[X] My Assistant

[edstrick]

I've had good luck doing autostitch panoramas with Spirit images.

The Opportunity images taken in the middle of the plains generally refuse to stitch properly in autostitch despite attempts tweaking the settings.

[Phil Stooke]

Here is a polar version of jvandriel's pan from just east of Methuselah and Jibsheet. Thanks, jvandriel! This is quite good for showing the tracks and tracing the route.

It's common to say that the hill to the north is Clark Hill. But I think that the hill forming the horizon is really Chawla Hill, with Clark Hill in front of it and a bit lower. The top edge of Clark Hill is made visible by a line of dark rocks... is this another outcrop like Methuselah and Larry's Lookout?

Phil

[tty]

Here is a polar version of jvandriel's pan from just east of Methuselah and Jibsheet.  Thanks, jvandriel!  This is quite good for showing the tracks and tracing the route.

It's common to say that the hill to the north is Clark Hill.  But I think that the hill forming the horizon is really Chawla Hill, with Clark Hill in front of it and a bit lower.  The top edge of Clark Hill is made visible by a line of dark rocks... is this another outcrop like Methuselah and Larry's Lookout?

Phil

I think it might actually be part of the same hard layer as Methuselah. You can see that the hills have a rather clear cuesta morphology (caused by an inclined hard layer). There also seems to be similar harder layers visible in the hills on the other side of Tennessee valley. This whole section of Columbia hills seems to have been shaped by differential erosion of an inclined sediment pack.

[dvandorn]

Here is a polar version of jvandriel's pan from just east of Methuselah and Jibsheet.  Thanks, jvandriel!  This is quite good for showing the tracks and tracing the route.

It's common to say that the hill to the north is Clark Hill.  But I think that the hill forming the horizon is really Chawla Hill, with Clark Hill in front of it and a bit lower.  The top edge of Clark Hill is made visible by a line of dark rocks... is this another outcrop like Methuselah and Larry's Lookout?

Phil

I think it might actually be part of the same hard layer as Methuselah. You can see that the hills have a rather clear cuesta morphology (caused by an inclined hard layer). There also seems to be similar harder layers visible in the hills on the other side of Tennessee valley. This whole section of Columbia hills seems to have been shaped by differential erosion of an inclined sediment pack.

See, this is why I think the hills are *not* composed of the original crater floor, uplifted by faulting. The floor of Gusev would have been a melt sheet covering a highly shocked and probably brecciated underfloor. Methuselah looks like sandstone -- whether deposited by wind or water, it's some type of layered sandstone. Which is why I'm convinced that Gusev developed a nice thick floor of layered sediments on top of the melt sheet before the upthrust fault created the hills, which was then followed by one or more lava inundations.

And the larger-scale landforms (the "feed river" formation and delta landforms on the floor) would suggest that the layered sediments were water-laid. I don't insist that the sediments *must* have been water-laid, but I think the evidence is pointing to that conclusion...

-the other Doug