Q & A With Steve Squyres, Coming in September |
Q & A With Steve Squyres, Coming in September |
Jul 27 2005, 11:46 AM
Post
#1
|
|
Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14433 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
As previously reported, there's a great lineup of speakers at the BAA out of London meeting on September 3rd - including MER Principle Investigator Steve Squyres.
Steve has kindly offered some of his time so that we can meet up and do a Q'n'A based on questions submitted by you lot. Obviously - there will be loads and loads of questions you want to ask and only so much time in which to ask them - however - I'll do what I can to pick as many of the best as I can squeeze in in the time available. There will be a write up here, obviously, and I will try and record it as an MP3 and post that here as well. Steve's book 'Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity and the Exploration of the Red Planet' is published next week - and a signed copy will be winging its way to the person submitting the best question! * If you have questions you want me to pitch to Steve, then drop me an email to doug@rlproject.com with the subject SS Q&A As a heads up - please take note of the other speakers at the BAA meeting - and if you have specific questions you'd like asked of them - I'll do my best to try and get them in after their presentations at the meeting. The last two ( Profs Greeley and Muller ) are on the Sunday and the Friday respectively, but I will be trying to get down to those presentations as well - but no promises. -Prof. Carolyn Porco, Principal investigator, Cassini imaging system -Prof. John Zarnecki, Principal investigator, Huygens surface science -Prof. Mike A'Hearn, Principal Investigator, Deep Impact, -Prof. Ron Greeley, Scientist on several planetary missions, Chairman of NASA & NAS Mars exploration panel -Prof. Jan-Peter Muller, Scientist on Mars Express hi-resolution camera team, University College London. Doug * 'best' to be picked by SS and myself on the day |
|
|
Aug 22 2005, 09:11 PM
Post
#61
|
|
Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14433 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Arhgh - those codes on the DVD's had Helen and I going nuts
You got a good deal mind you - as the Spirit one was imaged twice I think... Sol 2 - You got a REALLY sharp L4, highly compressed L5, a 2:1 downsampled L6, and a nice L1. If you make a colour image from the L456 - then overlay it onto the L1 - you get great results. Bog standard L456 http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...pir_dvd_456.jpg L456 as colour over L1 http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...r_dvd_456x1.jpg L456 and L1 stretched a bit - and multiplied http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...dvd_456x1xD.jpg One problem is that it's just short of being in focus - it's a bit too close to the pancam. However - sol 37 comes along and we get L24567R2 - all full res and with mild compression The 456 comes out as http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...r_dvd_2_456.jpg and an L2/R2 anaglyph http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...r_dvd_2_ana.jpg Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet Full sized L1 and L4, but this time downsized on both L5 and L6 L456 http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...opp_dvd_456.jpg L456 x 1 http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...p_dvd_456x1.jpg L456 x 1 with tweaking http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...dvd_456x1xD.jpg Sol 12 - Oppy got another shot http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im.../opp_dvd_12.jpg Sadly - in the part-taken L4,5,7 mosaic http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...nest_mosaic.jpg The DVD isnt there - it's off to one side. All this is on the Planetary Soc website - but it was fun to recreate it all myself as well - ahhh...sol's in single digits..those were the days That was a fun blast from the past. Doug |
|
|
Aug 22 2005, 09:28 PM
Post
#62
|
|
Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
QUOTE (djellison @ Aug 22 2005, 02:11 PM) Can you believe that before the operational rehearsals, Squyres was actually worried that the codes would not be legible -- that the Pancams couldn't resolve the detail? (Jim never doubted, of course.) --Emily -------------------- My website - My Patreon - @elakdawalla on Twitter - Please support unmannedspaceflight.com by donating here.
|
|
|
Aug 22 2005, 09:52 PM
Post
#63
|
|
Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14433 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Well - I can see why he might be nervous - certainly inside the 3m point at which Pancam gets nicely focused (hence the 2:1 downsizing of all the deck-pan selfportrait images ) - but if Jim says pancam will do X ...pancam will do X+1
I was amazed to find that those first few sols were using really slow UHF passes - no wonder they compressed-to-hell those first pancam octants. Pity that the media abandons such missions early on - as the success pans were the lowest quality of the lot Doug |
|
|
Aug 23 2005, 04:33 AM
Post
#64
|
|
Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2228 Joined: 1-December 04 From: Marble Falls, Texas, USA Member No.: 116 |
Thank you, edstrick, helvick, Emily, and Doug.
Well, I guess there is more to the resolution of pancam images than I realized. You folks clearly know more about the subject than I do. Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me. I must admit that I am still puzzled by the fact that the L7 and R1 full frames always appear to be the highest resolution to me, and the resolution appears to decline from there as the wavelength increases. I spent some time tonight looking at some pancams more carefully. Perhaps the longer wavelength ones only "appear" to be lower resolution. -------------------- ...Tom
I'm not a Space Fan, I'm a Space Exploration Enthusiast. |
|
|
Aug 23 2005, 08:10 AM
Post
#65
|
|
Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14433 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Here's a cunning point for you
If you can find a red LED a green LED and a blue led around - have a look at them. You cant focus properly on the blue one - wavelength if just a bit too far over for the eye to focus onto the retina Doug |
|
|
Aug 23 2005, 02:54 PM
Post
#66
|
|
Special Cookie Group: Members Posts: 2168 Joined: 6-April 05 From: Sintra | Portugal Member No.: 228 |
Doug...
Can I still throw mine?...Please! I was on vacations!!! 1# - IF (let's cross our fingers) any of the rovers reaches Sol 1000, is there the possibility for an organized web community visit to the facilities from where the MER team coordinates the mission? 2# - have you ever heard talking about Ultreya?... -------------------- "Ride, boldly ride," The shade replied, "If you seek for Eldorado!"
