Sol 755 - Panoramic Camera - West view.

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment
50% scale stitch and 4x vertical stretch.

Added another image.

A panoramic view taken on Sol 751, 753, 754 and 755 with the L0 navcam.

jvandriel

All the Gibson pan images taken on Sol 748 are all down* (6x3), an update is on my site (only two extra frames). Now if they would only hurry up with the rest of it!



James

*Although one L7 (far right middle) is still mostly missing on the JPL site - for this I've used the 200x200 stamp image from the tracking site - works well when combined with the full res L2 and L5, you can hardly tell.

I don't know why the JPL version has not been updated, the full stamp of the EFF has been on the tracking site for several sols.

EDIT: Replaced with an adjusted version to bring out details within shadows.

Oh yeah, the lookback from Pitcher's Mound would be phenomenal, I would imagine.

I've been wanting a good view of the top of Home Plate through the pancams for a long time. Now that we have part of it in L7R1, I couldn't resist stitching them and making an anaglyph panorama. I had to compromise on size and compression to get the original 9 MB down below the limit, but the detail didn't suffer too badly.

Dilo, good picture. I think that the leftmost and half height part of the picture shows an interesting hole that it might be the source of water fountain. Have anyone ever identified that as a soft and smooth hole.

Rodolfo

Eight sol 757 pancams are available at JPL, but six of them are solar images. There are a lot of new pancams from older sols that I didn't download, so if you were waiting for something, it may be there.

Hy everyone,

Long time no see ! Wish i had more time to spend !
But, there was enough time to do my own version of "Gibson".

Dirk,

Click to view attachment

what a very nice view, dilo !

of course I couldn't resist this one to be seen in colors ;-)

I took Dilo's two half pans from 755 and 756, joined them together (with a bit of fudging to get them to fit properly)... and made this polar version.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Dirk,
I really like your colour version (vision )
Reminds me of badlands deserts that I have seen.

At the request of a few people, I put together a page with the highest resolution SFX images that I've created for Spirit's journey to HP.

Link

Thanks to everyone at UMSF who had a hand in their creation.
Hope you enjoy them.
Use them wisely.

Astro0

Jamescanvin: "All the Gibson pan images taken on Sol 748 are all down"

I grabbed the image and tried to do a contrast-stretch and color enhancement on it to bring out the color variety between bands. A lot of the brightest rock surfaces are saturated white and have lost detail in the green band. Red and blue channels are ok.

Everybody has got to check out Asto0's site. Simply amazing renderings!! Hats off ta ya, mate

Yes, I know. This is a tricky pan which is stretching my software to breaking point. I'm working on a much more advanced version which should help a lot.

Even then - it's not too hard for me to regenerate the pan with streched colours from the outset which would always be better than trying to stretch the final version. If people would like this I can do one tomorrow (Oz time, about 15 hours from now)

Cheers,

James

Very cool Astro0 I LOVE the ones from West Spur and Comanche!

Nico

What I don't have and wish I did is something like "Principal Components Analysis" software, which can be used to stretch color information multi-dimensionally. Most of the color difference in the mars data is more-red-vs-less-red. Left cam 257 pans have the best color balance that brings out the most "more-green-less-green" middle band color differences, but there's often little. PCA can stretch that, even get the most data out of multi-band imaging.

The whole point is you can see more of the compositional geology.

Or maybe sooner, for a quick half size one...

That scene is a good example of a nearly bi-chromatic scene. An image made with bands 2 and 7, and an average of them in place of band 5, wouldn't look dramatically different.

Very typically, the lightest rock surfaces, which appear to be thinly coated with dust, are distinctly yellowish. Dustier areas or areas that appear more thickly coated with dust or perhaps a weathering product are redder and not as bright.

I spotted this years ago in research on the Viking lander images. I attributed it at the time to a very soft, potentially erodible weathering product formed on the rock from the rock, and usually present with varying amounts of adhering dust on the rock over it, but i'm still not sure if this speculation is valid or something else is going on.

