I should probably write that in the caption...anyway, I rarely change the filenames of images as I work with them, so it's still on there in the image in the post. Just save picture as and you'll see it: PSP_001497_2480_RED

I got an interesting email from Mark Lemmon, which I'll blog next week as I've done enough for today, but I thought y'all would enjoy it here:

I asked for more from him on why that orientation -- I'll post Monday.

And I did fix that 8-meter mistake (stupid Imperial units...)

--Emily

Emily wrote "which will align the solar panels roughly E-W."
May be I'm too impatient but as I see how important it's for Spirit to get her panel in the right orientation I may be understand why the "slope issue" (of having slopes less than a few degree) is as important as the "boulder issue"

Tried again - 33cm/pixel ( it just seems better at that res ) - with all the landers pointing with arms going north...makes it harder to see with a 30 degree high Sun off to the west - as the shadow falls more under the lander and less onto the ground beside it. Thanks for the pointers Mark

Doug

You'd have had real fun on the flight from LA to Dulles with all the JPL's EDL guys playing around altogether to get Phoenix OK on the ground

Landing site update from Peter Smith's LPSC poster. Of the three boxes considered in Regions D and A, Box 1 has been selected as the final 'box' (2.5 degrees north to south, 9 degrees east-west, which is about 150 km square). This is in the 'green valley' area, about 80 km west of a 10 km crater on the south edge of the valley. The ellipse can still move around a bit within the box.

Phil

Cool. Nice to know Phoenix's future home on the Red Planet has been selected

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070312/full/070312-5.html

Update from LPSC on the Phoenix site.

This is the region of the landing site:



and this is the site itself with three landing ellipses oriented according to different arrival dates. The intersection of the ellipses is the preferred location.



Phil

I am on dial-up. I will not be downloading any Hirise size files, so I saved your graphics to a newly created Phoenix directory. Good basic material for following the future mission. However I have one question -

Edit
Forget the question. It can be answered by comparing both images.

Original question
Is the geometry of that image accurate? All the craters are extremely squashed ovals - wildly stretched east and west. Is it caused by projecting parallel longitude lines?

.

Yes, the first one is a simple cylindrical projection, which is why everything is so stretched out in longitude. 1 degree of longitude does not equal one degree of latitude this far north, not even close! Map projections are actually a real problem for this mission. Phil, of course, would be the correct authority on what projection they SHOULD be using for their maps...

Phil, where did you find that update? I couldn't find it on the Phoenix site. Can you post a link?

--Emily

The geometry is perfectly accurate - for that map projection. Simple Cylindrical does that to craters. The second image is part of the same thing, but stretched vertically to give a better idea of shape.

Emily - a polar sterographic or a conic projection at that latitude would be better for shape. I used the Simple Cylindrical because that's how we can now get all this good stuff straight off the Themis site:

http://jmars.asu.edu/data/

As for the update... Ah, Em, you shoulda been there! I took it from Peter Smith's LPSC talk and poster.

Phil

An interesting article on undergraduate labor. http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=22456

I may have missed it somewhere else, but I've never heard whether MRO concluded it's HiRes imaging campaign of the entire Phoenix landing site. Did it finish? If not, is The Storm having any effect on it's imaging at this latitude?

I know the days have to be getting short at the site by this time of (martian) year. So if they're not done yet ...

Phil reporting in from an internet cafe in Tofino, BC:

No, I don't think there is very much coverage yet. New pics will be taken after the sun gets higher again, not too long before landing.

Phil

BAD QUOTING - STOP IT

That will feed our eager minds untill May...
Advanced discovery planning, we're into it...

FYI, Phil, There is a bakery there that has the best Pizza I've ever tasted, that and it's the hotbed of Sasquatch sightings.