Busy preparing a new Outreach talk here, and have been trying to find some images to illustrate the "power" of HiRISE for a non-technical audience. Playing about with - sorry, carefully looking at the images on - the addictive http://global-data.mars.asu.edu site I found a cute landslide on Xanthe Terra that does the trick nicely. Using the IAS Viewer you can zoom in on the boulders carried down the slope by the landslide and even see cracks and splits in them... unbelievable...!
Emily's series about White Rock is good, too.
(Course now that I go looking, it might not have gotten to HiRise!)
http://www.planetary.org/blog/archive/35/
I did -- but you remind me I promised to wrap this up, and I haven't delivered on that promise yet...
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001419/
--Emily
Yep, Emily's "White Rock" sequence is an outstanding piece of work, to be sure. I'm not comparing this Xanthe sequence to it at all; I was just struck by the detail visible in those shattered rocks
As in Emily's presentation, consider adding scale bars to the images?
Spider:
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_003087_0930
The famous avalanche:
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_007338_2640
Rolling stones:
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/images/2008/details/cut/PSP_007547_1895_cut.jpg
Frost covered gullies:
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_001552_1410
I found another unusual boulder track. You can see clearly how increased speed of the boulder on the slope. Jumps were increasingly longer, even a few dozen meters.
Hills Northeast of Mojave Crater (PSP_008430_1895) - general view
Judging from the freshness of the tracks, this event must have happened quite recently. Did MRO by any chance image this area before?
I would love to see an anaglyph of that scene!
There was some concern before that HiRise's resolution would actually be greater than the Mars atmosphere would allow due to twinkling. Has anyone taken a look at that again? What's the new maximum theoretical resolution from orbit? Less than 5cm?
The camera developed a fault not long after science operations began. There has been an obvious deterioration in image quality as a result - images are much grainier and not as crisp.
Look at this first picture obtained of Spirit at Home Plate
The reported degradation of the camera has been found to be minimum in past discussions; see, for example:
Hey, look... HiRISE is on Twitter now, too...
http://twitter.com/HiRISE
A picture is worth 140 characters!
Just... beautiful...
http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/the-glory-of-mars
AFAIR the noise problem was present only in some of the CCDs in Hirise's CCD array. Also the problem was remedied somewhat by warming(?) the CCDs.
I think the atmospheric conditions on Mars play a bigger role. That could be seen in some of the images taken during the major dust storm around rovers' regions.
Inbetween writing Christmas cards and eating mince pies today I've been playing about with the wonderfully addictive website http://global-data.mars.asu.edu that lets you explore Mars through the eyes of spaceprobes from Viking to MRO. I like just dipping in at random, playing a kind of "martian lucky dip" if you like, and seeing what turns up. I just found something interesting... well, I think it is.
Image http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_005665_1800 is entitled "Change detection in Dark spot", so I thought it was worth a look... change is always a good thing on Mars, after all... into IAS Viewer and fine, looked just like one of those "fresh impact craters" to me - a dark "splash" of colour on a bright background. Zoom - and yep, right in the centre there's a small cluster of craters. But that's not what caught my eye - what made me go "hmmm" were the many dark lines and trails coming off the terrain around it. There are hundreds of them! I'm just puzzled what I'm seeing... this isn't a polar area, so the light terrain can't be frost- or snow-covered, yet it looks like something is coming out from underneath a surface layer..?
Stu, do those lines appear throughout the region or just in the immediate proximity to the new craters?
They look like ordinary dry dust avanches.
Fascinating, good catch, I'm looking forward to finding out what on Mars it is...
Edit: OWW - thanks!
Me neither.
But I don't see any layers. To me, it looks like they all begin at the top of the 'plateaus'.
Hmmm, you may be right. I'm just very impressed with the area in general.
Easily impressed huh? Dust, dust and... more dust.
To me this terrain looks much more diverse, interesting and....beautiful:
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_009537_2045
Follow that riverbed at 50% zoom and be amazed.
