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Posted by: jabe Sep 13 2006, 07:43 PM

Well,
since first pictures are coming up soon why not make a guess where?
Besides a picture of one of the rovers or other landing..or in some cases crash.. sites. Any one have any favorite spots?
The problem with high resolution pictures is when you look at rocks you just see smaller rocks so they can look the same..sort of like a nice fractal...
Nice to have an image with something that is recognizable.
I'm hoping for months end..I prefer tomorrow but I can wait til the end of September..but hopefully not October...
anyone elxe?
cheers
jb

Posted by: Holder of the Two Leashes Sep 13 2006, 08:04 PM

I'm afraid all my favorite targets are landing and crash sites.

Well, if you press me, I'll say It'd be interesting trying to spot the most geologically young lava flow, and try to use small crater counts to date it. I'm guessing there are several scattered sites that could be candidates for the most recent activity.

Posted by: djellison Sep 13 2006, 08:23 PM

I would have thought that the pre-conjunction imaging would be of basically, whatever they can grab, much as with the pre aerobraking imaging. I don't think there's the time to schedule sequence and command something more specific than that.

Doug

Posted by: Holder of the Two Leashes Sep 13 2006, 09:07 PM

Oops... the mention of landing site targets got me wandering off. You're right. Well, one target that would present itself every orbit would be the north polar cap. A relatively blank, featureless part of it might serve for some kinds of camera calibrations. The border areas would have a lot of detail and contrasts. I'd be willing to bet that polar pictures will be in the mix of the first new pictures to come in since before aerobraking.

Posted by: jabe Sep 13 2006, 09:29 PM

I think you are right.. what ever is there, lets take a picture. Just hope the pictures are released as discussed in other http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=2534&st=92 and not held for months on end like Smart-1 or Mars Express.. I think we have been spoiled by MER.
I really doubt they will target specific sites but lets hope for some "interesting" places they can pass over sooner rather than later.. I'm going to be thrilled with anything they send back actually... but I would prefer victoria myself
With high resolution I'm assuming a smaller path along the ground, so that much longer for significant ground cover.
High resolution of the poles melting would be cool
jb

Posted by: djellison Sep 13 2006, 09:36 PM

Well - at 1.5m/pixel - MOC is approx 3km across and as much as 10km long.

HiRISE at 33cm/pixel has a maximum of 6.6km across and 13.2km long.

Doug

Posted by: dvandorn Sep 13 2006, 11:17 PM

I'm thinking that the area around Victoria Crater would be a high-priority area to get HiRISE images of, as soon as possible. That would allow the MER team to spend their time during conjunction doing some real planning. The MOC images we have are nice, but the HiRISE images of the site will be invaluable for planning the Victoria campaign.

Oh, and some good CRISM work in the area would be extraordinarily helpful, too.

In fact, I'm thinking that the first CRISM work ought to be at the MER sites. We have a lot of ground truth at those sites, which will let them approach the overall CRISM results with valuable information about how their readings correlate with what's actually on the ground.

-the other Doug

Posted by: RNeuhaus Sep 14 2006, 01:17 AM

See the following post. MRO will soon take pictures over Victoria Crater in order to improve the coordination of analysis between MER and MRO teams.
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=2534&view=findpost&p=67072

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=21974

Rodolfo

Posted by: dvandorn Sep 14 2006, 01:46 AM

I hate to say this, Rodolfo, but the spaceref.com article gave me the impression that they were planning to start studying Meridiani with MRO in November or December. I'm wondering if the Victoria area might not get a priority for at least a first-look from HiRISE and CRISM *before* the solar conjunction.

-the other Doug

Posted by: mcaplinger Sep 14 2006, 02:46 AM

I can't speak for the HiRISE team, but I believe there's only one day's worth of off-nadir imaging allocated pre-conjunction, so if they don't hit it then, and they don't go right over it, it's not going to happen.

I don't think it's giving much away to say that the MER-B site is in the CTX target database.

And I think you're overstating the incremental value of HiRISE imaging over the MOC CPROTO for traverse planning, but I guess we'll see.

