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.

[ormstont]

Ok, get what you're going for there - the only suggestion I could possibly make for an in-flight test would be an exposure of Mars at low altitude that's long enough to blur out any surface detail (although I guess that would probably saturate the detector too).

I'll see at work tomorrow if any tests were made pre-launch although I think most of the dirt/objects/scratches(?) we see on the optics came after Beagle 2 ejection. VMC is right underneath the Beagle ejection mechanism so there might have been outgassing or debris from the pyro bolt firings that separated Beagle (some small objects can be seen moving away from the spacecraft in the Beagle separation images).

Based on this possibly the technique that Paolo mentions with this software could be helpful? Would certainly be great if we could extract the artefacts from each image.

Finally, you mention what we really need is a flat-field. Would a dark frame be helpful too? I've never tried VMC pointed away from Mars, so would be interested to see what happens (more out of engineering curiousity)!

[ugordan]

I don't personally think a dark frame would be all too useful for purposes of processing images alone - the detector is 8 bit and the majority of the noise is flatfield related noise. That said, I wonder how long an exposure can you get wih the VMC? It's a wide angle imager so we can forget about imaging individual stars probably, I wonder if it'd be possible to capture the Milky Way glow at least? It would probably depend on how fast dark current builds up with exposure.