And one weird crater:
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_009320_2150
Couple of new shots here...
http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/more-hirise-highlights
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Wow: the perfect shot
(and the perfect title, centworth II
HiRISE zooms in on Pavonis...
http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/hirise-zooms-in-on-pavonis
... and another "volcanic treat" from HiRISE...
http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/another-hirise-volcanic-treat
Love that camera!
Stu, I hope you don't mind me posting this link here (since you haven't yet). I found it fascinating. Your impact sites seem to be arranged in a nice 'landing ellipse'! Several questions come to mind. Is the group statistically significant in terms of spatial and temporal density such that a common origin is a serious possibility? Is the 'landing ellipse' consistent with an atmospheric break-up, or is it too big? Folks here can shed light I'm sure.
http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/incoming-tharsis-not-a-good-place-for-a-mars-base/
Shooting from the hip here, Stu's impact cluster (great find & great article, BTW, dude! ) covers a very large amount of surface area, so I wouldn't expect them to originate from the atmospheric breakup of a single object. Mars' atmosphere is super-thin anyhow, and nowhere is it thinner than in the Tharsis Bulge area.
However, one interesting possibility is that this is what's left of the impact of five or more discrete objects that were once one, but were disrupted while still in space into a loose association separated by tens of km or more. Perhaps a small comet nucleus that had been fragmented after perihelion passage then had the misfortune to encounter Mars on the outbound leg?
</wild speculation mode>
Thanks guys, glad you found the post interesting. It's probably just a coincidence that those "fresh craters" are all in the same area (roughly), but hey, you never know. I just thought it was an interesting find. Man, I love HiRISE!
Very very very cool pic of Victoria Crater released today... oblique view...
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_013954_1780
Oppy's tracks stand out really clearly on it, too...
A comparison between the two HiRise images of Victoria Crater.
I've taken the original view and have oriented and distorted it to a similar perspective as the latest version.
Colourised crops from image of gullies in Gale Crater, released today...
The absence of any impact features at any scale here is just amazing.
Wow...well spotted, Stu.
The quantity of space imagery being released these days that I don't have time to look through is both marvelous and depressing
--Emily
Remarkable; thanks, Stu!!!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is that an island in the middle of the channel? Hmmm exp hmmmm....
Gale still gets my uneducated MSL vote. It's just more spectacular than the others.
Stu said those a few posts ago were Gale.
"Baby" gully on a new HiRISE image..?
http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/gorgeous-gullies-2
Just wondering... all input appreciated
If it's a "baby" gully, it's been a baby for quite a while. The sand ripples evident in the image seem to have conformed to the dip into the linear depression. If this feature were a new gully that is just beginning to form, you wouldn't expect that there would have been time for such conformal ripples to have formed along the topography.
-the other Doug
Ah, good thinking Doug, thanks. All input appreciated; it was just something that caught my eye.
I would add however Stu that the age of dunes on this steep slope doesn't necessarily correspond to the age of dunes on the plains of Meridiani. So don't abandon your idea yet. For all we know these dunes migrate down that slope on a much more frequent basis. And if the composition is different from what we've seen previously then the mechanical properties of the particles comprising them will be different too. Show me this same photo two years hence and then we can come to some conclusions.
A teleconference scheduled shortly (today): http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=29221
teleconference was about water on the moon! Solar wind trapped in lunar soil:hydrogen ions combining with oxygen in the soil to form hydroxyl and water molecules...higher concentration at the higher latitudes towards the poles...diurnal variations with higher concentrations in the morning and dusk!
That was the lunar press conference.
Right NOW - there is a teleconference about MRO -
http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/newsaudio/index.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro20090924.html
They have spotted ice in fresh craters. Not 1% ice in Moon soil. 99% ice in mars soil
Would you like some ice with your lunar regolith? How about some martian regolith with your ice.
As with Dr. Johnson's dancing dog, the wonder is not that there's great ice on the moon -- the wonder is that it's there at all.
However, I'll admit Martian ice in fresh craters is pretty cool too.
