The power of HiRISE Options

[Stu]

Busy preparing a new Outreach talk here, and have been trying to find some images to illustrate the "power" of HiRISE for a non-technical audience. Playing about with - sorry, carefully looking at the images on - the addictive Mars Global Data site I found a cute landslide on Xanthe Terra that does the trick nicely. Using the IAS Viewer you can zoom in on the boulders carried down the slope by the landslide and even see cracks and splits in them... unbelievable...!



Anyone else got any fave examples?

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

The camera developed a fault not long after science operations began. There has been an obvious deterioration in image quality as a result - images are much grainier and not as crisp.

Look at this first picture obtained of Spirit at Home Plate

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[SteveM]

The reported degradation of the camera has been found to be minimum in past discussions; see, for example:

That is a large exaggeration. Channel 1 of IR10 almost has completely stopped working, but channel 0 is working just fine. Looking at the articles that have been posted, I would point you to the space.com article and state that it seems to be the most informative and accurate, except for it's title. Quoting two parts of it which are totally true:

In late November 2006, the HiRISE team noticed a significant increase in noise, such as bad pixels, in one of its 14 camera detector pairs. Another detector that developed the same problem soon after MRO’s launch in August 2005 has worsened. Images from the spacecraft camera last month showed the first signs of this problem in five other detectors.

That warming, McEwen told SPACE.com, is sufficient to reduce the HiRISE problem to minor dropouts—easily interpolated—in RED 9, and no problems at all in other charge couple devices within the instrument except an infrared receiver channel (IR10 channel 1), where instrument specialists first saw this problem after MRO’s blastoff from Florida in August 2005.

These two statements are 100% correct. Just thought I'd point that out.

and

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0708/26mro/

"Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson, principal investigator for the camera, said, "I'm happy to report that there has been no detectable degradation over the past five months." "

"McEwen said, "Given the stability we've seen and understanding the nature of the problem, we now expect HiRISE to return high-quality data for years to come." "

yay!

Steve M