HiRISE PDS release, Has anyone done anything yet? Options

[um3k]

Has anyone played around with the HiRISE PDS release images yet? More specifically, color images? I have no time to do anything.

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/pds_release.php
http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/Missions/MRO_mission.html

[OWW]

Speaking of the PDS release. I was browsing the CTX images, but they're all in IMG format. So...:

- Is there a way to view these images in JPG/PNG format?
- How can I view the IMG files?
- When is MSSS going to update their site? Mars Express actually released more images this year.

[djellison]

Well - IMG2PNG will help - and/or NASAView (google ) for viewing IMG's.

Doug

[OWW]

Thanks. Works great. I wonder how long it will take CTX to map the entire planet! Like what THEMIS did here:

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

But then at 6 Meter/pixel! I can't wait.

[djellison]

4,000 gigapixels of 6m res will cover the planet - I think. Maths might be wrong.

Doug

[tim53]

A coworker pointed out an easy way to find the dimensions for .img files:

Open the file with a text editor. The header contains the info you need.

I work on Macs, and prefer using something like Photoshop, Gimp, or ImageJ to open .img files. Once I find the dimensions via Textedit, I open the files as raw files in Photoshop.


HTH,
-Tim.

[djellison]

Thanks for that tip Tim - this is the first CTX image I found of Gusev - a central 2kx2k crop. This is the non-flatted non-projected version.


Doug

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[MouseOnMars]

I've only just downloaded the next version of ISIS and haven't even got it's support data yet, but am looking forward to stitching together something in colour, either false from hirise or the more accurate MARCI or CRISM.

I'm interested in oblique views of Mars like we used to get from MGS, so I might try searching CTX emission angles.

MouseOnMars

[monitorlizard]

The USGS PIGWAD site has footprint maps for HiRISE, CTX, and MOC (through S23, the MSSS site only has MOC images through S10). HiRISE and CTX images are those of the July PDS release, and each footprint is hotlinked to the corresponding image. Site can be accessed as follows:

webgis.wr.usgs.gov/pigwad/maps/mars.htm (publicly available)

then go to right-hand column "Beginner" and click on "Launch Mars General"

I've always enjoyed footprint maps for their display of surface coverage. You can really tell what features are of prime scientific interest. Mars north polar cap got good coverage by CTX (monitoring retreat/advance?).

[MouseOnMars]

That's some interface. Well done Pigwad team

I think the Mars datasets are really starting to look formidable, the way they are combined like this. My only concern is that I don't get lost in all the data and forget why I'm looking at Mars in the first place.

MouseOnMars

[DataMiner]

Some of you may have noticed that samples of our color processed images have started to show up on the HiRISE website over the last few weeks. Well today we have a treat for you, we have released 143 color images onto the website. Obviously these are all false color, but the majority of them are quite striking. All of the images released today are of candidate landing sites for the Mars Science Lab (or areas nearby candidate landing sites).

Over the next few months we intend to start color processing the rest of the data we have already received, so there will be more coming in the near future.

Enjoy!

[djellison]

Art - pure Art.

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_002101_1315

[Greg Hullender]

Now what would be REALLY great would be if you made some 1200x1024 and 1600x1200 so I could use them as desktop images. :-)

--Greg

[DataMiner]

Now what would be REALLY great would be if you made some 1200x1024 and 1600x1200 so I could use them as desktop images. :-)

--Greg

Actually, our webmaster is doing that, although only for selected images. I also don't think the wallpaper he's making is large enough for high resolution monitors. I've been meaning to mention that to him...

[Stu]

GORGEOUS false colour images released this week, and I have to be honest and say they make a very welcome change from the 'weird shapes at the pole' images we've been seeing so much of

Anyway, these are purely for fun; not suggesting these colours are particularly accurate or anything...

[Stu]

... and one more...

[nprev]

Wow. Beautiful work, Stu. MRO is making Mars look more & more like Chesley Bonestell's original visions...

[Nirgal]

Its really hard to keep up with the vast amount of HiRise images ...
I'm recently working on some colorizations to keep the "Alien Landscapes" series running




link to the original data:PSP_001816_1410

[Stu]

Welcome back Nirgal! GORGEOUS pic!

[Nirgal]

Welcome back Nirgal! GORGEOUS pic!