Edgar Alan Poe |
|
|
Aug 23 2005, 07:06 PM
Post
#67
|
|
Member Group: Members Posts: 345 Joined: 2-May 05 Member No.: 372 |
QUOTE (djellison @ Aug 23 2005, 04:10 AM) Here's a cunning point for you If you can find a red LED a green LED and a blue led around - have a look at them. You cant focus properly on the blue one - wavelength if just a bit too far over for the eye to focus onto the retina Doug It would be more accurate to say that you cannot focus on both of them at the same time when they are both located at the same distance from you. However, you can (as long as they are within a certain distance range) focus on one or the other. Also, if you move one closer or farther away from you, you can focus on both at once. Of course, none of this applies if you have lousy eyesight. EDIT: Oops, I skipped over the part about the green LED when I read your post. What I said still applies, though--just group the green and red together (and count them as one). |
|
|
Aug 23 2005, 07:16 PM
Post
#68
|
|
Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14433 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Really - you cant focus on the blue ones - your eye isnt clever enough to do 'different' focus on it because it's a different wavelength
Have all three lined up - the blue one just wont focus. It's very odd - I read it on the internet ( so it must be true ) and had a try myself and it's actually true Doug |
|
|
Aug 23 2005, 08:54 PM
Post
#69
|
|
Dublin Correspondent Group: Admin Posts: 1799 Joined: 28-March 05 From: Celbridge, Ireland Member No.: 220 |
QUOTE (djellison @ Aug 23 2005, 08:16 PM) Really - you cant focus on the blue ones - your eye isnt clever enough to do 'different' focus on it because it's a different wavelength Which may be true for something you hold in your hand but once you get sufficiently far enough away then they will all be in focus, at the same time. Well, provided your eyesight isn't as bad as mine. :-) The Pancam's focus at range(3m and out) should be close to perfect across all the filters, certainly more than good enough to yield images at their designed resolutions with all filters. |
|
|
Aug 23 2005, 08:55 PM
Post
#70
|
|
Member Group: Members Posts: 345 Joined: 2-May 05 Member No.: 372 |
|
|
|
Aug 24 2005, 01:39 AM
Post
#71
|
|
Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430 |
Squyres writes the book on Mars and the little rovers that could
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Aug05/....roving.lg.html Aug. 23, 2005 By Lauren Gold lg34@cornell.edu ITHACA, N.Y. -- It has been an amazing mission from the beginning. Getting two tremendously intricate machines funded, designed, built, tested, approved, launched, landed safely on a planet millions of miles from Earth and functioning nearly continuously for more than a year and a half is an extraordinary feat. -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853 |
|
|
Aug 24 2005, 05:31 AM
Post
#72
|
|
Member Group: Members Posts: 356 Joined: 12-March 05 Member No.: 190 |
QUOTE (djellison @ Aug 23 2005, 07:16 PM) Really - you cant focus on the blue ones - your eye isnt clever enough to do 'different' focus on it because it's a different wavelength Have all three lined up - the blue one just wont focus. It's very odd - I read it on the internet ( so it must be true ) and had a try myself and it's actually true Doug Hmmmm, I do believe this is not because the lens of the eye has trouble focusing the short wavelength, but is instead because your retina's concentration of blue sensitive cones is, well, crap compared to the green and red sensitive ones. Thus the spatial resolution in the blue is greatly reduced for the eye. Recently, this fact was verified at the UofR by imaging the retina microscopically,in vivo using adaptive optics. |
|
|
Aug 24 2005, 08:55 AM
Post
#73
|
|
Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1870 Joined: 20-February 05 Member No.: 174 |
You *can* focus on the short wavelength image, but not at the same time as the red/green image. The eye does not have the option of mixing two refractive lenses with different chromatic abberation in order to cancel out chromatic abberation over the wavelength range it's sensative to. The short wavelengths, rarely the brightest thing in the visual field (other than the sky, which doesn't need acuity) tends to lose out in the focus contest.
|
|
|
Aug 24 2005, 06:10 PM
Post
#74
|
|
Newbie Group: Members Posts: 4 Joined: 24-August 05 Member No.: 470 |
Hi there!
I did an interview to Robert M. Manning (Chief Engineer for JPL's Mars Program Office) some months ago. Probably youŽll remember him as you see the picture: http://www.astroenlazador.com/mer/entrevis...g/interview.htm Probably this could be useful for you to think about new questions, etc. But I would be very grateful if you could ask one of them to Mr. Squyres: Spirit landed on a volcanic rock area and had to drive more than 3 Kilometers (1.86 miles) to find important clues to confirm the past presence of water on Mars. If this mission had consisted in a static lander, it would have been impossible to obtain that important scientific information. Do you think sending static landers to Mars is still worthwhile or reliable? (As youŽll suppose, IŽm thinking about Phoenix Mission for 2007) Cheers! |
|
|
Aug 30 2005, 11:12 AM
Post
#75
|
|
Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14433 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Right - time's up - I need a couple of days to sort thru all the questions I've had via email ( like I asked ) and here ( like I didnt )
Doug |
|
|
Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 13th June 2024 - 05:06 AM |
RULES AND GUIDELINES Please read the Forum Rules and Guidelines before posting. IMAGE COPYRIGHT |
OPINIONS AND MODERATION Opinions expressed on UnmannedSpaceflight.com are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of UnmannedSpaceflight.com or The Planetary Society. The all-volunteer UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderation team is wholly independent of The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has no influence over decisions made by the UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderators. |
SUPPORT THE FORUM Unmannedspaceflight.com is funded by the Planetary Society. Please consider supporting our work and many other projects by donating to the Society or becoming a member. |