Posted by: mwolff Sep 14 2006, 04:12 PM

The discussion in that article is more about correlation of orbital and MER observations from mineralogical perspective than from one of a planning process. The emphasis in the pre-conjunction and early science mapping phase will likely be the north polar regions (since this expected to be a time of minimal dust loading) and the potential landing sites for Phoenix. Of course, if the ground-track happens to fall across Victoria region during a nadir-sequence orbit, I suspect people would be happy. The planning process has just begun in earnest with the completion of the burn earlier this week...and so, one will know fairly soon.

Posted by: monitorlizard Sep 14 2006, 06:34 PM

But wouldn't you want an off-nadir image of Victoria to combine with a later nadir (or near-nadir) image
to get good stereo to make 3-D planning maps? Getting an off-nadir image should be a lot easier than a nadir image, although I admit you still have to get fairly close to an overhead pass. Sorry if I'm stating the obvious.

Posted by: Holder of the Two Leashes Sep 15 2006, 02:23 PM

Isn't MRO observing from entirely different sun angles than MGS? I'm thinking that perhaps a combination of pictures of Victoria taken early morning and late afternoon might aid in understanding the lay of the land a little better than either picture set alone.

Posted by: mcaplinger Sep 15 2006, 02:37 PM

No, MGS is at about 2 PM and MRO is at about 3 PM.

Posted by: Holder of the Two Leashes Sep 15 2006, 03:04 PM

Well, guess that's not a whole lot of help, just an hour difference. Thanks for the info, though. Somehow I'd gotten the impression that MRO had gone for a 9 am orbit.

Posted by: mwolff Sep 15 2006, 04:03 PM

It depends upon what you mean by "easy." off-nadir targets are a "commodity" and it may be that only two (or so) are allowed every other orbit. so, it's a question of priority by the science teams. there does not appear to be a great deal of excitement burning off-nadir opportunities simply for MER-B traverse planning. I believe there are already some nice MOC data that are being used. certainly, if one really wants Victoria, off-nadir targeting is likely to acquire the data sooner.

Posted by: mwolff Sep 15 2006, 04:27 PM

perhaps i spoke to soon. the Mars Program Office appears to have gotten an off-nadir slew into the target planning for pre-conjunction observation (though the final target list has not yet been determined).

Posted by: djellison Sep 15 2006, 06:18 PM

I can imagine, given that the Mars office has been compartively quiet in terms of 'big' news since the MRO MOI - a big press release during conjunction to unveil the Victoria panorama, the McMurdo pan, and a HiRISE / CTX / CRISM data set of one of the two landing sites would make a nice 'story' that would make most of the major newspapers.

Perhaps the order came from on high to try and grab one of the two sites if at all possible before conjunction...stranger things have happened.

But I'm jumping the gun

Doug

Posted by: climber Sep 15 2006, 07:41 PM

Not only a picture of Victoria will make a nice story, it will be very timely for VC exploration allowing about 2 weeks of thinking. BTW, IIRC, they kind of sparcely communicated during last conjunction. Do you know how long we can expect the "real" com will be out ?

Posted by: djellison Sep 15 2006, 08:00 PM

Well -

http://anserver1.eprsl.wustl.edu/anteam/mera/pages/docs/241/MMD/2C241MMD.htm

During the 18-day conjunction period that began on Sol 241, the sun will be obscuring the communications path between Earth and Mars, making communications sessions unreliable. We were able to successfully command Spirit on Sol 241, and had partial commanding success on Sol 242. We will be attempting to command Spirit on Sol 243 also. Beyond that, thru Sol 255, sequences already safely on board will perform a set of science activities on a daily basis. On Sols 256-258, the last three days of conjunction, we will be attempting normal operations again.

I would say at least a fortnight.

Doug

Posted by: jabe Sep 16 2006, 12:25 AM

Well,
if the Sharad was deployed right, it looks like we are http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/realtime/mro_002.jpg from pointing the cameras at mars...

slowly getting there

jb

Posted by: jabe Sep 24 2006, 12:35 AM

well,
from http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/realtime/mro_002.jpg, it seems the next step is 5 days from Instrument operational checkout. Lets hope for a release of pictures before end of the month..which will include the first "pictures" from Sharad that seems to have been taken.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Sep 25 2006, 10:56 PM

http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/9/wa/SRStoryDetails?ArticleID=13110
By Lori Stiles
UA News Services
September 25, 2006

EDIT: I decided to link directly to the UA press release.