Thanks, Stu

One of the most amazing things with the HiRISE imagery is that there are so many interesting detail views waiting to
be discovered among the many many gigapixels ...

For example this one:


original link:PSP_004044_1640

Anyone else want to post their favorite detail MRO views ?

[monitorlizard]

Does anyone know the date of the second HiRISE PDS release? I thought I heard once that releases would be at six-month intervals, so we may be fairly close.

[monitorlizard]

Just to clarify, I see that the HiBlog site mentions that 1200 color images have just been released. These have probably been in the pipeline for quite a while. I was wondering if there would be a forthcoming release of images taken after the first PDS release (June or July?). These I assume would not be fully processed to color images.

[dilo]

One of the most amazing things with the HiRISE imagery is that there are so many interesting detail views waiting to
be discovered among the many many gigapixels ...

Anyone else want to post their favorite detail MRO views ?

Welcome back, Bernhard!
Your pictures are great, but last one, without a scale, is a little disappointing.... (is a MRO or MER MI camera picture? ).

This is my side-by-side comparison of two "Bright Streaks and Dark Fans" pictures taken 4.5 days apart (PSP_002622_0945)

[Nirgal]

Welcome back, Bernhard!
Your pictures are great, but last one, without a scale, is a little disappointing.... (is a MRO or MER MI camera picture? ).

Thanks dilo ... and criticism always very welcome

reminds me of my former idea of augmenting the orbiter-images with a small artificial airplane shadow as a scale.
Will try to include this in future images ...
I found that detail shot quite dramatic with the rugged shadows and the oblique viewing angle ...
and I am actually always looking especially for images/crops taken at late evening or early morning local time for the more dramatic shadows IMO those are the best views that look more like viewed from out of an airplane/helicopter window rather than
a satelite image from orbit

[quote]
This is my side-by-side comparison of two "Bright Streaks and Dark Fans" pictures taken 4.5 days apart (PSP_002622_0945)



Wow ! spectacular! ... I wonder how close the bluish color of the fans comes to the "true perceived" color ...

BTW.: Has anyone already tried "true calbirated" MRO composites (like slinted's great MER calibration work...) ?

[OWW]

I found the perfect landing site for MSL:

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_004067_1230

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[djellison]

Bloody hell!

[nprev]

...couldn't have said it better myself, Doug! (Good one, OWW! )

Where is this, anyhow? There are actually many rocks on top of rocks here. Makes the Viking & Pathfinder sites look like city parks by comparison...

EDIT: Duh. Should have looked at your link. Okay, the perimeter of Argyre is not a happy place. The rim of Hellas is probably even worse. Suspect that heavy winds from the diurnal entrance & exit of air into these deep basins scours away most of the soil at the edges, leaving nothin' but rocks...LOTS of rocks.

[Stu]

Can I ask something that's been on my mind for a while? Is anyone else out there wondering why the good folks behind the MRO mission aren't making more of its images? Or taking... oh jeez, how do I put this without sounding ungrateful... more exciting, more stimulating images?

I mean, looking at that picture up there I thought, like Doug, "B****y hell!!" Look what it can do! That detail! But every week - at least for the past couple of months or so - I've gone to the MRO site on New Release day, looked at the images and although I haven't thought "So what?" I have thought "Hmmm... ok...". Nothing has really grabbed me, not like in the early days when every pic made me shake my head with disbelief. Lots of pictures of polygonal structures at the poles... strange layering here and there... dunefields... all very interesting scientifically, I'm sure, and very useful for planning further missions certainly, but nothing startling, nothing hypnotic for people not directly involved in the field.

I am NOT putting down MRO, no-one suggest that I am, please. But I do know that while this mission had me almost rabid with expectation and excitement in the days just after landing now I find myself getting a little ho-hum about the images being released. I think they're just too large scale. I'd love to see extreme close-ups of surface features, showing more familiar scales. I know anyone with a decent broadband service and a good PC etc can do that for themselves if they download and peruse the images at their leisure, but there must be many, many people like me who are still on dialup who are using less-than-state-of-the-art PCs who would love to be able to see images like the ones OWW and Nirgal posted above.

Again, I'm not disrespecting MRO or anyone behind it. I just think that OWW's pic shows the real capability of the camera, and that, perhaps, more could be made of it. The most amazing images for me have shown crumbling cliff faces, mesas casting long jagged shadows, things like that. I think we need to see more of those - and if they're already on the pictures, then dramatic features like those need to be zoomed in on and posted as pictures in their own right.

