MEX VMC - Back on, and online! Options

[djellison]

I heard about this 24 hours ago, and couldn't believe it - this is EXACTLY what has been missing from ESA. MASSIVE kudos to the ESOC MEX flight ops team for doing it

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/VMC/index.html

The last time I wrote a post and hit 'submit' at UMSF with a smile this big on my face, was when Oppy successfully got out of Purgatory.

[elakdawalla]

I'd like to include one of the VMC crescent images in my "Year in Pictures" roundup for The Planetary Report but am so far not happy with what I have been able to produce. Attached is the result of my fiddling with the crescent image from the "Best of 2007" feature. But I need an image from 2008 for this roundup. There are a lot of crescent shots in the archives from the spring and summer of 2008, though most of them appear to be saturated. I'm going to keep fiddling with the data -- these images are really fun -- but I know there are lots of people here who are better than I am at making pretty Mars color images and am hoping that one of you will be able to come up with something more spectacular than I can.

--Emily

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[ugordan]

All 2008 crescents indeed appear to be severely overexposed. The closest thing to a non-overexposed crescent view are images from June and July, but they're already at a fairly fat phase. Here's one of the later ones:

It's looking down on the southern hemisphere with a high cloud peeking over the terminator.

If you're willing to put up with overexposed high phase shots and have an image that doesn't really scream "this is Mars", might I suggest one from that sequence showing clouds at the terminator that was brought up here, from Feb 14th.
FWIW, either Mars isn't terribly reddish at those high phase angles or the VMC data is very noisy, or both. Getting anything out of those thin crescents except a greenish hue seems like an exercise in futility.