Some stereo closeups from the context of the Sol 3066 image in the previous post.

Distant dunes and crater view changing with time, obviously part of a long-term survey:


Airbag

It had been a while since I fired up MMB2, and I was struck by this most colorful sol 3135 collage with all viewing options enabled!


Airbag

LOL (plus slight cringe)... yes, there are some longstanding issues there, not the least of which is 'auto-mismatching' of images. Midnight Planets is already handling it somewhat better, although progress is slow:

(For folks who haven't been following MER for years, I should probably explain that the color variation is mostly due to how the individual grayscale JPG images are automatically brightness stretched for the web. Eventually I'm hoping to process the 'real' image data from the Planetary Data System and eliminate that problem.)

I've noticed that some of the "auto-mismatching" of images in MMB is due to the wrong images being used when the RGB composites are generated. Some of that is unavoidable, since we often get images with dropouts early on, which cause some of the generated images to have areas with strange colors. This is readily corrected by waiting for the final image versions, manually deleting the earlier versions of images in the raw image directories, and then telling MMB to regenerate the composite images for the sols affected.

That alone will significantly improve many MMB panoramas. (I used to do this religiously, but after all these years it is getting tedious, and sometimes I just live with the patchwork quilt panos. ) Some of the mismatching, however, is not so easily corrected, and requires one to manually correct certain images and put them in the proper directory, which I didn't do for this attachment.


...loving Midnight Planets, by the way...

Sol 3224 micro.

Nice micro...here's the rest of the image

Another gust out in Endeavour (each frame of the gif is the average of a left/right navcam pair to reduce noise):

Is this summer gustier than last, or did we just not look carefully enough for the signs last summer?

Fredk, I'm glad you're spotting these things. I'm wondering if you ever go into the PDS data to look for these once the data are out. If you do, is there a substantial improvement in quality?

I know the raw images let us see what's going on *right now*, but I do wish more people would work on PDS versions -- the longevity of the mission is such that 6-9 months doesn't seem nearly as long as it used to.

Can you please elaborate on the PDS versions? Are they images not as compressed? Where can they be found? Thanks!

Funny that I mention that this morning and then I get an email announcing that the latest release came out today! It covers Sols 2971 through 3060.

To access it, use the MER Analyst's Notebook. I know there have been discussions about using it on this forum. Have a look around. Or just click around at the Notebook -- you'll find certain features very easy to locate.

That's right, they are uncompressed, and calibrated. Find them in the Analyst's Notebook.

I suspect that for many people the problem is time: we have 3060 sols of Oppy PDS images! It can take enough time just keeping up with the new images. But I agree it would be very cool to revisit many of the great images from this mission.

Myself, I'd been thinking "when Oppy finally bites the dust (gasp!), that'll be a good time to start digging into the PDS". Fortunately, that hasn't happened yet!