Not criticising. Just a little frustrated.

[nprev]

Stu, only thing I can think of is that the MRO team is neck-deep in accomplishing the nominal mission objectives right now...but, of course, that's kind of pale. Cassini's outreach is occurring during the primary mission, and by comparison it's been outstanding (well, to give credit where credit is due, it's been extremely good in its own right).

Only other thing I can think of is that Mars orbiters have taken a much lower profile in contrast to Mars landers. This is probably a huge mistake to make with an instrument suite as powerful as that of MRO's.

[mcaplinger]

Cassini's outreach is occurring during the primary mission, and by comparison it's been outstanding...

Cassini has an encounter every month or two with not much happening in between. MRO takes more data than a Cassini encounter every day. And frankly, the Cassini images are far easier to pick good ones from, don't you think?

I think it's fair to expect that one or two images from MRO will make it onto most lists of the top space images of 2007. I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect a lot more outreach than that. (Though I am disappointed that most likely none of those images will have been taken by an MSSS instrument this year.)

[elakdawalla]

Can I ask something that's been on my mind for a while? Is anyone else out there wondering why the good folks behind the MRO mission aren't making more of its images? Or taking... oh jeez, how do I put this without sounding ungrateful... more exciting, more stimulating images?

Well, don't the HiRISE team release pretty much EVERYTHING they take to their website eventually? This is in marked contrast to most teams, who do very well to release at most one image per day (which is still quite a lot). If other teams are more selective, it's more likely that each choice will be more exciting. With HiRISE we are getting the ho-hum (*cough* Phoenix landing sites *cough cough*) along with the great, and everything in between. Consider MER. How thrilling is each and every Navcam drive image? (Are the northern plains aesthetically equivalent to the MER Sundial?)

Also, the best stuff in HiRISE images, IMO, is found when you look at the images at near their full resolution, and hunt around for fun features. None of us seems to have time to do that for all the images. So finding true greatness is hit and miss. That makes it all the more important for each of us to post cool stuff here when we find it.

--Emily

[monitorlizard]

I'm in basic agreement with Emily's line of reasoning. The thumbnail HiRISE images on their website look pretty much like Mars images from other spacecraft because of the highly reduced resolution. Very few of us have the hardware (or even time) to download entire HiRISE images, except an occasional one that picques somebody's curiousity. There are subimages for HiRISE on the webpages, but I'm not sure they're full resolution either. I'd like to see full resolution subimages of interesting features featured more prominently at their website (yeah, I know, where's the time for that).
I think the "Wow" factor would go up substantially.

[Stu]

Also, the best stuff in HiRISE images, IMO, is found when you look at the images at near their full resolution, and hunt around for fun features.

Thanks Emily, appreciate the feedback. That's exactly my point. As most people here know by now, I do a lot of what's now trendily called "Outreach" (aka 'standing at the front of a drafty church hall or community centre showing spacey pics to the public' ) and to be brutally honest I can't really use most of the MRO images as they are. The images that I can and do use succesfully are the smaller scale ones, the crops I've managed to take from the large images, and features people here have picked out and kindly given me permission to use - the crumbling ledges, shadow-casting mesas, etc. I think that the results of HiRISE - heralded as "The People's Camera" I seem to remember? - are not being shared adequately. And by that I don't mean anything is being held back, I know they release everything, but I think it would be a good idea for the team to do some of that "hunting around for fun features" you referred to and put those pics on the website too. That's the way they'll get people more inspired and excited by the camera, the mission, and Mars itself. Because let's be honest, MRO is not exactly enjoying a very high profile right now. Discussion about its images here, on what is probably the most passionate and knowledgeable space exploration forum there is, has reduced greatly. We used to drool over each release of new images moments after they appeared. Now... well, not so much. Which is no big deal, these things wax and wane, but still...

I'm sure the team have images of their own favourite places, screen-grabs of "wow!" features that impressed them. We and the public would enjoy seeing those too, alongside the BIG images that are wonderful in their own right.

[djellison]

I can't really use most of the MRO images as they are.

No one can. That's the problem. Until someone comes out with a 20,000 x 120,000 pixel projector. Before the advent of the viewer, I tried to download and view these things in full res - and I got a little insight into just how hard it must be to process these things - let alone have an informative web-page for each one.