I find that the rocks are a little blue. But, is ti that's you want, to show us different natures of rocks and dust.
Also, your image is superb

False colour like that is used by the Pancam team as well - a new catagory of images at the PC website is going live soon with loads of not-true-colour images. Quite freaky in places The blue-loons will have a field day

Doug

Spirit looking back on Sol 756.

Taken with the R0 navcam.

jvandriel

A panoramic view of McCool Hill.

Taken with the L7 pancam on Sol 749.

jvandriel

Jvandriel, those shots -- among with almost all pancam taken on sols 748-751 -- are part of Gibson panorama.



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Edited: this last part was supposed to be a separate post... features of v2.1?

Today (sol 759) is driving sol at Gusev.
Question: Will they traverse to the far side or stay nearby?

All L7 pancams taken on sol 749 too i.e. looking left and slightly upwards.
Here is a preview at 1/4 size (just "copy & paste" on autostitch).

Click to view attachment (369k)

PS: James, that missing frame is a real mess for us working with B&W.

I thought it would be interesting to compare the MMB view (a perspective projection) vs. Autostitch (I love Autostitch, but frankly who knows what kind of projection it does). Here is the MMB pan version of the left side of that L7 mosaic:



Here's a 130 degree wide (which is about as far as I can push it with getting into serious distortion) view centered on roughly the same point as the Autostitch mosaic:

Looks like an 11 x 2 ish Pancam mosaic from the top.

(actually - i think there's some nearfield / clast survey in there, but there's certainly a 9x2 L257 from the top coming down)

Doug

I think the illuminaton in these images is really amazing!
Here a partial version of this panorama (the rightmos/West side):

What a phantastic view again !

here is my attempt at a colorized stitch of this mosaic
(finally my new hardware is paying off in helping me stitching and colorizing larger panoramas

However, due to limitations on my Lycos Web-Account I'm preliminarily posting only the 25% limited resolution.
But on demand I will also provide the 50% and/or 100% (~10.000x3.000 pixels) online ...

Wow, as always, Nirgal, a very impressive rendering. And very useful for interpretation. Assuming the horizon is level, your panorama clearly shows Home Plate to have a saucer shape with a slightly raised rim. The layers in the right half of the panorama have an inward dip. The dip of the rocks on the left half is difficult to determine but the layers do seem to flatten out in the center. Is this "gentle" concave geometry more typical of an impact crater or a volcanic vent? And would the extruded volcanic material be so finely bedded right over the vent?

Very nice indeed! Although, as a footnote to the image, Spirit's solar panel sure looks dusty!

oops you got me as this is a synthetic "hand"-coloring with only one filter frame (L7) I normally use masks to color different parts of the image in different hues (sky, rover parts etc.)
... in this case I simply overlooked the panel, so it got just colored in the reddish back-ground tones

Sure 'n begorrah! 'tis a beauteous image t' be sure!
So what now? All you codebreakers out there. Tesh? You oenologists with your grapevines, You ornithologists with your 'little bird' friends. Where are we goin' and what are we doin'? We're aimed arrow-straight at McCool. Are we just going flat out before we freeze? Are there points of interest on top of HP that we will visit first? I can think of nothing of greater scientific interest than the vertical profile which we have abandoned. What do our beloved PIs see that I can't - apart from Jack Frost nippin' at our nose?
Feel free to speculate, if you've got nothing concrete. With Exploratorium resting in peace, we're all just twiddling our thumbs anyway.

Wow Nirgal, very cool

Black&White version

Spirit sol 755-758 R1 of Home Plate

Nico

Aldo: The same question crossed my mind and the only thing I could come up with is that we are looking at the throat of an inactive,eroded vent which earlier was somewhat higher allowing it to capture erupted material that slid from the rim back in filling it layer by layer. But because it would probably be chaotic deposition, I still lean toward an area of compaction ,in more widely spread beds, beneath an impact feature. The uncompacted material having been eroded away.

I haven't reached a conclusion, yet, but there is the strong indication that the strata iof Homeplate are indeed bowl-shaped. The Gibson area is inward-dipping, Pitchers Mound seems to dip inwardly and we'll know more about the dip of the third point in a few Sols. It would have been nice to have walked this outcrop from the base but we can learn a lot from traversing the top of Homeplate.

