There was a saying on the set of Apollo 13 and FTETTM

"What does Chaikin say?" refering to Andrew Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon"

It is essentially THE reference of what went on imho

Perhaps what Aldrin saw was entirely natural, perhaps it was debris from a previous mission of some description - who knows.

Doug

I think the area of transition between the dusty dune-dense flat areas, and the rockier hillocks and humps is offering the best driving, so a skirt all the way around the unit that culminated in HP is looking quite likely.

Doug

FWIW - I look at the ISS whenever I can, and whilst a 90 degree elev gives the longest possible pass, it's awkward to look at. My favs are when the ISS passes at about 30 - 60 degrees, 45 being the sweet spot. It's a long pass, without being a neck-craner

Of course, something like 20 degrees is good if you have a clear horizon, as you can then do long-exposures that show the trail, with ground features to give a perspective to the whole thing. I'd say you're in a nice spot to get a nice view of it right where you are - just go and find some locally high ground if you can, with a clear nHorizon to the NW and NE so you can be sure to see as much of it as possible.

Doug

The way I figure it, that to 'resolve' something, you have to be able to say that there will be more than one pixel that is nothing except that object. The CPROTO images of the rovers are cool, but no one pixel is nothing-but-rover, they'll all just about include a big chunk of ground, and a bit of rover in the mix, contributing to the brightness of that pixel.

So - say you have a 1m resolution - and a 1x1m object, you could be REALLY unlucky and have the join of 4 pixels in the middle of your object and all you would have is 4 pixels that are 75% ground and 25% object. You've not resolved it

If you had a 2 x 2m object, there's no way in which the 'pixels could fall' where by you dont have at least one pixel that's totally saturated with the object and nothing else.

But to have be sure of what you're looking at - to have multiple pixels of the object in question - (and if you're have multiple pixels then it's going to have to be 2 x 2 pixels of it ) then you're looking at a minimum object size of 3 x 3 m - that's 3 x the 'resolution' of the camera.

So - transpose that onto the Peoples Camera (HiRISE) - and you have 3 x 30cm, which is, as near as makes no difference, 1 metre Any 1x1m object is certain to be the only source of photons in at least 4 pixel elements when you have a 30 x 30cm resolution.

I dont think there's any hard and fast rules on this. Like much imaging, it's a judgement call at the end of the day. I think my two simualtions are fairly representitive of the camera's abilities given perfect conditions. SS loved it when I gave him a little print out in a frame as a thankyou for his updates and hardwork on behalf of this place. I dont think the HiRISE team had done anything like that ( Steve's on the science team for it ) - and it certainly packed some wow factor. I dont think there will be a single HiRISE image that doesnt make you go "WOAH!"

That's my non-expert guestimated take on the situation anyway. It sort of makes sense...ish

Doug

At least I wasnt the only one who watched hours of MER ATLO

Doug

The pixels will be 25-30cm - but they use that to establish that it will be able to 'resolve' items of 1m



What you can 'resolve'and what your resolution are, are two different things.

For comparison, MGS MOC is typically 1.5m/pixel, although CPROTO makes that 0.5m/pixel downtrack - hence the non square pixels in my simulation

Doug

Not a great job, but it shows the environs.

Doug

HiRise has 10 x 2,000 pixel wide CCD's for a total of 20,000 pixels image width.

Those 10 all have a red filter, but the middle two CCD's also have two neigbours - a Near IR filter, and a Blue/Green filter.

Thus - in the middle 4000 pixels are a pseudo colour. I made two greyscale images - one red, one the average of my simualted images Green and Blue. I treated those images as if they were a 'raw' data product and generated that simualted image from them.

Doug

Thanks for the heads up Alex - I've been looking forward to these

Doug

No probs, just attach any new beta's and I'll give it a whirl

Doug

But the earth is hardly 'unmanned'

Doug

Doh - that's what I meant.

Just noticed something in Pans with 1.4.1 which I've not seen before.....

See the black 'chunk' like little V's that's over some of the Navcam imagery? It's odd - it doesnt go over Pancam frames, but it does hide parts of Navcam frames as you animate around

Yes - they're big screenies.....I have a big screen

Doug

I've sent a polite email to Dr Li ( he of MER Mapping fame, and the head of the dept. that produced those most recent, amazing maps ) and asked if he might be able to release an elevation map or DEM so that I could do some perspective views and animations of the area. If we're lucky, I might be able to do something like the old perspective views I did - http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_images/elev_1.jpg - but much much MUCH better

Doug

Ahhh - THAT'S it

I'm not a code monkey by any means, I just played around with the src

Doug

And of course, that means packing a bigger battery into the impactor, and a more powerfull transmitter. Which makes it heavier and bigger and so on and so forth....

Doug

No idea if this was addressed in 1.4.1, but this morning I was trying to make an UBER-MOVIE of all the FHAZ frames from spirit since Sol 1 - and 1.4 was shouting at me about null pointer exceptions or some such nonsense.....upgraded to 1.4.1 at lunch time, and tried again just now and it worked a treat

I'm going to be using the export-frames tool to make a cool every-FHaz+MI image from Sols 1 - 430ish to give me something to talk over at the beginning of my Spirit 'update' talk in London in three weeks With MMB it'd be just about impossible!!

Doug

Damn good point actually UG - hadnt thought of that.

Then again, they're planning a yearly checkout iirc though - and that may involved pitching/rolling/yawing the spacecraft to look at astronomical calibration targets, which would trash the effect wouldnt it?



Doug

That's an unfair and unjustified jab at the mission.

From http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects...e_20050720.html


Doug

I THINK.....




needs to be



You need to given them the same input name (so you pick one or the other, and not both) , but different id's. In this case, I've renamed their ID's to be radiobutton_is and radiobutton_isnt - just tried it on a saved version, and you can at least pick and or the other. I've just submitted an 'isnt' with the reason "I've told Emily hopefully how to fix this form"

Doug

I've submitted a reason why it IS

I've got to think of one why it isnt now.

Ahh - problem....when I click on the 'isnt' radio button, it doesnt actually select

(Win XP Pro SP2, Firefox 1.5)



Doug

Yup - that's more like it. Mine was more a 'over there...ish' wavey-hand type thing

Doug

Indeed - my best guess is something like the attached.

I think 713 was a drive sol as well, wee should get the imagery either quite soon on an AM Odyssey pass, or in 12 hours time on a PM after more post drive imaging on 714 They seem to be doing a pattern. Drive & Drive Direction Pancam on some sols, and then Navcam (documenting the terrain I suppose ) on the following sol.

Doug

I've tried to compare Alan-is-Lost with Tesh-Map

It doesnt look like much, but it really helped me put the local geography into some sort of context.

Doug

How about 'dedicated close encounters' and 'distant encounters of opportunity'?

Doug