They do show interesting snippets with a few of them, and we've had four rounds of science output ( http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/sim/ ) which include not only what you're talking about but scientific discourse as well. Missions can't maintain high profiles for ever - it's impossible. Spirit and Opportunity are not high profile at the moment. The effort ( i.e. money ) involved in maintaining an ammount of outreach material like that simply isn't available. I wish it were - but it isn't.

There is so much data that it's going to take decades for it to be appreciated. Wihtout broadband, I'd say it's impossible to appreciate it at all - it's just a symptom of the instrument. The only way to enjoy it is via the IAS Viewer which makes every image brilliantly accesable for anyone with a reasonably good connection. Truthfully, I don't think they can do any more than that. Without that, you're only ever going to get 1% of the picture - metaphorically and literally - and to use it, you've got to have broadband - or extreme patience.

Doug

[Nix]

My connection is okay for the files, and 4 gigs of ram is fine..., processing power is on the edge... - the only 'problem' I'm facing is hard-disk space. I have now a 250 Gb drive stuffed with those .jp2's, but I lack time of searching all of it for interesting 'spots'...

I feel it's up to us though, as Emily pointed out, to provide the community with selected regions from the files.

Nico

[Stu]

Good discussion, thanks for the feedback guys. Guess I'll just have to make do with skimming the cream of the MRO images from UMSF's postings until I can upgrade from my current less-than-state-of-the-art PC. Another reason to appreciate the time people take to post images here.

[djellison]

You don't need a banzai computer to use the IAS viewer (at least, I don't think you do) - just a wider pipe

Doug

[OWW]

I think it's fair to expect that one or two images from MRO will make it onto most lists of the top space images of 2007. (Though I am disappointed that most likely none of those images will have been taken by an MSSS instrument this year.)

Most images in popular books and calendars seem to be the same images released on the Planetary Photojournal, and sadly not the hundreds of gems hiding in the PDS. This CTX image would be a good candidate for a calendar though:

Image P01_001558_1325_XI_47S326W

EDIT: image updated. flipped.

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[Stu]

Sorry, but that's just frakking* gorgeous!! If that's what's hiding on MRO images I think this Saturday I'll go down to the library and take advantage of their mega-fast broadband pcs... their pipe is a lot wider than mine.

* Note to UK board members: SKY is showing the special BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: RAZOR tonight at 9pm!

[n1ckdrake]

Here is the remarkable image OWW posted zoomed-in.

[n1ckdrake]

Zoomed-in even more.

[Stu]

Now, you see, that's just rubbing it in...

[charborob]

[snip]
Nothing has really grabbed me, not like in the early days when every pic made me shake my head with disbelief.
[snip]
While this mission had me almost rabid with expectation and excitement in the days just after landing now I find myself getting a little ho-hum about the images being released. I think they're just too large scale. I'd love to see extreme close-ups of surface features, showing more familiar scales.

I think part of the reason for this loss of interest, so to speak, is that the MRO images are taken from a vertical point of view. This is very useful scientifically, but for the average person, this is an unusual way of viewing surface features, and meaningful mainly to specialists. We are used to seeing landscapes from the surface, and sometimes obliquely from an airplane. For public outreach, the MRO team should release more oblique views created from the stereoscopic coverage of the Martian surface. It would give the public a more vivid sense of "being there". In another thread, I asked about the possibility of constructing these views ourselves, but apparently, it is a high tech trick unavailable to "amateurs".

[djellison]

If the DEM's make it out - I'll do HD animations of them as flyarounds. I'd love to - but that data isn't on the HiRISE PDS 'to do ' list unfortunately.

Doug

[mcaplinger]

I think part of the reason for this loss of interest, so to speak, is that the MRO images are taken from a vertical point of view.

This must explain why a MER image is on the front cover of TIME every week.

Frankly I'm not sure this loss of interest is any different than what we saw with MGS. The images would have to be pretty spectacular to elicit a "wow" response day after month after year. I think you guys have just gotten to the point that the instrument teams arrived at a long time ago.

THEMIS still releases an image every week. Does anyone here look at them? I'd wonder about the cost-benefit ratio of making a lot of effort to do regular releases, if even enthusiasts express dissatisfaction with such outreach efforts. Better to dump the data to the PDS and let you find the pretty ones.