Have we heard anything about the mineralogy of the Homeplate rocks? That will narrow our choices what is happening here.

Great panoramas, all.

--Bill

Unusually bright rock or just chance reflection (see yellow arrow)?Click to view attachment

BTW, I couldn't log on about an hour ago, was the site down?

You should use the 'stamp' image, especially as your only doing 1/4 size and the stamp is 200x200 which is ~1/5 res anyway.

My version (full, 1/2 & 1/4 scales) is now on my website



Enjoy,

James

Mike: According to the brief faq on the Autostitch web site, "The demo version of Autostitch uses sp(h)erical projection and is capable of stitching full view 360 x 180 degree panoramas (everything visible from a point). Cylindrical and planar projections are not supported in the demo version."


The only clue they've given us is that they will head to the other side. My guess is that they'll head in a roughly southerly to south-southeasterly direction toward what appears to be the highest area on the other side. (left of Pitchers Mound). I too, would have liked to see more of the vertical section below, but notice the stair step like ledges climbing toward the far side. That is a continuation of the vertical section that they surely would want to see.

Yes, Tom, for sure. But if we were offered a straight choice between seeing the section below or above this one, what would we choose? I am surprised at the sudden apparent urgency to reach a winter haven. Either we miscalculated badly the time available, or there is something afoot here that we don't know about. I'm not implying anything other than scientific interest; I just hate to have no clue where that lies.

Yeah people. Just what is the dip doing? Just when I think I have it figured out, I'm forced to reconsider. The plate is topographically dish-shaped, but I am not sure it's structure is. I'm also unsure the dips of the layers on PM are relevant to those on HP. One side dips toward us and the other dips away. I think that's a younger unit. The mineralogy has not been revealed. We must guess from the MIs and whatever other clues are available.

Aldo: I think MMB may be the best tool for identifying a level horizon. Mike (aka, The Wizard of the 4th Planet and Dimensions Elsewhere) recently discovered a way to get image pointing data from the pancam tracking website. MMB panoramas now seem to be fixed in space better than ever.

The complete Gibson panorama.

Taken with the L7 pancam on Sol 748, 749 and Sol 750.

jvandriel

I did it after posting the "preview"; and it's almost impossible to distinguish the stamp from the other pics.
Actually what I did was to overlay that piece of full-res picture on top of the stamp, making a "new" mixed resolution pancam image.

Spirit drove again on sol 759.


I can't see yet the pics on the official MER webpage neither at the exploratorium (does anybody has any news about what may be happening?), so the only hint is the tracking web and the little thumbnails.

Here is where I would locate the rover after the drive.
Click to view attachment (56k)
(Background panorama taken on sol 755)

So looking at those thumbnails, can you tell if the drive took place?

Even with less than that! Just by checking the site/drive id of the downlinked images.
The previous one was AOC6 (sol 755) while the current one is AODQ (sol 759). However, this id's change can't be translated on a driving distance, it's only an indication that the rover has actually moved.

In order to know (a "wild guess" in this case) the new placement, I looked to the "drive-direction" thumbnails. It's hard! But the impression is that the fov hasn't changed too much i.e. a short/medium drive.

Edited to add the following image. It contains the drive-direction panoramas taken on sols 755 (below) and 759 (above, using the thumbnails) and some common features among them.

Click to view attachment (91k)

Home Plate.

Taken with the L7 pancam on Sol 755, Sol 757 and Sol 758.

As soon as new or complete images are down, I will add them.

jvandriel

Sol 759 pics are in

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...QP1214R0M1.HTML

Almost reminds of the view Opportunity had on the rim of Endurance crater.

Very rought and read - but L257 of the same pan from earlier, plus the new Navcam Mosaic

Doug

Watch your step, Spirit!

Edited: Net movement was about 10m. See ellipse (in cyan) on the following image.

Click to view attachment (57k)

In your b/w image. Note the following features around the edge of the depression right in front of Spirit.
1. Rounded oblong rock w/ fracture face toward camera. Short length of what appears to be basalt column.
3. Couple of what appear to be broken volcanic bombs. 4.Knobby surface on upper bedded units @ lower right.