--Greg
Colourised crop from one of today's HiRISE releases...
http://twitpic.com/jrojd/full
THAT is an incredible image, Stu; thank you!!!
I think I saw one of those carved into a cliff at Chaco NHP.
Nice photo .It almost looks like we have some "crop circle Artists " up there
The latest batch of releases also features a rather http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_014413_0930 of some of the "martian spiders" - sorry, "radial channels" ... couple of colourised crops here...
http://twitpic.com/jtjdy/full
http://twitpic.com/jtjf8/full
Just a gorgeous, gorgeous view...
http://twitpic.com/krklr
Subtiler, but DDs can do beautiful artwork too. It's fascinating to see how the DDs spun around.
Cropped and sharpened image:
2.7MB full res. http://www.greuti.ch/mro/ESP_014426_2070.jpg
0.65MB http://www.greuti.ch/mro/ESP_014426_2070s.jpg
I love the combination of slope streaks and dustdevil tracks! It's a smoking gun of sorts.
That is amazing. It looks like a blanket with an artistic pattern.
This is where we need the guy who says 'Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts!'
Phil
My gosh! At first I thought it was a joke picture of someone's tattoo. Where/what is it?
--Greg
Not a bad idea... I think I will get that tattooed on me.
Phil
are the dunes in valleys?
are the surrounding terrain hills?
and mars has a thin atmosphere
do the wind cyclones die as they leave the valley and terminate at the tops of the hills?
of course the counter argument is on earth the valleys would be cold at there floors this must not be the mechanism on mars for energy for a cyclone or tornado.
tornadoes on mars must be driven differently then on earth
Where/what is it?
Check it out http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_014426_2070.
This one just gets more fascinating every time I look at it; definitely one of HiRISE's Top 10 most beautiful & intriguing images!
(Looking at LROC image...)
Call that a bouncing boulder? THIS is a bouncing boulder..!
http://twitpic.com/lsry0
http://twitpic.com/lss3l
(from HiRISE image ESP_01439_2045)
...holy [clinking] [clink!!!!] Can't believe what I'm looking at here, Stu, what a find!
Thanks Dan!
Aah, you still deserve the props, big guy. It's an important image for understanding the behavior of these things; thanks for bringing it to life!
How could a dust avalanche flow around the boulder so neatly?
If you liked that, Nick, you'll love this...
http://twitpic.com/lug9n
HA!!! Christmas in October! What a stunning sight; thanks, Stu!
Has this been mentioned here before? I'm not sure how old it is!
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/earthmoon.php
It's stated on that very same page: "... acquired at 5:20 a.m. MST on 3 October 2007"
Some colourised crops of the amazing layers visible in the new MRO image of Arabia Terra ( http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_014033_1910 )
http://twitpic.com/q31tf/full
http://twitpic.com/q31ul/full
http://twitpic.com/q31wk/full
thx for those crops Stu. Looks like some dried up terraced hillsides. Those Martians must have really been into gardening!
Stu,
Your work rocks!
(next time I am in England, I need to stop by for a tutorial from the color master! What is your hourly rate?)
Cheers
Also some view of Arabia Terra plus more on this "must see" video, whether or not you'll like the music associated (I did): http://nasawatch.com/archives/2009/11/todays-video-hi.html
Magnificent dunes, with extra added gully goodness!
http://twitpic.com/rfom1/full
( from http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_001558_1325 )
In the spirit of HiRISE releasing some DTMs, I thought I'd put up a couple of shots of my recent attempts at making some of these monsters.
I made it using exactly the same method (hopefully!) as the USGS, so switching between ISIS and SocetSet. It was one of the first I made, so it's got some striping in the overlaid orthoimage, but not in the underlying DTM. The recent hiequal command in ISIS has got rid of that striping now, but I don't have images of that attempt with me at the moment.
Whole DTM:
Wow, magnificent view (especially second image)!
I always regret, that processing of raw HiRISE images are beyond capabilities of my current computer and internet connection.
