Deimos images, Viking and others Options

[elakdawalla]

Hi folks, as I've been working on this advent calendar thing I thought it'd be fun to dig into the Viking archive on Deimos and make my own color composite (since Viking is, as far as I know, the only mission that's gotten views on anything other than the Mars-facing hemisphere). The data is quite a bit more gnarly than I anticipated. Thanks to Peter Masek's VikingOrbiterView software though I have put together a montage of all the halfway decent Viking Orbiter images of Deimos, and I thought you guys would enjoy. Attached also is a color composite from a set taken at random (made by making an R-G-V combo, mixing a bit of the green into the V because the V is a little underexposed, and then converting to HSB and swapping in one of the much nicer clear images for the brightness channel). Anyone else want to have a go at making a pretty color combo? Anyone have any helpful comments on the color? The images in the montage are not processed at all except for removing salt-and-pepper noise and (in a few cases) doing some destriping to correct missing lines, so there'd be nothing wrong with grabbing individual images straight from the montage rather than hunting down original files. I've posted the montage in PNG format here.



The view in the attached color composite is primarily of the leading and southern hemispheres. Deimos has this weird squashed south pole -- I guess it's one big impact crater, but it's a crater with a diameter similar to that of Deimos itself.

[JohnVV]

back to the orig post

. Anyone else want to have a go at making a pretty color combo? Anyone have any helpful comments on the color?

go with your gut . i know that is not scientific but even the nasa color of Deimos and Phobos are only close guesses
i used these as a guide for my maps
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/deimos.php
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/phobos.php
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/target/Deimos
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/target/Phobos
and old sites
http://www.nineplanets.org/phobos.html
http://www.nineplanets.org/deimos.html
the two moons will have some red in them from dust from mars getting ejected by impacts

so if it is consistent with the above examples and looks nice ...

[HughFromAlice]

even the nasa color of Deimos and Phobos are only close guesses

Your YouTube vid of Deimos rotating was v good ***** ! Liked your photo Emily and may take up the challenge (although back to work in a day or so).

IMO close guesses are about as near to 'ground truth' as we are likely to get. Even with a calibration target in situ to refer back to, there are so many intervening variables that perhaps even a Jim Bell or David Malin would scratch their heads just a little bit.

The reproduction of great paintings in the most expensive art books is a good case in point. When I see one of them (by itself) I think (assume!) that it is like the original! But, open a couple of books and put two different reproductions side by side and the naked eye can see the differences between them.

Electronic technology is even more variable. A couple of examples from many
- Even with improvements in the html environment converting a graphic produced in RGB or CMYK to hexadecimal (web 'safe' colours) is not seamless
- The angle that you look at a PC Monitor effects what you see... the same pic looked at just a few degrees away from level line of site appears to lose saturation and contrast.

The big q to me is what do you want to produce the image for. A scientific paper? A popular book like Postcards From Mars? A web pic on UMSF? Space Art?

The challenge that I personally enjoy is that working on images like these requires a thoughtful balance between science and interpretation(experience + art) depending on what you are producing the image for and the strengths/weaknesses of the tools that you have at your disposal. On UMSF, to pick two good contributors among many, there is a range from a James Canvin (more scientific) to a Stu (more interpretive)... I get inspiration from both of these approaches depending on what I am looking for.