2nd EDIT: I notice the Media Note isn't included on the UANews.org website, so I'll put it back here:

QUOTE

MEDIA NOTE: Reporters are welcome to join the HiRISE team in UA's Sonett Space Sciences Building when the first HiRISE image is received at HiROC at approximately 2:30 p.m. MST (Pacific) time. Please make arrangements with Lori Stiles, University Communications, 520-626-4402 or 520-360-0574 (cell).

Posted by: nprev Sep 25 2006, 11:04 PM

....ooo, ooo, ooo....(jumping excitedly about like a kid on Christmas Eve...)

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Sep 25 2006, 11:06 PM

Huh? MST is Mountain Standard Time (Denver, Salt Lake, Phoenix.) Pacific time is an hour earlier (Los Angeles, San Francisco and of course Elk Grove)

[EDIT: never mind. Arizona isn't on Daylight Savings so they stay on MST while the rest of the zone goes to MDT, and the Pacific zone goes to PDT. So this time of year, MST=PDT ....sorry, my bad]

Posted by: nprev Sep 25 2006, 11:10 PM

Yeah, good catch, Dan. Even more confusing is the fact that Arizona doesn't do Daylight Savings Time, so right now the entire state is effectively on Pacific time...they need to clarify this.

[EDIT: Me & Dan were typing @ the same time...he cleared it up. Still think that UA could've made this a bit less confusing, though...]

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Sep 25 2006, 11:12 PM

More on U.S. time zones http://www.timetemperature.com/tzus/time_zone.shtml

Posted by: volcanopele Sep 26 2006, 12:29 AM

Yep, we don't believe in Daylight Savings Time here. No changing clocks here, just the annoyance of my football games being on an hour later in November.

In terms of this HiRISE business, they got T-shirts for this check-out period Maybe we (Cassini Titan people) should get a T-shirt for each Titan flyby...

Posted by: nprev Sep 26 2006, 01:05 AM

Indeed...you'd have quite a wardrobe already!

OT a bit, but I was stationed at Davis-Monthan AFB for three years (1986-early 1990)...loved the base & Tucson, but that DT disconnect used to drive me nuts...never could remember what time it was everywhere else when I had to make an out-of-state call.

Posted by: volcanopele Sep 26 2006, 01:27 AM

Thanks for the warning, Alex. Now do I stick around for the images, or leave for home before the insanity starts...
Maybe this will all be upstairs, who knows. Maybe I will be spared the worst of the poking and proding, and the: "Are those HiRISE images?"/"No, these are of an interesting place." exchanges...

Posted by: djellison Sep 26 2006, 07:14 AM

Oooooooooooo - harsh

Doug

Posted by: jabe Sep 26 2006, 02:10 PM

Lets hope we get a whole bunch of pictures full size friday... not a compressed file and have them release only one.

but then again, if they only release one picture, the pictures better be clear .. I'd rather have an excellent camera with few public released pictures than full release but a faulty cam.... We'd get a peek at them eventually... May have to buy a MUCH BIGGER monitor and video card to handle the new released pictures..

jb

Posted by: volcanopele Sep 28 2006, 05:31 PM

CNN's article on Opportunity's arrival at Victoria states that HiRISE will be looking at that crater and Opportunity very soon. With the first 40 check-out images coming over the next week or so, hmm....

Posted by: jabe Sep 28 2006, 05:55 PM

SWEEEEEEET!!!!!

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Sep 28 2006, 06:03 PM

That would be pretty cool. That said, however, and given how much the mainstream media screw up their "facts" when reporting space-related stories, I'd feel a little more confident that this is going to happen if there was official confirmation (e.g., from NASA or the HiRISE team).

Posted by: Sunspot Sep 29 2006, 12:40 AM

http://www.planetary.org/news/2006/0927_Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter_Gets_Ready.html

Good article at the Planetary Society website.

Posted by: marsman Sep 29 2006, 12:51 AM

A MRO press conference is scheduled for October 16 at 1pm EST. You can see it on NASA TV or streamed at the JPL web site. Looking forward to great pictures!

Posted by: Sunspot Sep 29 2006, 08:57 AM

Hmmm thats a long time to wait to se those pictures.

