes) for more; also http://www.raybradbury.com .

I'm a sci-fi and sci-fantasy freak from way back...

--Bill

[Nix]

True summit in true color;

Cornell True Color

Nico

[Tman]

If you read in the technique forum you know I got some troubles to get a reasonably
brightness gradient in this horizon view from this Everest horizon pan...



(4,8 MB) http://www.greuti.ch/spirit/spirit_pancam_sol620-622.jpg

...fortunately, in PS there's a solution to place a transparent mask (with adapted b/w gradient)
over each part of the pan that it needed.

[Nix]

I considered this technique before instead of painstakingly adjust the histogram of each frame but did not think it'd give this good a result!

Excellent Tman

In terms of horizon visibility I consider this the most spectacular vista yet from either rover!! There's even a distant crater-rim visible now far behind Castril Crater (towards the southwest, next to Grissom Hill in the pan).

Fine work! I'm 'flabbergasted'
If you find the time to do the other eye for an anaglyph then I'll hug you

Nico

[alan]

New update
http://athena.cornell.edu/news/mubss/

The big news, I guess, is that we've decided where we're going to go next. We've been studying possible descent routes for a couple of weeks now, and we've settled on one, at least for the first part of the descent.
Extending eastward from the summit of Husband Hill is a broad ridge that we've named Haskin Ridge. It trends ENE from the summit, does a little dog-leg to the right, and then trends ESE for a bit. Right at the dog-leg there's a pretty steep step, which we're not certain we can get down. So we're going to descend the upper portion of the ridge, right to where the step is, and assess the situation. If we can see a safe route, then we'll continue down onto the lower portion of Haskin Ridge. If not, then we'll think about what to do next! But either way, we should get a good view of the East Basin, which is something of a mystery at the moment. And we all think our chances of finding a way down that step are pretty good.
If we can get down onto the lower part of the ridge, we'll eventually hang a hard right turn and head south, toward Home Plate, crossing some interesting-looking terraces and passing just to the east of a dark patch of sand as we do. But that's for the future. Right now our focus is upper Haskin Ridge, and whatever the view is going to be from the top of that step.

[Joffan]

Great work Tman, beautiful pan. 3 nice dust devils too.

And of course 3 million cheers for Spirit and the team.

[Tesheiner]

FYI,

All 81 images of "Everest" panorama in L7 are available now at the Exploratorium.

[Tman]

Thanks,

Yeah Nico, Husband true summit marks a great lookout. Maybe the R's too, but first I'll try to stitch the whole pan.
If you find the time, can you explain what "painstakingly adjust the histogram of each frame" means? I guess that means "only" you compare each histogram until it matches by doing much adjustments in PS's "image caculation"? But I dont know how you could overcome only with this image caculations when you get differences in brightness from left to right? They are always existent then...

[Nix]

Well, I use the 'levels' in PS most of the time. By adjusting the input levels sliders; shadows-midtones(actually a gamma function)-highlights. I also adjust the output level sliders for contrast.

However, if what you mean from left to right is also per frame, I would increase the brightness of the first (left) frame by about 25% (deselect sky maybe) and then match the second to the first, third to the second,...you will eventually be left with a row that is bright on the left and gradually darker to the right as if the sequence were taken on one day, with varying sunlight troughout the 360 degrees of the scene..however for a full 360 or even a 240-270 your approach is very valuable with the uncalibrated images because otherwise the left and right ends of the scene might not be 'right' if you wanted to make a QTVR of the pan...sigh

It's troublesome though and I feel I approach it differently on every other mosaic I do.

What we really need is Vicar & MarsRad

Nico

[Nirgal]

If you read in the technique forum you know I got some troubles to get a reasonably
brightness gradient in this horizon view from this Everest horizon pan...  

(4,8 MB) http://www.greuti.ch/spirit/Spirit_pan_sol620-622.jpg

...fortunately, in PS there's a solution to place a transparent mask (with adapted b/w gradient)
over each part of the pan that it needed.

Congratulations for the perfect stitching, Tman !
it's impressive: seamless transitions, full dynamic range accross all frames even with this difficult frame set

[RNeuhaus]

New update
http://athena.cornell.edu/news/mubss/

I like that way, going to East and then go down. It is what Usatrax and me have expected. That way is the most challenging than the other way toward West.

Stick out the mast to look for a downhill good path!

Rodolfo

[Tman]

>>It's troublesome though and I feel I approach it differently on every other mosaic I do.<<

Yea, I know that feeling too. One have to or can try so much in PS.

Btw. Nico, when your PTGui finally caculates and stitches such a full res. pan, how many time needs your computer for it - as example by stitching one 360 degrees row of 27 Pancam frames? I dont know, but my computer (or graphics cart) seems to be rather too slow. The pan above was my first big stitch, but sadly I overslept the end of the stitching process and waked up after three hours from start on.
But now the pan with 27 frames seems the speed problem striking to slow down. After two hours in progress it's still by 80 percent "Preparing Stitching Masks" I guess need a better graphic cart for it..

[Tesheiner]

After two hours in progress it's still by 80 percent "Preparing Stitching Masks"    I guess need a better graphic cart for it..

Tman, the graphics card is not related to the problem but the CPU speed and available memory. The memory may or not be an issue depending on the Panorama Tools version you are using.

I was trying to make the whole 27x3 pano using autostitch but finally gave up; no luck.

[djellison]

For PTGui you need th biggest, fastest hard drive - that's the main bottle neck I think - as if you look in the folder you're saving to, you'll see HUGE files being generated!!

Doug

[Tman]

Tes, guessed the graphic card assists the CPU too, but could be wrong and such a card needs only to caculate the graphics (better) on the screen. My computer runs the Pentium® 4 CPU with 2.40 GHz and 248 MB RAM.

Doug, thanks for the tip!