Images from Viking Orbiters Options

[machi]

"Storm and Shadow"

Phobos shadow passing over dust storm in area of Viking 1 Lander landing site.
Artificially colourised animation made from 20 frames taken by Viking 1 Orbiter.
Timewarp 40×.

Attached File(s)

 f467_40x.avi ( 951K ) Number of downloads: 3376

 

[jccwrt]

I've been experimenting with a trial and error method to get pseudo-true color mosaics from single-color RED filter mosaics. Given that most of the surface albedo information is contained in the red portion of the spectrum, I've been creating synthetic blue images by dramatically reducing the contrast, manually brighten the horizon to simulate scattering, adding topography back in by overlaying a high-pass filtered red image, and then creating a synthetic green image by some blend of the red and blue images. It's not the most scientific method, but I think it does get close and is a nice quick way to see Mars in color.

My first attempt was with a large mosaic of Valles Marineris:

Valles Marineris synth color - Viking Orbiter 1 - Orbit 663 - 04-11-78

Modifying my process a bit, I assembled this 36 frame southern hemisphere monitoring mosaic.

Viking Orbiter 2 - Southern Hemisphere Monitoring

The original black and white version of the second mosaic is also on my flickr page.