Oppy still exploring Marathon Valley

Just a quick note to reassure readers of the blog that, like Oppy herself, it is very much alive. If the lack of recent posts had left anyone worried that my commitment to either was flagging, I can assure you that is absolutely not the case. Real, non-blogging life gets in the ways sometimes, and that has been the case: like all bloggers, away from my laptop I have commitments to family, work and other things which mean sometimes, just for a while, blogging has to take a breather. So, thanks for hanging in there – I know many of you check-in regularly for updates, and I appreciate it. 🙂

Another problem has been that this is, primarily, an unashamedly pretty picture image-driven “travel blog” for Oppy’s adventure on Mars – and for the past few weeks, as fascinating as the views of the rocks and boulders scattered around Oppy’s wheels are (and they are, it’s beautiful geology)  there haven’t been many of those available to make from the raws coming back…

It also hasn’t helped that the image stitching software I use hasn’t been able *to* stitch together the images being sent back, which has been frustrating –

** sigh **

But anyway, enough moaning. Just wanted to reassure anyone who was worried about it that all is well with the blog, and my devotion to Oppy, and commitment to supporting her and her team as she roves Mars, remain. There’ll be a big update soon, but for now, here are a couple of stitched mosaics of images taken by Oppy’s microscopic imager showing, in great detail, the wide variety of shapes, sizes and forms of rocky fragments and stones on the floor of Marathon Valley…