No - saying that the image in question is at the bottom of a crater is an out and out lie It takes 10 seconds to find out where Opportunity was when you're looking at data - and they intentionally avoided doing so. It's part of the BURNS CLIFF panorama for gods sake - CLIFF. Doesn't that tell them something?

It would be like taking a picture of a real puddle on earth and saying "look - I took this picture on the side of a hill - the water isn't running away! Gravity is defeated!"

Here's an MER independant interpretation of the calibrated data by Dan Lyle - brilliant understanding of colour science - processed to assume an automated white balance.
http://www.lyle.org/~markoff/pds/257...2273L257C1.JPG

Notice this official Pancam team image - a FALSE COLOUR image
http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/panc...L257_pos_2.jpg

This is an estimated true colour rendering - note that the frame in question is slap bang in the middle of this 180 degree mosaic....compare to the horizon at each edge.....and they're saying that it's a little pond of water? It's at 30, 40 or more degrees!
http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/panc...cliff_new.html

This really isn't science - it's comedy.

I find it very VERY hard to believe that the people responsible for this 'paper' were ignorant of these facts - and if they were - then peer review should riddle it with holes - hence why it's destined for an engineering paper - where those reviewing it wil not know the science involved.