Dawn data in the PDS Options

[elakdawalla]

Hey folks, Christmas came just a little bit late this year...

http://dawnpub.igpp.ucla.edu

DAWN DATA RELEASE: LEVEL 1A DATA FROM APPROACH AND SURVEY

The Dawn project has created a public website that is available to serve the cruise and Vesta data sets that have been delivered to the Planetary Data System (PDS) while the data are still under review. Data are available from all three Dawn instruments, the Framing Camera (FC), the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIR), and the Gamma Ray and Neutron Detector (GRaND). The data that are currently available are raw data, in engineering units, sometimes referred to as EDRs by the PDS or as NASA level-1a data. Additional data sets will be added when they are submitted to the PDS.

The Dawn website is located at:

http://dawnpub.igpp.ucla.edu

Users of these data should exercise caution. Invariably there will be errors or omissions in the documentation. Please report any problems...

It is a LOT of data. Just the Vesta Approach includes about 2000 FC images! Wow!!!

I think that the first thing I'm going to work on is that approach sequence/movie that I wish I'd had in real time. The rotation of Vesta through the image sequences makes color composition very hard, but I am sure there are people here who are up to it. I hope someone here can come up with a pretty color global shot that I can put into a comparison montage!

[Bjorn Jonsson]

Here are two global mosaics from the survey phase of the mission:



Both of these images are mosaics of 17 individual color frames. The images were created by first creating a big simple cylindrical map and then draping it over the Gaskell shape model. The processing associated with this is similar to the processing of the images I posted earlier (see this Planetery Society blog entry for further details). This has been one of the most complex image processing projects I have ever finished.

The left image is an approximately true color composite using data from the red, green and blue filters with the color corrected using Vesta's spectrum. This correction made the color a bit more saturated and reddish. Some color variations can be seen but they are rather subtle.

The right image is from the same sequence but using data from the 918 nm, 749 nm and 438 nm (blue filter) as red, green and blue respectively. It has been processed to bring out color differences by first making Vesta's average global color approximately gray and then greatly increasing the color saturation. Note that this processing differs a bit from the processing of a similar image from the RC3 sequence. There I didn't make the average color gray before increasing the color saturation; this is the main reason for the different overall color here. This processing has brought out lots of interesting features. For example I find some of the long and narrow, red features interesting and now I also want to find higher resolution color data for some of the colorful craters in this composite (in other words: There's more to come). One caveat: There are probably some inaccuracies in the large scale color variations since it was difficult to get a competely seamless mosaic without manually messing a bit with the color where the images overlap to get rid of the seams. This was especially important here since the processing tends to bring out the seams and I don't want that.

The source images were obtained on August 20, 2011 when Dawn was about 3000 km from Vesta's center.

[tedstryk]

Simply stunning! These are the first large, color mosaics without gaps with consistent illumination that I have seen of Vesta.