Thursday, February 25, 2021

Fun with photos (Mars edition)

 I spent about an hour puzzling out the Perseverance Rover's location tonight. News reports gave me enough data.. but on my phone it took a bit of sleuthing and several MRO magnifications to get it right!


Image 1 gives the precise location but without much context. There it sits in its fine gold square, surrounded by rilles, craters.. and emptiness. Hm.

On to figure 2! Once I zoomed in on this I found the craters, rille and the dark blockage on the rille (just above "Po"). That puts the landing site just above the right side of the "o". Yay! 

And nice landing relative to the target!!

The full picture this came from includes part of the large escarpment that the outflow in the distant past has eroded. More on that soon!
 

And finally, figure 3 - the wide view of the neighborhood.
In this instance I've rotated the image so it better fit my phone screen. We now have the outflow area at the top, and the plains and craters near the bottom. 

For comfort and certainty we revert to a wider view of figure 2 and its proposed rover route up the escarpment..



Bingo!


Which inevitably leads back to my question: where is Perseverence in the wide view of its target destinations? Well, it's very near the yellow X below. Glad I asked!


And that's how geeks have fun! :√)

p.s. I tinted the images to better match my ochre perceptions through various telescopes..





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