[Nirgal]

This CTX image would be a good candidate for a calendar though:

Image P01_001558_1325_XI_47S326W

Wow, phaaaantastic !

OWW, could you also post the original link to the image ?
I could not find it at the MSS CTX web-site ...

[djellison]

THEMIS still releases an image every week. Does anyone here look at them?

Yup -I have a THEMIS image of the day item on my dashboard using webclip on OSX.

You have a point about the sustainability. Perhaps it's because the initial 'wow' isn't actually at the science or the image per se - but the capability inferred by the images - the demonstrated ability of the instrument. Once that 'wow - 30cm' or 'wow - 5000 pixels across' has died down - it's hard to find much to be excited about if you're not trained to know what you're looking at.

There are odd-balls to that pattern, you can always get a 'wow - a lander seen from orbit' or 'wow - the Earth!' moment. But generally, I don't think any ammount of outreach effort could maintain a laymans interest in instruments like HiRISE, CTX, THEMIS etc.

What I think I WOULD return to day after day is daily MARCI maps in the way I regularly check into the MODIS rapid response page to see how the UK's looking most days. The MARCI weather reports are a great treat in that regard - nice to see that instrument getting 'out' a little more.

A comparative analysis between MER, Cassini, SOHO, MRO and other missions website stats would be an interesting statistic. I may try and pull together forum-view stats for UMSF to see if the 'traffic' to each section varies in an obvious event-by-event way.

Doug

[OWW]

Nirgal, the image was downloaded from the PDS:
http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/Missions/MRO_mission.html
And converted with the img2png tool.

Mcaplinger, I still look at the THEMIS daily releases and I'm sure a lot of people on this board do.
I have to admit I was a bit disappointed that the MOC/CTX daily releases stopped on msss.com. Nirgal's question in the previous post proves that more people hunger for more than the 7 CTX images currently on msss.com. Just dumping it all on the PDS means downloading and converting 50 Mb files, and that may be a bit too much for the average person interested in Mars.

I'm pleasantly surprised though that the weekly weather updates are back:
http://www.msss.com/msss_images/latest_weather.html

Great. Now the same for CTX and I'm in heaven.

EDIT: Doug, you beat me to it on the THEMIS images. So I'm not the only one checking those images as I suspected.

[mcaplinger]

Just dumping it all on the PDS means downloading and converting 50 Mb files, and that may be a bit too much for the average person interested in Mars.

I'll make you all an offer: there are plenty of people on this forum who can process the raw CTX images just as well as we can. Find some images you consider worth sharing from the current released PDS data, process and format them as you like, and I'll link to them from my own page on the MSSS web site and credit you accordingly.

Do it soon and maybe we can get a CTX image on Emily's best of the year list, which would make me very happy.

[mcaplinger]

I'll also point out that the CTX PDS volumes are pretty good; there's a cumindex.tab that has text lines describing each image on every volume, and there's a pre-processed JPEG browse image for each image on the volume.

[Stu]

I'm a big fan of the THEMIS images too, there are some real gems there. I've lost count of the number of times I've stopped what I was supposed to be doing here on my PC and gone back to the recently-released image of Aram Chaos (one of my favourite places on Mars) to just roam around it.

[Nirgal]

Very good discussion here ... love those detail image crops !


Here is another of those "jagged-shadow"-shots (detail crop, tone map enhanced, added (false) colors and
virtual airplane shadow as a 50 meter scale ...

original image link:
PSP_001337_1675

[lyford]

TTHEMIS still releases an image every week. Does anyone here look at them?

Not EVERY week, but yes, I do click when I get Ron Baalke's email.

[gndonald]

I just looked at the image OWW posted and the two 'zoom-ins' that followed. All I can say is WOW!

They are just incredible, you expect to see camels and I swear if something had walked there we'd be able to see the footprints...

Oh for a faster connection...

[OWW]

I'll also point out that the CTX PDS volumes are pretty good; there's a cumindex.tab that has text lines describing each image on every volume, and there's a pre-processed JPEG browse image for each image on the volume.

Thanks. That cumindex.tab file is very helpful for finding the cool places. The line describing the image I posted seems to be incorrect though. It says "Proctor Crater dunes", but actually it's the crater to the east of Proctor. Don't know its name.
Also, all CTX images are mirrored/flipped and brighter in the middle. What's up with that?

