Yup - another few CM forward i'd say

It'll be a bit of a fiddle - but I'm going to try and do a composite animation that has all four corners animated together - for the whole egress - in one animation. Who knows if it'll work - but it'll be fun trying


Doug

Someone start a thread and I'll move the appropriate posts

It's a good idea. MER is certainly done to death on Wiki ( and fairly well I might add ) - but there's certainly scope for missions past, present and future to be documented more verbosely.

Doug

Oh of course, you always keep a copy in PNG/PSD or whatever format 'at home' as it were - but I only ever 'publish' online with a JPG - just because memories of 56k are not THAT distant

Doug

I dont know why they do it - Cassini images are Greyscale..

BUT

You're not having to download 3x as much data. If it were BMP's or PNG's then perhaps you might - but JPG's are a little cleverer than that - instead of 200-300kb, they'd be about 150-200kb instead, not <100k. Perhaps 1/3rd less ( I tried a few in photoshop )

Doug

You could take that 20Mb down to 5 or less with no obvious loss of quality with a JPG

Doug

Just perusing thru the Viking Lander dataseta ( amazing, less than 1CD each - and I've got 9 DVD's for Spirits Pancam Sols 1-270 alone ) and found this three-colour set - I thought it looked fab, and I've never seen it before.

Here's the info...

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_images/hga_gim.mov
1.8Mb - quite an interesting one

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_images/hga.mov
900kb

I've got a nice one to put up of the HGA gimble being tested as well

Doug

Ahh - maybe they're still in the Exp. but not up at JPL. When I'm looking for filter sets, I always look at JPL as I can just see them all lined up ready to go

Doug

No, seriously - where are these 256 sets - as I cant find a single one.

Doug

really?

I've only seen 2,4,7 being taken - the usual set for Photometric studies

Reasonable colour can be fudged from 4 + 7, but it's not great.

Doug

As said - you cant do CProto with a 1024 x 1024 CCD (as MGS MOC is a push-broom line ccd ) - but you can do a sort of super resolution imagery by taking many many images by moving the pancam head very slightly. However - it's been done with the L7 filter to generate a high resolution greyscale image - and then an L456 over the top for colour. However - we have the high res greayscale in the form of MI imagery. It's a no go really.

doug

The T shaped outcrop RIGHT in the middle of that mosaic

There are four middle frames on that mosaic - we're talking about the right half of the second one along

Doug

Well - Thursday was touted as a possible day of action - and so that would tie in with yesterdays straight-wheel move - I guess we'll find out what the first step is over the next 24-48 hrs.

I've got a crate of mars bars that says people at Mark Carey's forum, the Habitable Zone and elsewhere WILL - despite the repeated warnings from Steve - brand the exit attempt a complete failure after one sol

Doug

http://www.agu.org/journals/je/je9904/je104_4.html

Doug

Well - I got a great repsonse when I asked about MGS data releases a while back - so I will reply to that address about it.

Doug

Just confirmed - I'm giving a talk (working title '33 Cameras - our Eyes on Mars' ) at the Instruments and Imaging section of the BAA who are meeting on May 21st at The Humfrey Rooms, Castilian Terrace, Northampton (Home of the Notts Nat.Hist. and Astro. Soc) - kick off at 11, my talk likely to be the last before lunch - and during lunch (and beyond if necessary) I'll be doing some workshops on MER imagery techniques.

If you're wondering why 33...

10 for each MER (20)
Two on MPF (22)
Three on Sojourner (25)
Two on each Viking Lander (29)
MOC on MGS (30)
Themis on Odyssey (31)
HRSC on MEX (32)

and of course, a look toward HiRISE on MRO (33)

I know I'm missing out the Mariner and Viking orbiter cameras, and others besides - but they're the cool ones

Doug

Ahh - but a dusty solar panel pixel, and a dusty mars soil pixel are very different when false-coloured from two wavelengths

doug

Keep an eye out on NASA TV's Video File for some great footage of the trials at the sand-box at JPL

It looked in those still images like they had the rover in a 'pit' - but there's video footage of it climbing thru and out of a fake dune - it was also just a mobility test rover - no cameras on it (to compensate for the mars-earth weight difference I presume)

It would SEEM - based on the testing - that the easiest way 'out' is 'thru' not 'back'. Steve was right though - a LOT of wheel turning without much happening, then a very small turn in place to use the excavated dirt as a 'ramp' to drive on - and it climbed very well

Doug

I think there's a 4 or 5 by 3 mosaic to be had out of this lot

Just need to locate it in Pancam imagery to colour it....anyone



http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_images/jib_mi.jpg (326kb)

Tried to colour it with pancam - but the two wouldnt match up at all - just a total botch-job - so I dropped it.

Doug

a long time ago I did an image that tried to show the resolving power of features using 3ds max. I showed different resolutions, different local times, different sized objects

but colour was the biggest help of all in identifying 'stuff'

Doug

I assume the demands of the instrument dictated that it be a fibreglass tube with, one pressumes, wire running down it - instead of just a metal deployment device like a metal tape-measure

doug

V1 + Pathfinder to match...

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/05/09/

Excellent work with MOC - some concrete targets for HiRISE.

I'm almost as excited by HiRISE as I was before MER arrived - it's that difference I guess between views 'from orbit' which MOC generates - and the views that HiRise will generate which are more like from a helecopter.

Phil - you might be able to shed light on this one - I've looked and looked - but no sign in any MOC images of the MPF backshell+chute or heatshield. The backshell might/probably was spotted in Super Res imagery in the direction of Big Crater but I see nothing that way in MOC imagery.

Also - using the EDL accelerometer data - they generated a route map for MERA and MERB that showed from retro fire to their final resting place - the direction travelled by the airbagged-lander.

I never saw anything like that for MPF. I guess if would have been near Big Crater - then rolling to the final resting place from there - theres some airbag scuffs in that direction - nothing as clear as those on meridiani or sleepy hollow however. recently I stumbled across the accel. data for MPF - (I dropped it into excel and it had the EDL graph with bounces at the end - vey nice) but I dont have any of the 1337 h4x0r programming skills to turn that edl data into a 3d path.

What I find a very exciting prospect for HiRise is that MPF should be easily resolveable, each solar panel being about 4 or 5 pixels in size - and easily visible in colour.

BUT

Maybe Sojourner will be visible as well It's just at the resolving power of HiRise and if the pixels fall just right - it's solar panel may make enough contribution to one pixel of an image to make it stand out.

Doug

Thanks for filling in the gaps Bruce. Same technique was used for the Pathfinder egress aids iirc.

Question is then - why the hell the obscure folded affair for MEX JPL has big input into this thing - ( U.S. (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), will be responsible for the system design with participation of Italy (Alenia Aerospazio). - www.marsis.com ) I'm amazed they screwed up here.

If it's kinked - I guess they could try spinning the spacecraft two and fro in an attempt to 'un' kink it

Doug