Well, in terms of resolving power at Mars now, we have...

MOC
HRSC SRC
Themis Vis
HRSC
Themis IR

It may be unimpressive compared to a MOC image, but it's still better than anything else....
http://themis-data.asu.edu/img/V06305001.html is the next best, and http://themis-data.asu.edu/img/V07416001.html in colour.

Doug

Attached - at full resolution ( quoted as being 4.3m/pixel - but obvious quite out of focus and probably only resolving 12m/pixel...if that ) the SRC mosaic strip of the Meridiani observation.

Obviously one can see Endurance and Victoria - but that's about it. Quite easy to see why ESA kept rather quiet about the SRC when you look at stuff like this.

Doug

Ooops - thought I'd get the ND3 of the early Gusev observation....and it's large..and you can't resume downloads ( very bad ).....eek....a single image product, 200 meg and still going.

If I said what I really though, I'd end up banning myself from the forum, which would result in a quantum administrative black hole and the forum would vanish in a cloud of irony.



As a heads up - the ND3 filter is much much higher resolution than the colour filters - me thinks colour overlay on greyscale is in order.

Doug

Anyone noticed the utterly CRAP flatfielding of the SRC images?

Doug

Actually - I'm going to pitch for more like 12...and I've not highlighted them but there's potentially another 2 in there as well, possibly more. I used Blue, Green and nIR for these...

Blue
START_TIME = 2004-12-25T00:55:56.360Z

Green
START_TIME = 2004-12-25T00:55:37.866Z

nIR
START_TIME = 2004-12-25T00:55:04.547Z

So - given that the red image is 'leading' the blue by 52 seconds, the full res is 89.5 m/pixel, and I'm getting between 6 and 9 pixels of motion between thsoe two frames...I'd estimate a speed of between 10 and 15 m/sec in a SE direction - one problem would be figuring out how much of that apparant motion is because of the slightly different p.o.v. between filters - but I think 10m/sec is a fair estimation.

Look at me, getting all scientific

Sadly - they didn't do all the filtes for this obs, but there's a normal red, and an ND filter obs that I've not looked at, so I'll try and do the maths with those later - see how well it ties in with 10-15m/sec

Doug

Here's the problem that I think Bruce and I have discussed elsewhere....

To be sure of no risk to the earth or life thereon, there must be a 100% guarentee that any Martian samples are free of biological material....

To do that, one has to establish that Mars is entirely free of life....which is basically an impossible thing to do without getting some samples on the ground to look at with all our best instruments.

So we can't find out if the samples would be safe to have on Earth until we get them on Earth and find out if it was safe to bring them down to Earth or not....see the problem

Doug

I read it's about 30 - 32 days of on orbit checkout and orbital manouvers to move into the A-Train.

Doug

You noticed that one has SIX DD's on it...SIX - and all fairly large to be detected at that res.

Doug

You win....a metaphorical cookie

Do you realise than in the space of 36 hrs we've output more HRSC images than ESA would do in about 6 months

Doug

Here's some interesting stuff....

A volcano ( I thought Ol.Mons but I have no idea to be honest - it isnt Ol Mons, a metaphorical cookie for whoever identifies it first ) from the HRSC, showing the coverage of the SRC - and then the SRC mosaic to match.

Because this is a stereo camera, and because there are some serious elevation changes in this lot, you get slight channel miss-match in places - especially with high altitude clouds ( as with some of the polar images )

The HRSC colour image is at a best res of 102 m/pixel - the SRC 3.5m/pixel ( but I've downscaled, so 7m/pixel )

There is a graph somewhere that plots 'Doug Productivity' vs ' Interesting Data Releases' - it's going to be pretty damning...

anyway - more fun...

And - that storage is the slower non-volatile type. It's not 'Ram'.

If you want to process a lot of images for navigation purposes, you need plenty of ram with which to do it.

Strangely, I've never seen any reference to Hazcam's for MSL - I'm assuming they'll be installed front and rear- but will they be MER heritage, or fish-eye'd versions of the Mastcam electronics?

Either way - I think with improvements in software, we can get better at this than we are now. Compare current driving to, say, the drive to Bonneville crater - AND - we are due another MER software update in the not too distant future.

Doug

"Kid in Candy Store" T-Shirts now available...we're nearly there

There seems to have been a systematic survey of the south pole during the 1000-1200 orbit numbers. And similarly, a LOT of images of Val-Mar. Mosaic-o-rama-a-go-go at some point


Doug

TPS members will be pleased to see that you can now do the 'beta' testing phase - interface is actually very good, I'm enjoying it.



I'm a pro, me.

Doug

1087, 1154, 1096 - all polar obs with nIR, G, B - perhaps the ice acts as an 'auto-level' thus making these look reasonable sans-radiometric-calibration

1201 just doesnt quite work out right - it needs that offset and scale processing I would imagine - and just for the sake of looking, I did the 1201 Super-Res channel mosaic as well.

At the BAA Out of London meeting this weekend just gone ( a tie in with the 125th aniv of the Liverpool Astronomy Assoc ) - we had a half hour session on the Faulkes North scope....
http://www.britastro.org/baa/

http://britastro.org/baa/images/stories/ne...0060422_ftn.jpg

Doug

SLAP

http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/index1.html



Doug

There was a gap post-Viking-orbiter and pre-MGS - but there has been continual mars orbital coverage (allowing for aerobraking obviously ) since MGS's arrival

Doug

Well - I could try the drinking angle, but I recorded the Q'n'A on Wed PM, but was so worn out and my voice so dead afterwards, I waited till Thur AM until recording the 'top and tail' pieces and sending it over to Emily - so that's a long hangover

Doug

I'm struggling to find meridiani obs using lat long search - what parameters are you using?

Doug

Well while we're comparing notes, Helen and I had our first last summer - a bit nervous at first but you get used to things very quickly, gives you a new perspective on things and we've even thought about having another at some point.






We're talking about cat's right?

If you look in the thread for each one, we've had quite a large ammount of the earlier ones done already - so by all means jump in

Doug

The middle part of that huge 70k tall Gusev observation

Looking around, it seems that a lot more nIR,G,B obs have been done than RGB.

Doug

Spirit ( and indeed other HRSC obs )
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=2653

Doug