Paul Morris wrote:

In article ,
"Icarus" wrote:

albright wrote:
Icarus wrote:

I viewed the area from the two images at the same scale side
by side, and the resolution looks very similar to me. Very
small pebbles visible in the panorama shot are also visible
in the navigation camera shot (especially if you tweak the
contrast and brightness), so I can't really see how
something as obvious as the object in the panorama shot
could be present at the time the second picture was taken
and not be visible at all.

looks like the field is different in the two pictures and the
nav pictures does not go far enough "south" (if you see
what I mean) to get the object into view ...

Have a look at this and see what you think:

http://www.envf.port.ac.uk/jr/object.html

The image on the left is from the Sol 002 panoramic image, the
one on the right is from the Sol 005 navigation camera image.

Ahh, there is a small white feature well to the left of the
"bug" that can serve as a landmark.

The distance on my screen from the small white feature to the
"bug"
is 8 inches for the image on the left (Sol 2 pancam), which
puts it just off the right hand edge of the screen for the
right-hand image (Sol 5 navcam).

So the navcam image is just outside the range that would
reveal the "bug."

OK I know I'm being really pedantic now but... :-) The aspect
ratio for the two images is different - The rock outcrop is
significantly wider in the left hand image than in the right,
although the height is the same. Hence it seems to me that we
should expect the distance from the small white blob to the
'object' to be smaller in the right-hand image than in the left.
I think that puts it in the picture still. In fact, I've
annotated the pair of images to show how I think the faint
features in the two images correspond - go back and have a look:

http://www.envf.port.ac.uk/jr/object.html

I'm sure it's all academic anyway, since the thing didn't appear
in the hazcam images after the rover left the lander, which
suggests it probably did blow away, and it was probably only a
bit of crap from the lander anyway... :-)