Spirit sees edge of Gusev Crater in distance?
Here's an image from martiansoil.com:
There's a MUCH larger version here.
Gusev Crater South Rim?
Reader Erwann Quelvennec sent in an excellent image and speculates that the southern rim of Gusev crater might be visible in images from Spirit's 71st sol.
Sol 71 Spirit subframe images, picturing south to southwest landingsite horizon(more precisely a subset of 10 L7 filter images, evidenced very far (i.e. very pale grey!) hills not seen before.
These hills extend from south mesa to SSW hill. When you try to locate these hills, or this plateau, on Gusev landing site, it seems evident that Spirit, now on top of the Bonneville crater rim, see Gusev crater south rim. Moreover, the left side of this plateau is probably the west bank of Maadim river mouth .
If so, the distance may be roughly 80 km!
He sent along an image he created to illustrate the point. It was created by stitching together (with high contrastand black foreground) sol 71 pictures surimposed on PIA04260, from MOLA data.
I imagine we'll get an even better view if Spirit ever makes it to the top of one of the Columbia Hills.
