It's June - Better LOLA? Options

[Rick Sternbach]

Okay, It's June 15. Where's the updated LOLA data? I keep finding the stuff from March in all the usual places. Okay, I'm sure it may take a few days, but does anyone have a clue if the LDEMs are going to get cleaner and crisper this time around?

I've already seen a resin casting of a moon globe made from the LDEM_64 data, but I wanted to wait a bit until more blanks were filled in.

Rick

[Phil Stooke]

It takes time to get it all fixed up... but people, if you want to see how unbelievable LOLA is going to be when it's all done, check out this amazing presentation from the NASA Lunar Science Forum, held at NASA Ames last month. This is by Maria Zuber, and - alas - it didn't survive the PDF-making process properly. I have asked if it can be fixed. But even so, it looks good. Check out the LOLA map of the floor of Shackleton on page 15. As I say I've asked for it to be fixed, so we'll see.


http://lunarscience2010.arc.nasa.gov/sites...files/Zuber.pdf

Other pressies here:

http://lunarscience2010.arc.nasa.gov/agenda

Lots of goodies.

Phil

[James Fincannon]

"It takes time to get it all fixed up... but people, if you want to see how unbelievable LOLA is going to be when it's all done, check out this amazing presentation from the NASA Lunar Science Forum, held at NASA Ames last month. This is by Maria Zuber, and - alas - it didn't survive the PDF-making process properly. I have asked if it can be fixed. But even so, it looks good. Check out the LOLA map of the floor of Shackleton on page 15. "


Yes, it looks good, and is much better than what we have had and they are doing great work.

But there are some points that should be emphasized (and I do not think they are sufficiently)........

For a 25 m/pixel grid for within 25 km of the South Pole,
(1) Only 72% of the grid elements have at least one laser data point. This means 28% are empty, but the DEMs show them filled (interpolated). This is a concern to me because although it creates a nice continuous image/DEM, it needs an accompanying error map to help a user to understand the missing data, interpolation error, etc.
(2) The average number of laser data points in this grid is 1.5 +- 1.4. For a 25m by 25 m pixel, you would like around 25 laser data points to get good coverage with 5 m diameter spots. This means when the DEM is constructed, the height for that pixel is supposed to be an average height of the surface, but really it is the height average of from 0% to 12% of the surface area within the pixel.
(3) How does the laser data point treats the area it "paints"? Is this the average height within the 5 m spot or the highest spot or what?


With coarser grids (240 m by 240 m/pixel), the percentage of surface area with laser data spots is around 8%.

Thus the magic of creating the DEM (i.e. sausage making) has alot of aspects that people need to realize and see if it applies to their usage. I have been stymied from doing illumination analysis because of these concerns. Sure I can do it and have done it with my analysis tools and use either the DEMs or the actual laser points, but I cannot create an error bar, so I have to reassess this laser data DEM.

[zeBeamer]

Thus the magic of creating the DEM (i.e. sausage making) has alot of aspects that people need to realize and see if it applies to their usage. I have been stymied from doing illumination analysis because of these concerns. Sure I can do it and have done it with my analysis tools and use either the DEMs or the actual laser points, but I cannot create an error bar, so I have to reassess this laser data DEM.

James,
we discussed that offline, but I do not agree that we need to paint the whole Moon to have a realistic map at say 25m resolution. Indeed the current filling ratio of the 25x25m near the poles was 72% when we discussed that in June, but it will keep on improving.
The September release in a couple of weeks will have side products for each of the DEMs containing the counts of laser shots in each pixel. People can use that as a mask to see where you can be more or less confident in the measurement averaging (actually a median).
But I am not sure that is what will capture the interest of most people here. And having "gaps" in the DEMs to reflect the actual sampling would not necessarily make it better; I would expect most people want a full map, and do not want to do their own interpolation (they may not be familiar with the tools to do so) when they want to render a given region.
To reassure you, the data is not put through magic black boxes, and the workflow is actually pretty straightforward. It just gets messy to deal with when you have billions of points and those high resolutions.

With coarser grids (240 m by 240 m/pixel), the percentage of surface area with laser data spots is around 8%.

Do you mean globally? In June, polewards of ~85deg, we had ~90% coverage at that resolution.

All,
The September release is coming very soon, and the DEMs will be updated this time, with more than 2 billion (good) points which went into them.
I updated the Celestia products, and they are already available here: http://imbrium.mit.edu/EXTRAS/CELESTIA/
They were made from the to-be-released 128ppd grid. Annoying seams should be gone (note to djellison and John). We are also releasing a 256ppd map (in four tiles), but I do not have the time currently to do it from that source (that would bring us to level6). And currently, it might be overkill. Others are welcome to try it out!

As for the new polar maps you saw in Maria Zuber's Ames presentation, this is not exactly what is going to be released. I'm not going into details here, but basically, the PDS release will still show some (reduced compared to before) orbit streaks near the poles. I will try to provide a better image of the South Pole, as it seems to be of interest here

Erwan

[Rick Sternbach]

All,
The September release is coming very soon, and the DEMs will be updated this time, with more than 2 billion (good) points which went into them.
I updated the Celestia products, and they are already available here: http://imbrium.mit.edu/EXTRAS/CELESTIA/
They were made from the to-be-released 128ppd grid. Annoying seams should be gone (note to djellison and John). We are also releasing a 256ppd map (in four tiles), but I do not have the time currently to do it from that source (that would bring us to level6). And currently, it might be overkill. Others are welcome to try it out!

Erwan

Quick noob question; what's the difference between an LDEM file and a CDEM file? Just noticed all the new file names added.

Rick

[zeBeamer]

Quick noob question; what's the difference between an LDEM file and a CDEM file? Just noticed all the new file names added.

CDEM contains the counts. LDEM contains the altitude (discretized in half-meter levels).

Erwan

[Rick Sternbach]

CDEM contains the counts. LDEM contains the altitude (discretized in half-meter levels).

Erwan

Oh, and I just noticed a lot of file names *missing*, like all the JPG2000 files. With my limited Mac software here, those were the only files I could get to look at and use in Terragen. I can get a file like LDEM_64.img to open in MacDEM as I did with the MOLA files, but now MacDEM can't figure out the height range (I think). Image comes out where I can see the terrain with directional lighting turned on, but the shades are all super contrasty and black-white splotchy. Probably time to get a new machine and better terrain software.