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Posted by: vikingmars Mar 18 2006, 11:30 AM

Dear UnmannedSpaceflight Forum friends,
MER's success is being celebrated in France !
A special issue of "Espace Magazine" was introduced yesterday on newsstands.

It features exclusive interviews of Steve Squyres ("Roving Mars" book) and of George Butler ("Roving Mars" IMAX film) !

==> Here is the link :
http://www.espace-magazine.net/kiosque/special_mars/index.html

Order form for those who read French and want to order it (works for International orders) :
http://www.espace-magazine.net/boutique/pdfs/bulletin_mars.pdf

==> Also the French chapter of the Planetary Society is celebrating the event :
http://www.planete-mars.com/

...with 19 NEW free Mars desktop wallpapers on 2 webpages (each one offered with 2 sizes : 1280x1024 and 1440x900 pixels) :
http://www.planete-mars.com/goursac/2006/vision.html
http://www.planete-mars.com/goursac/2006/vision2.html

...AND for those who want to compare the Mars sunset of the Espace Magazine cover with its counterpart in Paris, here are the Paris wallpapers (pics taken yesterday evening)

Enjoy !

Posted by: Phillip Mar 18 2006, 12:30 PM

Merci beaucoup Vikingmars. C'est formidable!

Phillip

Posted by: dilo Mar 18 2006, 12:51 PM

Aussi le photòs de la Tour sont merveilleuses, j'aime cette ville!

Posted by: PhilCo126 Mar 18 2006, 01:42 PM

Nice work !
Phill
BELGIQUE

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Mar 18 2006, 04:16 PM

I didn't know the MERS went to Paris! Did they find love?

That wide angle shot looks like a stitch of two navcam images. Nice work. Did you use Autostitch?

Posted by: vikingmars Mar 18 2006, 06:30 PM

Yes no autostich.
Spirit & Opportunity falled in love with Paris : their landing went good...
They went analysing the stones of houses and monuments through the streets, found iron at the Eiffel Tower, water in Seine river and a lot of life (especially at night) !
Mission success !!!

Posted by: ljk4-1 Mar 18 2006, 07:08 PM

I know this connection is stretching it a bit, but as the French say, Ce la vie and kay sera sera!

In Chapter 12 of Carl Sagan's novel Contact, two of the main characters see a poster
of images from two rovers exploring Mars - while walking in Paris!

Le Quote:

"They approached L’Orangerie, in the annex of which was a special exhibition, so the poster proclaimed, “Images Martiennes.” The joint American-French-Sovict robot roving vehicles on Mars had produced a spectacular windfall of color photographs, some—like the Voyager images of the outer solar system around 1980—soaring beyond their mere scientific purpose and becoming art. The poster featured a landscape photographed on the vast Elysium Plateau. In the foreground was a three-sided pyramid, smooth, highly eroded, with an impact crater near the base. It had been produced by millions of years of high-speed sandblasting by the fierce Martian winds, the planetary geologists had said. A second rover—assigned to Cydonia, on the other side of Mars—had become mired in a drifting dune, and its controllers in Pasadena had been so far unable to respond to its forlorn cries for help."

Posted by: Oersted Mar 18 2006, 10:51 PM

Hey, great EDL over the Invalides! - But I thought I'd get to see a rover on the bridge too...

vikingmars, what is it with those hi-res shots from the viking lander?? I didn't think they took anything that hi-res, how was it made?

Posted by: ljk4-1 Mar 19 2006, 02:37 AM

Very nice wallpapers, thank you. Do you have any in 800 by 600 size
for smaller monitors?

Posted by: vikingmars Mar 19 2006, 11:17 AM

Thanks for your compliments, much appreciated.
The Viking Landers took images in color, BUT with low resolution only (0.12° per pixel). The hi-resolution mode (0.04° per pixel) was only in panchromatic, i.e. black & white. So, what I did is to build carefully an hi-res panchromatic mosaic to which I added the color by merging a similar mosaic, but done with low res color images. Technique is visually explained in the VoM book...

Posted by: vikingmars Mar 19 2006, 12:03 PM

Dear ljk4-1, here they are in 800x600, just for you (well the quality is not quite the same as the higher resolution wallpapers...)... uploaded in several posts. Enjoy !

(next 800x600 desktop wallpapers)

(last 800x600 desktop wallpaper)

Posted by: MERovingien Mar 19 2006, 01:36 PM

Thank you very very much VikingMars for the great wall papers! I find the one of Argyre Planitia absolutly breathtaking!

Excellent issue of Espace Magazine! As soon as I read your post yesterday evening I took my car and rushed to find it! The pictures are amazingly beautiful, it's one thing to have them on a computer screen but another to see them on paper!

It's quite a good complement to your two books, this magazine!

For all this, merci beaucoup Olivier! Keep on the good work!

Posted by: tedstryk Mar 19 2006, 02:44 PM

Great work Vikingmars!

Posted by: ljk4-1 Mar 19 2006, 03:58 PM

Thank you once again VikingMars, much appreciated.

Did you notice that in the image of Opportunity's crashed heatshield,
you can see the famous meteorite directly behind it:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=4621

I also learned an interesting little Frenchish tidbit the other day: The
USA's current national debt of nine trillion dollars is the equivalent to
28 full-scale replicas of the Eiffel Tower made out of solid gold.

Posted by: vikingmars Mar 19 2006, 07:35 PM

==> 1) Yes ! I chose these pictures to process, because most of interesting features were in them : meteorite, heatshield and its springs. Everytime I make an educational show for the Mars Society : people and children are always wondering at them !

==> 2) About the Eiffel Tower and the US external debt : do not worry, because the USA is also the strongest power in the world !
When France was world's power n°1 just before the French Revolution, its external debt was close to 90% of its internal production revenues... There was no much complains outside, because the other countries feared too much France at this time, which was Europe's most populated nation and had the best trained armies...
Typical French saying : "La loi du plus fort est toujours la meilleure !", i.e. "Law of the strongest is always considered as the best"

Posted by: Jeff7 Mar 19 2006, 08:22 PM

Hey now, it's not THAT high. It's "only" $8.27 trillion.
So maybe 27 full scale replicas of the Eiffel Tower, and two MER replicas made of gold.

Posted by: Ant103 Mar 20 2006, 08:48 AM

Bonjour à tous!

En France, il n'y pas que la Tour Eiffel vous savez?

Oops! In English maybe?

Hello all!

In France, there is not only the Eiffel Tower you know?

Viking Mars> The images you send arefrom Olivier de Goursac. I'd uy his book "Vision de Mars", and a lot of images are amazing.

Posted by: Rakhir Mar 20 2006, 10:56 AM

Ant103, Vikingmars is Olivier de Goursac

Posted by: Oersted Mar 20 2006, 11:53 PM

That's extremely clever, great job and thanks for the explanation!

Posted by: mars loon Mar 21 2006, 11:46 AM

Olivier

A magnificent collection

ken