[X] My Assistant

[Stu]

Well, what does everyone think of our long-awaited first view..?

[JRehling]

Justin Maki of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., an imaging scientist on the rover team. "However, we still have another two or three short drives before Opportunity is really right at the rim, looking down into the crater."

Time to put away the driver and take out the putter.

[MahFL]

Yes but I have seen pro's with a putter hit the ball wayyyyyy past the hole...........

[Phil Stooke]

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...cam/2006-09-20/

Pancams are on the ground...

Phil

[Nix]

ALL RIGHT!! Let's get to it, they look jaw dropping that is..

Nico

[mhoward]

Yowzers. I've updated the MMB metadata. I'll have time to generate some pans in an hour or so (unless somebody wants to use the 1.5 'Export Pan Images and PTGui Project File..' feature...)

[jvandriel]

The view in the drive direction.

Taken with the L2 pancam on Sol 944.

jvandriel

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[gregp1962]

WOW!!! It's sureal sitting here among a bunch of people in the office that barely care about this stuff, and, wouldn't know a thing about it if I hadn't been telling them. (They feign interest for my sake) My wife pokes fun at me, claiming that the only reason for my interest is her claim that Mars is MY home planet and Venus is HERS. My counterclaim is that Earth is my home planet and Venus (or Mercury)is hers.

Yet, there a bunch of people that I've never met, (You all) who share my fascination with Mars.

I'm dying to see a stitch of these images.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...cam/2006-09-20/

[Pando]

Wow...! A nice view of Sofi as well!

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P2382L2M1.JPG

[algorimancer]

Here's a full-sized pancam panorama, just a quickie with no pretty anti-vignetting like in jvandriel's version:

http://www.clarkandersen.com/pano.jpg

I love that nice line of horizontal stratum.

[algorimancer]

Wow...! A nice view of Sofi as well!

Wow indeed. I hadn't expect it to look like a crater from this far away. Cool.

[Gray]

How much forshortening are we seeing here? Those rock exposures are looking pretty inaccessible to me.

[RNeuhaus]

Today new pictures have given me new toughts.

The only part that we can see the stratas are the upper side but nothing on the lower which are covered by sand. The lower part is the part most desired to know.

The other good comment is that the promontory is impressive and it belongs to near rim. That picture has confirmed about its position.

Lately, at the back of VC, on the west side, there are at least three hills: twin peaks, and one of a similar size of Columbia ones (I think so since I have no made parallex calculations on that). Anyone can tell us about its height.

Rodolfo

[imipak]

Oppy: "Hey, this rock..."
JPL: "Er, evaporite."
Oppy: "Evaporite... yeah."
JPL: "Er, dust-covered evaporite."
Oppy: "Yeah,.. it's slippery as, as, as - what's the slipperiest thing you can think of?"
JPL: "At this moment? This evaporite."
Oppy : "Right. This evaporite is as slippery as this evaporite."


A lot of nice detail visible in the pancams, in particular there's a nice thick white (well, brighter at that particular wavelength) stripe visible, eg:here

It seems to significantly inclined relative to the surface, too, by perhaps 25 degrees -- would any of the rockhounds care to speculate about whether that's an artifact of the impact 'peeling back' the upper layers of the surface, or a pre-existing feature before the impact? ie., could it reflect the incline of the rest of the layers we've passed out on the plains?

The "sluffing slab" looks to me like the edge of the ramp^w alcove. I picture a wedge-shaped chunk of the surface sliding down into the crater; at the edges of the wedge, softer material on the non-moving side of the fracture would erode more quickly, and the 'cap' of evaporite has eventually snapped off and slid laterally as well as down slope somewhat.

However the alcoves visible on the far side appear to be composed of much smaller fragments than anything you could call a slab, sheet or a plate - a field of boulders, eg here

I'm quite glad we've got a few days whilst the VxWorks spods kick the metaphorical tyres of the new software load. Once we get up on whichever promontory and start the big pan, I suspect there's going to be a firehose of amazing features...

[Marz]

Today new pictures have given me new toughts. ....

Whoa! [theme song to "2001" plays in background]

Considering the far rim is ~800m away, that's some awesome rim! The amount of slumping on the rim and debris below has, as RNuehaus expressed, disconcerting. I hope there are some lower strata that are visible, and dare I dream, approachable. I wonder how recent some of the slumping events were? [gulp!]

I saw those hills far out on that horizon... and already had the explorer's curse too: how far away are they? what lurks over there!? Let's go!! Should we start placing bets when Oppy will reach them?

[gregp1962]

I haven't been able to find a satellite view that includes those far away hills. Does anyone know where one is?