Official image released today as PIA11501. "Streaking through the South"

Replying to my own post. It is a cloud streak and it is the same one observed previously at the N pole.
Here is the raw image, then an ubercontrasted version side by side:

Here is an attempt to coordinate and animate the April 28 and April 29 images to see N Polar streak cloud evolution over time:

(click to animate)

I tried to use the larger rounder 'blob' and the light circular streak as the reference points.
This is kinda ugly due to changing viewing geometry and different lighting.

But, if I got this right, it looks like the biggest brightest blob is catching up to the second brightest blob.

-Mike

Photojournal PIA11501 image (left) and original raw image N00132562 (right) rotated and the latter blended with a Celestia grid (as in post # 33). Should be possible to collect several images of this area from this year and create another movie of cloud motion around the S polar region.

Another set of clouds from the May 28 observations. These are near Ganesa Macula around 50 N latitude:
I used a slightly different technique to bring out cloud detail. (I'm trying to find a systematic, non-manually intensive way to do this easily. Just using a high-pass filter has issues due to the gradient).

Here is the before and after image:


Here is an annotated image using Celestia. Cloud streaks indicated by solid red arrows, tentative cloud streaks with dotted red arrows.
The orientation of some of the streaks is not lined up with the latitude lines, some appear slightly tilted WNW-ESE.


The final combined image and the exact recipe I used for processing (all the nerdly details) can be found here:http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/3581082151/

Most recent set of images post T-61 of Belet taken on Sept 10 ubercontrasted.
Contrast enhanced (Combo CL1 CB3 images - CL1 MT3 image), then masked out to remove artifacts. Cropped and rotated so that N is at top.



(The little bright dots all in a line indicate hot pixels that line up due to spacecraft motion from one CB3 image to the next. They were pretty handy guides to make sure the MT3 image was coordinated).

Animated sequence of images taken Sept 23 of the N Polar region. These are six images taken by the CL1 CB3 filter that have been aligned.


(Animated GIF - click to animate)

No cloud changes can be seen, only small changes due to perspective and exposure.

-Mike

Sept 23, 2009 Cloud images:

Aligned layer stack with hi-pass filtering:


Ubercontrasted image:


And a wickedly contrast-stretched image to try and show the high latitude dark lanes:


-Mike

Nice enhancements Mike. I think Kraken is visible. Here's my effort to show the same with some coordinates and an outline to help out.

Well, well - I just took a stroll over to 'Mike Brown's Planets' and what should I find but this. My printer will be busy for the next few minutes and myself for a bit longer! (We're both rather slow.)

http://www.gps.caltech.edu/%7Embrown/paper...louds_final.pdf

Indeed! Thats one of the papers I referred to in my posts in 'Non-targeted flyby Sept 22, 2009' see post #20. You should also read the Rodriquez paper I have posted there (abstract I think) as Brown has serious issues with that Nature paper. The cloud distribution figure in post # 23 and post # 27 are from the 2nd Brown paper I listed in post #20. http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0809.1841

Aah I thought so, but what I hadn't realised was that your second link went to a full paper - I only tried the first one. Oh well, I suppose it might be handy also to have the link in this thread which is a more long term topic than the other one. Now if one of the authors would supply a free link to the other paper we'd have the full deal.

The Rodriguez paper:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.0606

Thanks remcook! And on seeing that I now realise it has been on Jason B's website all along so here's the pretty version:

http://barnesos.net/~jbarnes/publications/...sion.Clouds.pdf

Heh -- I probly shoulda said somethin' earlier

Glad to be of service,

- Jason