I'm sure some of the better image masters here could squeeze some detail out of that - maybe for starters: zoom 1000%, unsharp mask, level adjust... At least with only one pixel, jpeg artifacts shouldn't be a problem!

Oh my God—it's full of stars!

OK so I wrote my own demosiaicing algorithm, included a Fourier filter and a 'detect suspiciously green pixels and look for something more Mars-like nearby' procedure. Still have a greenish cast in many areas but I'm making progress.



Click for image download options, including full 80 Megapixel 17MB version and Zoomify if you don't want to tackle that!

James

The timestamps on the raw image files--the time the image was taken--have been coming in the early afternoon, local solar time. To get an idea of the typical MSL workday, at least as far as picture-taking is concerned, here are the statistics for the first 5000 or so images:

11am-12pm 1
12pm-1pm 602
1pm-2pm 516
2pm-3pm 640
3pm-4pm 3426
4pm-5pm 150


The 3pm-4pm bin is heavily skewed by the MARDI images.

So no morning or sunset shots yet (sunset is currently 5:21pm and sunrise 5:26am). Is it necessary, at least at this point in the checkout, to operate the cameras only in the heat of the afternoon?

Remember that engineering camera images -- Navcams and Hazcams -- tend to be taken toward the end of the day, to document the final position of the rover after any movement, right before the afternoon downlink. They're taken during the day too, obviously, to document whatever's happening as it happens, but full navcam pans will tend to be taken in the afternoon.

Although I'm not an ECAM or MASTCAM PUL, I would venture to say they want to avoid heating either the mechanisms and/or the electronics to capture images early in the morning and late in the evening.

Paolo

OK, had to look up PUL.

Granted you're not necessarily going for artsy or pretty but it's axiomatic in nature photography that morning and evening light is the best. It'd be interesting to see how that mileage might vary with Mars atmospherics. Maybe sometime down the road.

Just a thought, "HDR" has been kind of a fad in recent years, where dynamic range is extended by combining multiple shots taken at different exposure levels--particularly where there are areas of bright sunlight and dark shadow in the frame, say, in the foothills and canyons of Mt. Sharp. Maybe that would require even more than an "intermission"--a vacation for MSL?

We had done some early morning and late afternoon photography on Mars with MER and I love those shots. Not only because they look good but also you can see the terrain better. MSL has done her part with her first FHAZ with long shadows. I'm sure they will do that some time. About the HDR thing, as the cameras already have 12 bit depth I'm not sure we would need many frames to expand the dynamic range. These are the typical things that can be done during conjunction for example. I will keep that in mind.

Paolo

They have 12-bit ADCs but considering the SNR, effectively somewhat less? If so, the nearly dark areas would be noisy. But overexpose to get more electrons in the wells for the dark areas & more real detail could be brought out.

On another topic, here's a shot taken yestersol by NAVCAM:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/pr...NCAM00407M_.JPG

Is that a scientifically interesting outcrop in the near left? Here's an anaglyph:



The terrain around your rover always looks a lot more uneven with 3D than I expect.

Its looking good! If you're still interested in off-the-shelf solutions, I see very nice results with the G'MIC plugin for GIMP. It has a Bayer reconstruct filter which with the default settings avoids the green patches other de-Bayer methods are giving.

I've also been working on some custom code for the problem, that works at the level of the raw jpeg data to try to correct the decimated dct coefficients for bayer bias. Maybe I'll have something to share on that soon. I was originally pretty motivated by the nasty green patches, but then I discovered that G'MIC mostly solves that issue without such fancy custom techniques.

That looks awesome James, whatever progress you make over this, I'm very pleased to appreciate all the detail in the mountain in full color

That sounds very intruiging - could you post samples of what that plugin can do? Could you use the same test images we've been using over in the images thread, these two:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/ms...2000C0_DXXX.jpg
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/ms...2000C0_DXXX.jpg
It'd be great if we could see what it can do before thinking about installing gimp...

A large bunch of raw images are available for Sol 24, many full data:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=

I believe you can see Bradbury Landing and the visit to the Goulburn Scour in this image, then the tracks lead further on:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/pr...NCAM00406M_.JPG

Rear Hazcam:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/pr...RHAZ00303M_.JPG

I am one ...

... and I agree. And, for many things, time of day is a significant aspect of planning. Speaking for myself, I don't mind heating the things when needed. But working outside of the warmest part of the day could mean heating cameras, electronics, and especially actuators for pointing, focusing, etc. Hazcam doesn't have those issues. This part of the mission is not the time to stress either the thermal or the power systems (soon, I hope!). And while I don't mind heating, the power gurus (or other camera types) might... . Of course, for some things, morning/evening light isn't so good. Shadows are dramatic, but they may not convey the kind of information you want. Nonetheless, I'd like to see such images be part of the repertoire.

I'm not sure about this. Not all cameras handle saturation gracefully. I've done multiple-exposure levels on MER, with cameras that don't do saturation well, meeting with partial success. We need experience to figure how valuable HDR can be (versus, for instance, individual, well-exposed, lossless images).

Sol 24 Navcam pan It's good to see some tracks behind the rover. The sign we are on the road.