That's OK. As you know, there are plenty of wonderful views to discover in older data sets that are not so difficult for your computer!
Yes!
So much to do and so little time.
Thanks for NASA, ESA, JAXA, IKI (and others) and their archives!
Interesting. Part of this layer seems to have collapsed. Impact crater or gravity?
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_014033_1910
Almost looks like an impact into really friable sandstone, and then gravity took over.
Here's an interesting image of some Mars spires. Judging from the length of the long shadow near the center of the image, the spire casting that shadow must be between 30m high (assuming a sun elevation of 30 degrees) and 50m high (assuming the sun at 45 degree elevation). Must be quite a sight from ground level.
(Unfortunately, I did not take note of the image number, and now I can't find it anymore. I just took a screen grab. I think it was somewhere on the flank of one of the Martian volcanoes.)
Just from an aesthetic point of view, I find this image exceedingly beautiful:
(HiRISE Image PSP_010221_1420)
ADMIN OOPS!
Accidentally lost this message when it was moved to this thread.
Sorry Den.
Den posted (along the lines of):
Amazing image from Hellas.
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_016022_1420
Was it a lake at one time?
Wow... a natural "cairn" on Mars...
(cropped from ESP_016036_1370)
What you mean "natural?" It's OBVIOUSLY an artifact.
...okay, THAT is flat-out cool as hell!!! How did you define your colorization scheme? That middle stripe of orange in each of the dune valleys is quite striking!
Aren't they the dune peaks? If they aren't then something truly odd is going on with all those boulders on the tops of the dunes...
Yeah, you must be right. It's hard (for me, anyhow) to gauge perspective in this image.
My guess--Orange stripes are dune peaks, rocks at valley bottom--like dunes on bedrock around Opportunity.
No the dunes are very dark and the bedrock is light and strewn with boulders. Really plays games with your shadow perception.
It actually helps - as is often the case with HiRISE images, I think - if you look at the black and white version first. Then it is clear that the boulders are "filling in the gaps" between the dunes...
In the CTX image http://viewer.mars.asu.edu/planetview/inst/ctx/P21_009058_1349_XI_45S255W
I saw this strange feature. What is this?
Freaky-looking thing. The whole area looks like either an outflow plain or perhaps even a dust-covered glacier. Perhaps an oblique crater pair that was subsequently overrun by an ice or water flow?
I'd go with a deposit leftover from some sorta glacier-thingy. Almsost seems like there is a trail behind it. There's a lot of areas nearby that look like they slumped out.
Nice catch; that is truly weird. Based on other nearby features I'd say it was the remains of a multiple crater rim but it looks truly odd. Note the image is not HiRISE but CTX! I checked HiWish and there is no HiRISE image over the feature. I won't preempt your find; you should go to HiWISH and ask for a higher resolution view!
I don´t think this is part of a crater wall. Note how flat-topped and steep-sided it is, quite unlike the variously degraded craters around this feature. My bet is that these are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esker
There seems to be a lot of ice-related geology in this area. Those lobes coming down from the mountain in the center of the scene look like ice sheets with crevasses and flow lines.
Nice work Nirgal. Looks very flat. Judging by the shadows I thought it had more relief.
Slightly different topic: Has anyone else had trouble with the HiRise site last couple of days? The Layout is all messed-up in my browser. I can't see the links to the IAS-viewer images anymore.
This is very strange. I can see those links again in Firefox, but in IE8 they are still broken. Does anybody know what could be causing this?
The "Crater garden" west of Victoria from ESP_016644_1780 (24 March):
Fresh looking crater (crater-pair?) about 9.5km south of Oppy's present position (also from ESP_016644_1780).
Oppy's Lewis and Clark trek across the great martian desert of Meridiani...
Beginning of the westward route. Those are Nereus and Nautilus at the top of the image.
Thanks.
That was so long ago, it's hard to believe so much time has passed since we left Victoria, but it has.
