Sure they are. They're called Full Resolution Basic Image Data Records or F-BIDRs. See http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/magellan/

Getting rid of shading at the boundaries of the swaths was extremely difficult because of radar artifacts. Maybe in the 20+ years since I've looked at Magellan data someone has improved the processing.

EDRs are never corrected/flat-fielded because they represent the least-processed form of the data.

In the list you linked to, "rad-corrected" RDRs would typically be flat-fielded, though I haven't looked at the engineering camera products. Some of the MMM RDR products are radiometrically corrected and some aren't, the RDR subtypes are not captured in the list you linked to.

Is what you're calling the "raw" image stretched or something? The raw data don't/shouldn't have anything like the level of visible blockiness that this image has. Either there is something wrong with whatever you're using to convert formats or something messed up in the EDR files themselves.

[Indeed, on further checking my original decompressed version of EFB13 doesn't show these block artifacts. Something is screwed up in our processing chain that produced the EDRs. Thanks for noticing this!]

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this. The 16x16 block artifacts are from the onboard data compression (same as was used for the MOC way back when -- JPEG-like but with 16x16 transform blocks.) There is no way in general to restore anything as the raw image was never transmitted.

The only difference between the EDR and the RDR is that the RDR has been linearized and a radiometric scale factor applied.

If this had been a real PDS release you would also have access to the documentation. That release is coming but I don't know when; unlike previous missions we don't deliver directly to the PDS. For now I'll see if I can post the documentation on the web site.

Certainly, but at a range of 5.2e6 km on JOI-5d, Jupiter is about 40 pixels across, so they won't be great images. [Junocam, maybe JIRAM does better.]

Handy formula: Junocam Jupiter size in pixels ~ 210/d, d in millions of km

Today is Jupiter Orbit Insertion (JOI) minus 180 days. 53.5 days after JOI, Juno will make its next close pass to Jupiter, and that's when we expect to get the first good images from Junocam, although there may be some imaging during approach and earlier on the first orbit.

Here's a dimensioned drawing of the Junocam color filter array (dimensions in mm). In looking at EFB12, I would venture to guess that a lot of the stray light features are actually interline smear from the clear areas in the CFA adjacent to the CH4 region, not all of which are occluded by the light shield. These are exacerbated by the short exposure times we had to use in EFB.

Reflections off the light shield are not very plausible, as the shield and all of the internals of the optics are bead-blasted and black anodized. The AR coatings on the glass surfaces are as good as we could obtain but certainly there are paths from the filter edges, from the CCD die, bond pads, metallization, etc.

Since the instrument is not intended to be radiometrically precise and the stray light is only especially visible off the limb, I'm not thinking this is going to be much of an issue for most applications. I'm still more concerned about band-to-band registration, for which no perfect model yet exists.

Mods: again, I suggest this material be moved to a subforum as it's unlikely to be very interesting to most.

[moderator note: A Juno subforum will probably be created soon and the Juno thread split and/or reorganized when this happens]

I'll see what we can release. Some of that doesn't even exist -- for example, no BRDF measurements were made for this non-radiometric instrument. The ray trace of the optics in the Junocam paper is accurate if non-quantitative.

BTW, the most rigorous attempt I'm aware of to characterize the radiometric properties of a pushframe system (including stray light) can be found in "Inflight Calibration of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera Wide Angle Camera" http://asu.pure.elsevier.com/en/publicatio...rbiter-camera-w (not open access, unfortunately.)

Keep in mind that EFB03 was taken in a mode that is unlikely to be duplicated for Jupiter observations (lots of TDI in a visible channel). We will probably only use a lot of TDI for the CH4 channel.

In the diagram you show above of the CFA, be aware that there is a light shield between the top of the CCD and the back of the optics with an aperture nominally 0.231x0.473 inches centered on the center of the sensor. This is intended to block stray light paths from the sensor bond wires and metallization on the sensor package, though there could be some misalignment and some small paths could still exist.

Mods: it might make sense to create a subforum for this material, much as was done with the MSL discussion of technical details about the cameras.

Citation needed.

Thanks for pointing that out, John, I had forgotten that tale of woe. What's missing from Dawn is the international aspect; although much of Dawn's payload was provided by foreign partners, as far as I know most of the developmental problems were with the spacecraft.

I wish there was better information about what actually happened with Dawn and how it was resolved; the best I've been able to find is http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1112 but that falls well short of an official report/policy statement.

More fundamentally, there are typically not spare data and power connectors on spacecraft like this. Even adding mounting holes to bolt on new stuff is non-trivial; assuming there was enough unused area at all, the spacecraft would have to be at least partially disassembled to do so.

The combination of Insight being a cost-capped PI mission and the problem instrument not being funded by NASA makes this a complex and AFAIK unprecedented situation. We'll just have to wait and see how it develops.

ULA takes it back and uses it for something else. There's almost certainly a cancellation cost in the launch contract.

Usually the mission-specific fairing sticker isn't put on until encapsulation, but if it's on already they can peel it off pretty easily

Actually (and despite my earlier skepticism), the cameras were upgraded to Bayer color.

Of course the RMI is somewhat defocused at the pixel scale so its effective resolution is lower than this would suggest.

They could use a similar scaling, but this capability seems to be rarely used. For MER, from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007JE003003/full



This is probably to simplify the onboard stereo processing, but I'm not certain.

The REMS booms are on the remote sensing mast, not the arm.

Earthrise from LRO: http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/posts/895

Moving dust is utterly unlike moving sand. Google for "martian saltation kok" for example.

J.F. Kok "Difference in the wind speeds required for initiation versus continuation of sand transport on Mars: Implications for dunes and dust storms"

Uh, no. See http://www.mars.asu.edu/christensen/docs/e...unes_JGR_91.pdf

Tough crowd. And I must have missed the memo that said peer review could be done over Twitter.

The system will sort this out. I don't think you want to introduce a chilling effect where interesting results, even if premature, can't be put out on arxiv. The authors are taking chances of being criticized, but those are their chances to take.

Where does it say that? Table 1 shows S/N of 21.4 for one observation and 4.3 for the other.

Did you read section 4.1? They certainly try to address why the object is not associated with alpha Cen. As I read it, the basic argument is that it's too bright to be at that distance and not have been seen previously.

Statistically I agree, the chance that the object just happened to be in line with alpha Cen but not associated with it seem very low.

Assuming this object is real, the most likely explanation can't be discussed here due to rule 1.3.

Unfortunately, here in reality the relationship between cost and probability of mission success is not quantifiable with any precision. I'm not even sure that spending more money increases probability of success in all cases.

Accidentally. We can command in many reference frames, both rover-relative and surface-relative, and if the rover orientation post-drive is not what we expected during planning, these sorts of things can happen. (Note that these images are focused on the stuff behind the rover, not on the rover itself.) There are some cases where the arm was imaged because it was in an unexpected pose, too.

I've tried to imagine a way in which the entire rover could be imaged by "accident" but I haven't come up with a plausible story. Yet.