Why does it have to be one or the other? They might, just maybe, be excited about both. My experience matches Stu.

You keep saying it's the 'same imagery' from the Apollo Era. It really really isn't. We're now talking HDTV colour movies from the surface of the moon ( never seen before ) and surface imagery of an abandoned Apollo site ( never seen before ).

And there's the bits of the moon between landing sites that we've never seen before in any way.

Also - there is the scientific bonus of visiting those sites that have a ground truth for calibration.

Doug

Late last week I stumbled upon a few HiRISE derived DEM's (Randy Kirk works his magic once again!)

http://webgis.wr.usgs.gov/ftphirise/index.jsp (URL now down)

I'm working on both Vic Crater and the Columbia Hills. Fortunately, now I've got a Mac, I can use ISIS. I've figured out a fairly simple flow ( isis2raw as 16 bit unsigned, and then imported into Photoshop ) to take DEM CUB's and make 16 bit PNG's

Just to demo how important that is for me as an animator - sliced comparisons of 8bit vs 16 bit.

A busy week unfortunately, but animations of various sorts are in the pipeline.

There's the whole of antarctica to visit - so why do so many like to visit Shackletons hut.

Why does anyone go to see the Bell X1, why take pictures of the empty lander from MER like the Lion King pan, why visit the Apollo landing sites...

It's a place of ultimate historical significance.

Or - to flip your argument - when there's so much of the moon to choose, why not choose the site the public will be most interested in from a revenue generating perspective.

Doug

That's what the situation needs. Heavily instrumented large aquatic mammals.

Or SAR.

The english language just falls apart when trying to put this stuff into words. We're both thinking of you.

Doug ( & Helen )

It's no good - we're going to have to change your name to Randy Kirk Home Edition.

GREAT stuff.

Doug

View from Jan 11th of Oppy in Vic crater.

Waddayaknow - Alan and his team deliver the goodies nice and early. Meanwhile the European lot drag their feet.

Not sure how 'suitable for public consumption' Alice data is, but I'll certainly have a look at some point

Doug

I'll sort out the 'first' and 'last' chance fit-in-a-frame family portraits and post them all as screenshots with timings etc into ppt slides and attach it, probably this weekend.

Doug

Well - the MI on MER can and does observe PARTS of the spacecraft. If you had an MI that could pull focus, you could photograph bigger chunks of the spacecraft. Like MSL's MAHLI Creative sequencing of the MSL IDD could allow some stitched images that cover quite a bit of MSL.

Doug

Ryan ( http://martianchronicles.wordpress.com/ ) said that they downlinked all the thumbnails - but then threw away the sky images They commanded a bigger mosaic than they needed, as it was commanded in the blind before the drive.

Doug

Both of those are used in the animation I did of EVERY HiRISE image taken of Spirit. It's in it's own thread in the Spirit forum. Spirit is as visible as ever, and I would say the tracks are more visible than ever, Home Plate as clear as ever. I'm well aware of the reports of trouble with HiRISE, but they have been mainly solved as I understand it. Some images are, indeed, worse than others - but the most recent one is damn good.

Image quality now is NOT significantly ( or ever, imho, noticeably ) worse than the start of the science orbit. Suggesting that it wont be able to see Phoenix (a larger vehicle than MER) when it can see Spirit better than ever is just totally wrong.

Doug

Phoenix will be EASY to spot - very very easy indeed. I did a simulation just over a year ago ( Bottom of http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000840/ ) - but it appears, from above, about three times the size of MER. Basically, imagine two MER's with a brighter disk parked between them.

And to be honest, claiming that HiRISE has degraded significantly is just not true. The most recent image of Spirit ( from January ) is as good (and infact, imho, better than) as the very first ( from Nov 06 )

I don't think there's any way to do that - all the instruments are essentially bolted to the vehicle and point in a similar direction.

And outbound, it's on the 19th - if the sun angle makes it possible. It'd be a lovely parting shot if it is.

http://soc.boulder.swri.edu/nhgv/gv.php?su...amp;title_plot=

Ah - I was being stupid - plot RADIUS. (duhh)

Inbound - it's a few days earlier then for P+C
http://soc.boulder.swri.edu/nhgv/gv.php?su...amp;title_plot=



And again, a few days earlier for P+C+H+N

http://soc.boulder.swri.edu/nhgv/gv.php?su...amp;title_plot=

I was able to go out to the 26th for look-back's - but not beyond that. Maybe, just maybe, there's a tiny thin crescent full family portrait on the outbound leg as well.

60% of the frame would mean playing with a fov of .18deg to be sure of 'getting' it. The viewer takes that into account already I think, just giving a .18deg FOV for Lorri.

If an outbound P+C ( but not H+N ) pair is possible (I'm guessing there's a sun-pointing keep-out involved at some point here) and assuming the viewer already constrains the LORRI viewing box to take into account the possible pointing errors.

http://soc.boulder.swri.edu/nhgv/gv.php?su...amp;title_plot=

left 40
go 10
right 90
go 5
end

MER works like a LOGO turtle right?



Doug

Same rule, with the 'kids' as well.

http://soc.boulder.swri.edu/nhgv/gv.php?su...amp;title_plot=

I'm sure those with excellent skills in Excel and celestial mechanics (yes, you Hendric ) will work their magic

Like

A

Glove

Docking coming up in just a few seconds. 7.5 m and closing at 6cm/sec

Oh, hold on - you're right. An equatorial site, during northern summer, will have the sun in the north at noon. At high summer, it would be 25 degrees from zenith. Thus - at noon, mid summers day, a 10m cliff would cast a shadow of about 4.6 metres.

So shadowing WILL be an issue (as indeed, the 4pm navcam image taken a few sols ago shows)

I've got it right this time havn't I? Equatorial sites would have the sun at zenith during northern spring and autumn, and then experience two winters as it were, at northern summer (when a site 25 deg north of the equator has the sun at zenith) and northern winter ( when a site 25 deg south of the equator has the sun at senith)

Doug

I think they're just doing a systematic survey of the IDD nearfield during the winter to see if the wind moves stuff across the surface, or the vehicle itself settles.

Doug

ARHGHGH - damn colourised elevation maps. Can't use them to do animations

Randy - do it - do a geo-tiff or similar

Doug

It's the Spring Bank Holiday Monday James WIN

Doug