A crop from http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_002419_1675
how about this from the same hirise image
[attachment=21202:crop.png]
or
[attachment=21203:crop1.png]
New astropoem, dedicated to all the people on the MRO and HiRISE teams..
http://twitpic.com/1bb60q
( text only version: http://astropoetry.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/ansel-adams-on-mars )
Today's batch of new releases includes an image of Spirit's landing site, taken Feb 15th, on which Spirit herself can clearly be seen. Here's a colourised crop...
... and a new, rather gorgeous avalanche shot...
Those are both exceptional images, Stu, thanks! Spirit's 'wings' are clearly resolved, amazing!
So this is what, the 3rd avalanche caught in the act? Are we sure MRO has no motion-sensor onboard? It sure seems that way!
The fact that MRO doesn't have any motion detection capability is testimony to the (apparently) astonishingly high rate of occurrence of these events.
Really interesting stuff happening here. Is the Cap being replenished anywhere near as rapidly as its edges are eroding?
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Just about to go to bed, then I come across these new images. Can't sleep!
Very cool!
Crater near graben in Syria Mons: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_016529_1350
Was the smooth stuff deposited before or after the ripples formed?
Probably not a square crater, but an outcrop of folded stratified rock. There are several more U-shaped outcrops in the vicinity of this one.
"Baby" avalanche spotted on an image ( ESP_016449_2650 ) in the latest big image release...
Oh wow!
http://www.universetoday.com/2010/05/10/latest-mars-avalanche-likely-triggered-by-impact-event/
Impact event thought to have caused an avalanche! Amazing picture, as usual!
Interesting, but I dunno if I buy it. Why isn't there the usual dark ejecta apron around the postulated recent crater? Also, there's something not quite right about the diffuse upper boundary of the streak; that also seems atypical.
I agree with Eduardo. Nick you of all people should know about avalanches. If you are unlucky enough to trigger one, the material both above and below you moves down the hill. Moreover, in this case it was more like those mortar shells that the ski patrol use to clear slopes. The airburst triggers the movement milliseconds before the object's impact over a broader area, both up and down the slope (and left and right). And from these images, that's what it looks like to me.
I'll be interested to know how steep is the place. May be you know that on Earth, natural (snow) avalanches start at 30° and they may be are the most dangerous (since one wouldn't believe they can start with such a low angle).
The dust avalanche is now featured at the HiRISE website:
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_017229_2110
The location is in the Olympus Mons aureole (Lycus Sulci) not the slopes of the volcano as the earlier article indicated. This is an area of rough, highly jumbled terrain thought to be formed from huge gravity-slide deposits shed from the lower slopes of Olympus Mons. This region is extremelt dusty and dust streaks are ubiqutous.
I couldn't determine the slope of the hillside on which the avalanche occured from MOLA elevation data. The area in the portion of the CTX image shown in the article is very small (only about 2 X 2 km) and below the useful resolution of the gridded MOLA dataset from the JMars program. Maybe someone knows a more sophisticated way to determine the slope. In any case I would guess that 30 degrees or more of slope is certainly possible.
Tom
Anyone else having trouble opening up images with the IAS Viewer?
never used it till now.
it is crashing on Arch Linux Firefox 3.6.3
Thanks, John. Anyone else?
Hi Stu
Just tried opening a HIRISE photo using IAS viewer from the HIRISE website and it didn't open ( I selected JP2 quicklook
IAS viewer) and got the following messages " Error in JPEG2000 Client unable to resolve host address "hijpip.lpl.arizona.edu"
and "unable to init IAS_TCPclient for server/port:hijpip.lpl.arizona.edu/8064"
Obviously something is up with IAS or the Hirise site at present
Yes, (here) it stops when the main window has opened and it has displayed sporadically a "Asynchronous Warning".
Thanks everyone who responded, appreciate it. So does my PC; it was *this* close to being hurled out the window...
