Dusty Cape Verde

         The Opportunity rover acquired this mosaic of Cape Verde on Sol 1570 (June 23, 2008).   Cape Verde was one of several bedrock promontories along the rim of Victoria Crater that Opportunity studied. It is about 6 meters (20 feet) tall.  The title for this mosaic refers not to Cape Verde itself, but to the fact that the left side of Pancam's front sapphire windows had, at this point in the mission, picked up a good bit of dust.  Subframing the individual images helped mitigate the problem, but the mosaic still shows evidence of the dusty window in the slightly washed out look (caused by light scattered by the dust) and the visible seams (caused by differences in the right and left sides of joining images).  The mosaic's field of view is about 40 degrees across and about 35 degrees high.
         This mosaic was acquired in Pancam's 753-nm, 535-nm, and 432-nm filters. Two versions are offered here at full resolution: an approximate true color rendering, and a false color stretch to bring out subtle color differences in the scene.

Jim Bell
Pancam Instrument Lead
December 20, 2008