Posted by: jabe Sep 29 2006, 06:32 PM

check out the blog for the http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/HiBlog/...
bet it gets overloaded with me hitting refresh..
so don't you guys use the site

Posted by: climber Sep 29 2006, 06:45 PM

Thank you jabe. If I understand it correctely, first image is due in ONE hour from now!
Please double check

« PreparationsWaiting to receive the first image…. »We just took the first image!!
We just received the telemetry to confirm that the HiRISE camera took its first picture!!! We all gathered around a screen projecting the telemetry data, and everyone cheered as the numbers came in. We’ll have to wait another ~6 hours or so to actually receive the image… The images go from the spacecraft to the DSN network, then to JPL, then to us.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 29th, 2006 at 8:44 am

Posted by: volcanopele Sep 29 2006, 06:48 PM

The first image should show up around 2:30 pm MST (or Pacific daylight time for those who don't like our anti-Daylight time views). So about 2 hours and 42 minutes from the time of this post.

Wow, that blog is almost like being upstairs.

Posted by: climber Sep 29 2006, 06:54 PM

Thanks for the correction volcanopele, MST,EDT,PST,GMT ...I'm on GMT+2, and it'll change next month! It could have been worse if they've decided to apply this to Mars

Posted by: jabe Sep 29 2006, 06:56 PM

I believe that it is 4:30 EST so about 2 hours when you posted message... I'm figuring http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ will also post image..just in case blog gets flooded..

Posted by: Rakhir Sep 29 2006, 07:25 PM

Waiting for the first HiRISE image, I didn't saw this one reported in any other thread.

New Spectrometer Begins Its Global Map of Mars

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/mro-20060929.html

Posted by: nprev Sep 29 2006, 07:56 PM

I'm confused. Are we expecting the images to be posted on the MRO mission site, or where?

Posted by: volcanopele Sep 29 2006, 07:56 PM

Blogs are a wonderful thing. I just read a little further down and found out there is cake!!

EDIT: GRRR, the cake's not here yet

Posted by: volcanopele Sep 29 2006, 08:00 PM

They might be posted at: http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/ . The MRO site might also be a good bet, but the HiRISE page may post the full size images. I'll ask around.

EDIT: Keep an out on that page, the MRO JPL page, and the main HiRISE page: http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/hirise/ .

Posted by: nprev Sep 29 2006, 08:00 PM

Hey, volcanopele, sorry to bug you but re my previous question: Do you know where the first pics will be posted on the Web? I'm not sure where to go...thanks!

[EDIT] Jumped the gun, man...thanks!!! Jeez, and this was my 400th post....oh, the ignominity of it all!
[EDIT2] Gotcha...thanks again, you da man, even if you are an Ionian caldera!!!

Posted by: jabe Sep 29 2006, 08:12 PM

I bet http://jpl.nasa.gov will have the pics real fast..they have in the past

Posted by: nprev Sep 29 2006, 08:18 PM

BREAKING NEWS: The blog says that the first pictures are in, and "they look amazing!" Singular & plural were mixed in the entry, but from context this might be about the very first pic.

UPDATE (NEW ENTRY QUOTED VERBATIM): "We’ve been looking at the first images for the last several minutes, they are incredible. We have identified many boulders, craters, channels, and other incredible features. Everything is looking as well as we have dreamed. Stay tuned for more!"

Posted by: volcanopele Sep 29 2006, 08:31 PM

I just had to go get lunch at the Student Union

Yep, the first image, of Ius Chasma, is down. For Mars, it looks great.

Posted by: nprev Sep 29 2006, 08:38 PM

I'm guessing here that you'd prefer an IRO, VP?....

Posted by: jabe Sep 29 2006, 08:47 PM

ok..so post the pictures already

Posted by: climber Sep 29 2006, 08:48 PM

From the Hirise blogsite :
"It is an amazing site at HiROC now. The team members all look like kids at Christmas time, opening that present that they’ve wanted for so very long. There are already amazing things we want to study more, amazing things that we can learn from Mars already. It’s going to be an amazing two year Primary Science Phase! We are all transfixed, studying these incredible pictures! "

We, at UMSF, when we talk about pictures, we can actualy SEE them

Posted by: volcanopele Sep 29 2006, 08:53 PM

Patience... you will see them soon. Even Cassini images on the raw images page are delayed a few hours from when they hit the ground to when you actually see them. That first image just got done finished processing only 30 minutes ago.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Sep 29 2006, 08:58 PM

Hey, cut climber some slack. After all, HiRISE is being trumpeted as the "People's Camera." And I presume climber is included.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Sep 29 2006, 09:04 PM

Hey, climber. We're almost there! We now have images of the HiRISE team looking at the pictures

My only question is: What's next? Pictures of the team eating the cake?

