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]

Interesting that we might have a cloud factory on our hands! I'll ask around and see if anyone here has any ideas why there should be clouds generated around this region. The instrument team did indicate to me though that we're going into a "cloud rich" season at the moment, so maybe it's just coincidental that most of our terminator shots recently have been around this region?

Also...I promised to update you on the exposure settings used. I'm still trying to work out a way to pass exposure information on every image through our automated processing chain. However, all recent images have used the 4-step exposure settings, with looping values of 0.4 ms, 6.8 ms, 14 ms and 22.8 ms.

For changing the exposure settings to better catch clouds - this is very possible, I'll try and have a look at what we can do and when we can do it - maybe come back to you and ask you to define your very own VMC observation