I'll make you all an offer: there are plenty of people on this forum who can process the raw CTX images just as well as we can. Find some images you consider worth sharing from the current released PDS data, process and format them as you like, and I'll link to them from my own page on the MSSS web site and credit you accordingly. Do it soon and maybe we can get a CTX image on Emily's best of the year list, which would make me very happy.

Interesting. Well, plenty of people on this forum, bring it on! Personally, I think credits for a cut/paste/stretch job is a bit over the top though, but that's just me.

[OWW]

I just looked at the image OWW posted and the two 'zoom-ins' that followed.

Ehhh, I should point out that my CTX-cutout was 50% of full-resolution. N1ckdrake's 'zooms' are not from the same CTX image but from a HiRise image... for those that hadn't noticed this already.

[mcaplinger]

Also, all CTX images are mirrored/flipped and brighter in the middle. What's up with that?

That's the way they come out of the camera; it's an artifact of the relatively wide angle CTX telescope. There's data on the volumes with all the correction coefficients.

Here's a pretty CTX image I found just by looking at the PDS volumes. It's one of those cracks to the west of Elysium Mons. This is just a small subsection downsampled 2x. For the full impact of CTX, you really need to make mosaics.

[hendric]

Bjorn,
Any chance you could add support for these calibration files to IMG2PNG? I tried it on a data batch, and it looked to me like it wasn't flat-fielding or decompanding. I'll write my own app after the holidays if you don't have time.

[GuyMac]

Can I ask something that's been on my mind for a while? Is anyone else out there wondering why the good folks behind the MRO mission aren't making more of its images? Or taking... oh jeez, how do I put this without sounding ungrateful... more exciting, more stimulating images?

Hi Stu, HiRISE now has around 1500 color images released, something like a third of a Terapixel in RGB color. I've only looked at a small fraction, but it is mind-blowing. I had my desktop display set to show a random chunk from a random each, updated every two minutes, but had to turn it off, because so frequently I was stopping to copy the image into a favorites folder and not getting any work done. :-)

We worked hard to get the color processing automated (better late than never!) and further improvements are in the works (stretches that saturate less pixels, better color band co-registration). There had been great interest in this data on this forum early on!

[Shaka]

I had my desktop display set to show a random chunk from a random each, updated every two minutes, but had to turn it off,

Aaaarrrgghhhhh! (...turns chartreuse with envy...)
How big a bribe would it take to get you to turn it back on and feed it through the web?
(I'd be happy to knit you a monitor cozy, so you wouldn't be distracted... )

[Stu]

Thanks for the feedback GuyMac I do realise how hard you've all worked, and appreciate all your efforts. To stress again, no criticism was intended. I'm off to my local library tomorrow - if this ***** cold lifts!!! aCHOO!!! - to sit at one of their broadband PCs for a couple of hours and do some exploring.

[mcaplinger]

Not a lot of response to my CTX challenge yet. Maybe you guys are waiting to surprise me for Christmas.

Here's a nice CTX image of White Rock: P03_002033_1720_XI_08S334W_070101 downsampled by 4.

[lyford]

Not a lot of response to my CTX challenge yet. Maybe you guys are waiting to surprise me for Christmas.

Mike, given the "ancient" hardware I find myself currently using, I would need a Christmas surprise of my own to do any imaging magic these days. (Though come Macworld in January, I may be able to step up to the plate....)

[Stu]

Not a CTX image Mike, sorry, but I did have a lot of fun in the library this morning, taking advantage of their broadband connection to have a leisurely stroll around the MRO galleries... made a few crops and colourisations...



Was looking forward to using the IAS viewer but it wouldn't connect... grrr... oh well, next time...

[OWW]

Nice "White rock" image. These layered mounds always look spectacular. Here's another one.

CTX image P03_002261_1744_XN_05S079W: Light-toned mound in east Tithonium Chasma

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[Nirgal]

Not a CTX image Mike, sorry, but I did have a lot of fun in the library this morning, taking advantage of their broadband connection to have a leisurely stroll around the MRO galleries... made a few crops and colourisations...

Good work, Stu !
I especially like the "mesa top" mountain at the bottom of the image.
do you have a link to the original PSP image ID ?

[GuyMac]

I'm sure the team have images of their own favourite places, screen-grabs of "wow!" features that impressed them. We and the public would enjoy seeing those too, alongside the BIG images that are wonderful in their own right.