More beauties here: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1007/15hirise/
Somewhere recently we were discussing the possibility of using super-resolution with scanning cameras, specifically HiRISE. I did an experiment using pictures of the old Spirit lander. I tried finding images of other places at Meridiani - Beagle crater, Eagle crater... but the difficulty was finding multiple high quality images of the same location with comparable lighting and atmospheric conditions. Despite what you might think there are not many places where the coverage is OK for this. For instance, Opportunity can be illuminated from either the north or the south at different seasons, and that wrecks any chance of combining images effectively. If you compare the three raw images you can see how each one samples the target slightly differently.
Anyway, here's a composite of five images of the Spirit lander, compared with the three best images of the set (the other two are less satisfactory in image quality and lighting). I'm using the versions which are not map projected, but I have then had to do some work myself to register them reasonably well.
The composite was made by enlarging to 4x the original scale and registering, but without the addition of sharpening any layers. It shows some promise, I think, but the process would benefit from specially targeted images taken at the same season. Not very likely in my opinion!
Phil
Thanks Phil. http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=6623&view=findpost&p=162349
This is a concept that fascinates me and I believe what you did here shows there is some promise to this. Long before I learned of the super-res application in digital images, I penciled out an analogous process for film photography that I never got around to experimenting with. I won't clutter up this discussion with it. Meanwhile I think I'm going to go try this with some distant horizon photos here on Earth.
Oooh, that's pretty...
Although I'm not totally sure I agree with the ice part of the interpretation (because that spot in the fan should be an area of deposition, not exposure, if I'm seeing things correctly), that is a well spotted find!
Hmmm. Good point about the deposition, hadn't thought of that... Just thought it was a fascinating view.
Wow... just spotted this is my 4000th post. Doesn't time fly when you;re having fun?
'Dry water' has just been in the news: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7964109/Scientists-create-dry-water.html
Apparently if you subject the powder to pressure you can squeeze the water out of it. What I don't know is whether this form of water is more resistant to sublimation under Martian conditions than ordinary ice. It does make me wonder though if something akin to 'dry water' could be present in Martian sediments. If so then the transient appearance of ice in avalanche debris might not be out of the question.
Yeah, that looks like a pretty unlikely substance, all right.
Hmm. Why does it have to be ice? We've seen Spirit's bum wheel churn up all sorts of bright deposits, including white stuff. Maybe it's a big deposit of MgO, or even CaCO3. If so, dust deposition will gradually cover it up.
The blue color is typical of ice in HiRISE "enhanced" color images. These cliffs are along the margin of the polar cap and are composed of mostly ice (H2O) with coloring/coating by dust. So I think the blue is exposing clean ice from broken blocks that fell to the base of the cliff. What is really hard to appreciate from these images is just how steep and tall these cliffs are...
About 700m (2500 ft) and darn near vertical.
Don't really want to start a new topic, so I'll put this here. I've noticed that the weekly releases of new images on the uahirise.org website have only had one extended phase (ESP prefix) image per week, with the rest being primary science phase (i.e., older) images. I found something from the September 2010 MEPAG meeting in a presentation titled "Current Orbiter Capabilities for Future Landing Site Selection" that might help explain this:
"HIRISE: Team has used longer and more frequent warm-ups to compensate for increasing ADC (analog to digital converters) bit flip errors. Considering an onboard annealing sequence which ground testing indicates could reduce errors by breaking up and dispersing the ADC contamination."
Later in the presentation it says "need to use the capabilities conservatively where instrument and/or spacecraft limitations dictate." Also of interest is where it reports CRISM capabilities have decreased because of degradation of its gimbal (used for high resolution) and coolers (needed for IR observations). I don't think these degradations are reversable.
Hopefully, HiRISE can successfully do the annealing fix before maximum data transmission rates are reached again next year.
Rats. Nothing serious (yet), but it always hurts to see spacecraft begin to age.
At least the restart issue seems to have been cured, so hopefully the ADCs can be healed as well.
