Continuing into Glenelg, Leaving Rocknest behind, sols 102-166 (Nov 18 2012-Jan 23, 2013) Options

[iMPREPREX]

I love your work, Damien.
I'm just too impatient so I have to thumbnail it.
But your stuff is great. Just wanted to tell you that.

[Airbag]

Many more sol 141 images added to the MastCam100 panorama; full size is 36k x 8k pixels and it is obviously not even close to 360 yet.

Experimenting with PTAssembler's new auto anti-vignetting feature but I think my own flat fielding works better as the former introduces noticeable banding and color shifts. Perhaps it would work better if I tried to set my own reference image instead of letting it pick? The problem is that because this image is so big, any experiment takes forever to try, even in preview mode, despite my very fast PC. Smartblend alone took about 2 hours for this 232 image (full size) pano.


Airbag

[iMPREPREX]

Airbag -Try PTGui - it's amazing - and very fast. Plus you have a lot of control over the projections.
I'm in love with that program.

[Airbag]

That is similar in some respects to PTAssembler; both are just front ends for the the various utilities that actually do the real work (e.g. Smartblend for the final blended image generation). I'm not going to learn another front end at this point - I have been working with PTAssembler for years!!!

Airbag

[iMPREPREX]

I gotcha - I think. I'm a super-rookie. I only started with the Sol 3 ML Pano, so I have a million miles to go and so much to learn.
I'm done with using Photoshop to stitch, though!

[Airbag]

For what it is worth, I have visually scanned the recently downlinked NavCam Left sequences from sols 120, 122, 134, 126, 129, 131, 133, 138, 139 and 141 (by creating movies with PhotoLapse) but I could not see any dust devils.

[edit: also checked 142]

[iMPREPREX]

I thought I would post this monster. I can't believe I still have a computer:

http://gigapan.com/gigapans/fb0bd2f50c9dbead2998ea9543a942aa

And the small preview:

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Greenish]

Thanks for crunching it, well done. And thanks for adding the cardinal direction labels, I really like having the orientation indicated.

[Phil Stooke]

A new drive coming up... still looking for the drilling location, with a fabulous Mastcam dataset to help choose it.

Phil


PS - if the dust devils have little or no dust in them, just looking at images even in a movie might not help much. Picture differencing might be the way to go. Subtract one image from another and see if anything is left. One approach - paste one image over another. Invert the shading of the top one (make it a negative of itself). Make the top one 50% transparent. If no change the result is a flat grey. And change including shadows will show up light or dark. Major contrast stretch might help.

[PaulM]

I thought I would post this monster. I can't believe I still have a computer:
...
And the small preview:

I see a difference between this area and the Opportunity landing site which I can not explain. The difference is that in the Glenelg area in-situ sedimentary layers can be clearly seen whereas in Merridiani the layered sandstone blocks have been greatly disrupted by meteorite impacts. The only in-situ layered deposits at the Opportunity landing site are in the sides of craters. Is it possible that the Glenelg deposits were covered by a protective layer of sand until a few million years ago which has protected these sedimentary rocks from meteorite impacts?

[Gerald]

Indications of recent creeping and/or underground weathering?


(reduced annotated mini-autostitch from sol 141 MR images 5,6, and 7)

It might add some plausibility to a thinkable - I don't claim high likelihood - hypothesis of a (not quite) recent landslide (within the last 10,000 to 100,000 years), as a contribution to today's Yellowknife Bay topography.

[Astro0]

Relentless movement of sand/fines, winds, fracturing from temperature cycling and/or impacts, tremors, etc.
Billions of years and just about as many possibilities.

That's what I love about science

[Gerald]

Gerald: ...It supports the idea, that the rock may have formed from the bed of a shallow lake, with discontinuous sedimentation

I don't think the wider view supports that idea. To my eye at least, just random cracking/fractures.

This image (sol 138) may be a better example with significantly non-random cracks indicating an inner structure of the sandstone(?) layer:

Fluvial or aeolian origin may still be options. Fluvial may be more likely than lacustrine. But I think, the impact hypotheses will become less likely.

[mhoward]

Short drive on sol 147. Looks like they're interested in the 'ridge' or whatever we call that thing. Edit: we now know the name is "Snake River".

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Actionman]

Drill mount is clean and serviceable.