That's really a good point, and I hope we can find some way to facilitate it (by extended mission???). The tools aren't quite up to the vision. I want to be able to select a region within a JP2 viewer application, be able to link to that particular view and resolution, associate that link with tags aka keywords, with an online application to search through the tags, see the most popular, etc, etc. The fallback might be to save many images & upload each to a forum. ;-)

[mcaplinger]

I especially like the "mesa top" mountain at the bottom of the image.

It's a neat image, but like most of the MRO data, to the layman at least it's just an incremental improvement over MOC stuff like
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/E01_E0...2002/meridiani/
which I suspect is why it's hard to come up with an MRO image that really seems revolutionary.

[djellison]

an MRO image that really seems revolutionary.

Here's me thinking that 2 gigapixels in a single swath was a revolution in itself.

I"m having a play with CTX @ Gusev - there's quite a few overlapping images there.

Doug

[mcaplinger]

Here's me thinking that 2 gigapixels in a single swath was a revolution in itself.

I'd argue that a considerably smaller swath than HiRISE's at the same resolution would have produced much the same science. It's hard to quantify the benefits of a wider FOV, especially with the 6-meter context provided by CTX.

That said, to be fair CTX is for all intents and purposes mostly an incremental improvement on MOC. The images are 10x wider and of comparable resolution to most MOC images, the buffer is much larger, and the SNR is a few times better, so we cover a lot more ground at better quality on average than MOC did, but I don't think this difference is perceptible to most people.

I think the jury is still out on what the major scientific results of MRO will be.

[Stu]

Good work, Stu !
I especially like the "mesa top" mountain at the bottom of the image.
do you have a link to the original PSP image ID ?

Thanks Nirgal, really appreciate that, especially as you're one of the people who inspired me to have a go at making images like that.

The PSP ID is: PSP_002839_1825

Another area that caught my eye...



What can I say? I'm a mesa fan! Looks like Mars' very own "Monument Valley" down there... imagine the pics a rover would send back from here, as it rolled along with the theme from "The Big Country" playing in the background...

[n1ckdrake]

Rabe Crater CTX: P05_002890_1342_XI_45S326W

[slinted]

Wow n1ckdrake, that's a spectacular choice!

[djellison]

I could have sworn I saw some map projected CTX images on the PDS somewhere....or am I going nuts - I can't find them now.

Doug

[mcaplinger]

I could have sworn I saw some map projected CTX images on the PDS somewhere....

MSL landing site candidates are map-projected. I can't think of any others.

http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/msl/ctx/

[n1ckdrake]

Slope streaks in Arabia Terra - CTX: P06_003285_1930

[mcaplinger]

Slope streaks in Arabia Terra...

Wow. Cool image! I wonder what's going on with the very linear terminus to the flow in the upper left corner?

Even though I designed a large part of CTX, I haven't looked at 1% of the data from it. From these images, it's doing everything I hoped it would. Thanks for finding them!

Merry Christmas everybody!

[nprev]

...all I can think of is some sort of deep fracture, which drained them rather rapidly.

And actually, this begs a question: Why don't we see diffusion features at the end of these things, like deltas? Does the putative water evaporate and/or freeze so quickly that they never get to form? The abrupt terminations are odd in themselves...

[mcaplinger]

Does the putative water evaporate and/or freeze so quickly that they never get to form?

I'd have characterized these as dry slope streaks, no water involved. But that terminus seems weird. Only thing I could think of is some topography below the limit of resolution (some kind of a ridge or dike maybe.)

[dvandorn]

I'm with Mike, here, Nick. These look a lot like dust slope streaks, not like the putative water-carved gullies seen elsewhere. You see these slope streaks all over on Mars, in places where liquid water could not possibly exist (i.e., high on the slopes of the Tharsis volcanoes) and they don't seem to share the V-cut morphologies of the gullies.

-the other Doug

[nprev]

Okay, I'm with you guys now; been thinking in terms of the wet model. This feature seems to provide considerable evidence for the dry model.

[Nirgal]

Rabe Crater CTX: P05_002890_1342_XI_45S326W

Thanks, n1ckdrake (and others), for sharing all those great detail view findings !!


Here's a hand colorized version of the Rabe Crater picture (unfortunately I have no time left for framing and caption this time ...)

[Stu]

Every time I see one of your images Nirgal I feel like Luke watching Yoda lift that X-Wing out of the swamp...