I should add, for those who are interested in CRISM, that the same presentation said the following about future CRISM operations:
"Plan: Use full VNIR/IR capability for 2 weeks every other month in mini-campaigns focused on high priority items(especially during periods of higher data rate)
--VNIR-only mode can be used at other times (but avoid major dust events)
-----VNIR (0.4 to 1.1 micrometer) aqueous mineral signatures are limited to ferric minerals
Bottom Line: Full-resolution VNIR/IR targeting reserved for high priority targets"
It's sad to see the instrument in decline, but cryocoolers like CRISM's are hard working pieces of machinery that can't be expected to last forever. They sure did a good job until now, though.
Some stunning pics of the interior of giant Mars pits...
Link : http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/photogalleries/101221-mars-pits-pictures-photos-science-nasa-space-caves/#/mars-pits-larger_30636_600x450.jpg
Here's the page at the HiRISE site: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_019997_1975
Look at the bottom for some geometry info.
Well the info lists http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_003317_1975 as an anaglyph product for the image this enhanced clip has been taken from so one of the wizards here might be able to reprocess both similarly and then produce an anaglyph, the convergence angle looks pretty high to me but I'll let others comment on whether that makes this unusable or not.
This is the link to the http://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/download/PDS/EXTRAS/ANAGLYPH/PSP/ORB_003300_003399/PSP_003317_1975_ESP_019997_1975/PSP_003317_1975_ESP_019997_1975_RED.JP2 image.
Even without the enhancement it should be not a problem to calculate the depth of the bright sunlit segment.
Its very easy to imagine the bottom of that hole continuing as a lava tube under what seems to be an overhang at the right of that image, and possibly all the way through to the left hand side. May be an illusion of perspective and lighting though.
p
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_020058_1865 in the latest PDS release.
Similar to the http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_016022_1420 or not?
"Weird looking terrain in the latest PDS release."
it's odd but then this is Libya
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-18/hires/iss018e014770.jpg
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=30394
For convinience here is the http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/pdf/2314.pdft from LPSC. It makes for interesting reading, but I suggest great caution in declaring liquid water found, much less a habitable environment. Hopefully CRISM observations will make a stronger case or put this to bed.
In the literature, McEwan has been a critic of wet formation mechanisms. I don't think you need worry that he'll overreach.
Thats good to know.
Discussion of paper on Spectral Evidence for Liquid Water on Mars, LPSC 2011, Renno and Mehta moved
HERE -> http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=6949&st=0
Another cave: http://www.onorbit.com/node/3681
An article about the recent problems with HiRISE camera
Operators of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are resuming use of the mission's highest resolution camera following a second precautionary shutdown in two weeks. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument powered off on Aug. 27 and again on Sept. 6. In each case, commanding for an observation was not properly received by the memory module controlling one of the instrument's 14 electronic detectors (CCDs, or charge-coupled devices). Between those two incidents, the camera successfully resumed observations for five days using its other 13 detectors. The second entry into the power-off, thermally protected mode occurred during an attempt to add use of the 14th detector. The camera is resuming observations with 13 detectors today while plans are developed for other diagnostic tests.
The detector remaining out of use pending further tests lies at the outer edge of the lineup of detectors. It is one of 10 detectors observing through red filters. The other four are pairs observing through blue-green or near-infrared filters, yielding color images in the central portion of the observation. Without this 14th detector, observations can still cover as much area, in images slightly narrower, but longer, than usual. The typical cross-track width of a HiRISE image without use of that detector is about 3.4 miles (5.4 kilometers), compared to about 3.7 miles (6 kilometers) when using all detectors. The coverage area can be maintained by extending the length of the observed area by about 10 percent.
HiRISE has returned more than 20,400 observations since the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reached Mars in 2006. Each observation by this telescopic camera covers several square miles, or square kilometers, and can reveal features as small as a desk. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter completed its primary science phase in 2008 and continues to work in an extended mission. HiRISE Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen, of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Tucson, said, "This isn't a significant loss to the science capability of HiRISE. However, it is a sign that the instrument is aging and could suffer further degradation in the future."
Source: http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Orbiter_Resumes_Use_of_Camera_999.html
A bright wispy feature from the image I downloaded to give feedback on HiView:
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_024579_1790
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