Humbled...

[Nirgal]

Every time I see one of your images Nirgal I feel like Luke watching Yoda lift that X-Wing out of the swamp...

Humbled...

thanks Stu, I'm embarassed by your praise that is really too much for my humble effort
So I hope no real (Jedi) Master is reading this *lol*

[n1ckdrake]

unnecessary quoting removed

Wow Nirgal, that picture is amazing! The amount of detail you applied is mind-blowing! Thanks for posting this awe-inspiring picture.

[n1ckdrake]

Crater in Coloe Fossae Region - CTX: P03_002348_2172

[hendric]

n1ckdrake,
What are you using to calibrate and uncompress the raw pictures?

[n1ckdrake]

n1ckdrake,
What are you using to calibrate and uncompress the raw pictures?

Hello hendric. I currently use ImageJ or NASAView to access the raw data. For calibrating images I use Photoshop CS2. And I find Irfanview to be extremely useful as well.

[TheChemist]

n1ckdrake, I think that if you

a. change the caption of your latest crater image,
b. reduce the resolution, and
c. post it in the Paolo's Plunge thread at the Opportunity forum

you would have half the forum scratching their heads trying to explain what they see in this "weird RAT hole"

Thanks for these gorgeous crater images you provide us.

[ugordan]

For calibrating images I use Photoshop CS2.

How do you calibrate with Photoshop?

[Nirgal]

Another "Alien Landscapes" detail shot out of the virtual helicopter window while flying over HiRISE's endless
gigapixel landscapes :-)


Large image (1.2 MB)

(For a better sense of scale, I added an artificial airplane shadow as "50 m scale" in the lower right corner...)

Original context image:
PSP_002379_1755

[tedstryk]

How do you calibrate with Photoshop?

It can be done. I often use Photoshop to subtract flat fields and dark frames when I have a problematic image (such as working with old Mariner images). It is a pain, but if some tweaking is needed, such as when one doesn't have an exact exposure match and is having to approximate, it is the best way to go.

Ted

[Stu]

Cereberus Fossae is rapidly becoming one of my "fave places" on Mars, and the recent release of hundreds of colour images from MRO included a couple of shots of this fascinating feature that I just couldn't resist playing about with... I think it's the combination of the steepness of the cliffs, the long shadows and the hints of detail on the floor that make it so intriguing... you can easily imagine standing on the edge of this great wound in Mars' crust and peering down into the dark depths below...

[ngunn]

Those are brilliant. Thanks for posting them Stu.

[n1ckdrake]

Light-Toned Material in Western Louros Valles/Sinai Planum (TRA_000876_1715)

[Stu]

Colourised crop from "layering and slope streaks in Henry Crater" (PSP 006589_1915)

[charborob]

Cerberus Fossae [clip]... you can easily imagine standing on the edge of this great wound in Mars' crust and peering down into the dark depths below...

When we'll have stereo coverage of that area, high-res DEMs, etc., maybe one of the image wizards on this forum will be able to create just such a panorama.

[Stu]

Not strictly speaking a PDS issue, but I don't know where else to put this, so apologies in advance if anyone thinks this is too off topic.

On her always-fantastic blog today, Emily has a link to a rather good Arizona State University website which - cutting a long story short here - has gathered together all the images of Mars taken by various orbiters over the years, and allows you to browse them to your heart's content. I thought I'd have a look and, on my first random click, found this beauty from HiRISE...

Wow... I now have a new "favourite martian crater"!



Thanks Emily!

[Stu]

Actually, I take that back. CURSE you Emily!! Curse you for telling me about such an addictive, time-devouring site!!! This is a martian equivalent of GALAXY ZOO.

You open the page, select the image database of an orbiter, and are taken to a map, with lots of random red dots or boxes spattered all over it... Boots on, rucksack over the shoulder, time to explore... hmmm... I wonder what THAT box looks like magnified... (click)... oh well, nothing interesting there.... what about THAT one? (click)... nice, but not that great... THAT box? (click) WOW! Look at that! I've never seen that picture before, and I thought I'd seen EVERY picture of Mars!

Even found a new (to me) pic of "my" crater on Mars...

[attachment=13458:ganges_crater.jpg]

Go to this site at your peril...!!!

[elakdawalla]

Muhahaha...my evil plan is working.

--Emily