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Sep 29 2006, 09:08 PM

If you take a picture of yourself at your monitor and post it, then we can have pictures of UMSF members looking at pictures of HiRISE staff, looking at pictures of Mars. That's nearly as good as the real thing, isn't it?

Posted by: jabe Sep 29 2006, 09:08 PM

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/HiBlog/
dam..ah well..time to go eat..bbl

Posted by: lyford Sep 29 2006, 09:12 PM

OK who has the mad imaging skills to tease the data from a possible reflection in the window? It's got to be there somewheres....

And geez, I am all for "real time" display of the images online, but even in my wildest dreams never expected a live connect from my iBook to the DSN..... patience!

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Sep 29 2006, 09:15 PM

You've been watching too much CSI. (Didn't they once purport to capture the face of an individual from a photographic reflection in a person's eyeball?)

Posted by: djellison Sep 29 2006, 09:19 PM

Didn't you know, Photoshop has a special GUI for hollywood with two buttons. 'Zoom beyond all actual resolution' and 'Magically enhance'

Doug

Posted by: lyford Sep 29 2006, 09:19 PM

No that was Blade Runner.
(Though maybe you are right, I don't watch CSI....)

Posted by: climber Sep 29 2006, 09:20 PM

It is indeed :

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Sep 29 2006, 09:21 PM

I first saw this technique used by Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) in one of the first episodes of the television program "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098936/." And I recall some similar image teasing (though not from someone's eyeballs) from Michael Crichton's book http://www.amazon.com/Rising-Sun-Michael-Crichton/dp/0345380371/sr=8-1/qid=1159564730/ref=sr_1_1/102-4857735-8506504?ie=UTF8&s=books.

EDIT: I went back and re-edited this inane post. Can you tell I'm bored waiting for the HiRISE images?

Posted by: lyford Sep 29 2006, 09:23 PM

Is this going the direction of an Infinite Space Enthusiast Project -
a la http://www.infinitecat.com/


EDIT - Yes I think we're getting a little silly here while waiting - here are some Ius Chasma context images to hold us over -

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/feature/Ius+Chasma

Posted by: nprev Sep 29 2006, 09:41 PM

You know, I just thought of something...MRO seems likely to upstage the efforts of MGS & Odyssey even as both of these missions are still in progress. We UMSFers should be quite careful to show 'em some love...this has to be a bittersweet moment for them at best.

I'd've included Mars Express, but the results have been trickling out to the public so slowly that I'm convinced that they prefer stealth mode!

Posted by: volcanopele Sep 29 2006, 09:41 PM

For those waiting, imagine this image:

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/m19_m23/images/M23/M2301826.html

But 10x higher resolution...

Posted by: climber Sep 29 2006, 09:41 PM

Doug
Would you try one on this :


I'm sure you can get some informations out of the reflexion on her glasses

Edit : didn't see you've got the "reflexion" idea first Lyford,...sorry

Posted by: volcanopele Sep 29 2006, 09:51 PM

Okay, stop messing with Ingrid's glasses... that goes for you too Doug

Posted by: odave Sep 29 2006, 09:53 PM

Mooch any cake yet, VP?

<twiddle, twiddle>

Posted by: climber Sep 29 2006, 09:55 PM

Actualy, not a piece of cake for us

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Sep 29 2006, 09:57 PM

Now I feel much better. I guess I can go surfing now.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Sep 29 2006, 10:00 PM

Great. Now we have images of reporters looking at the images!! Next up: images of the Domino's pizza deliveryman ogling the new views of Mars.

Posted by: Tom Tamlyn Sep 29 2006, 10:03 PM

Wish I had a monitor like the one in the picture ...

TTT (& I'm glad to see it's an Apple)

Posted by: DEChengst Sep 29 2006, 10:09 PM

Only if you sneak into that room and point your digicam at that monitor

Posted by: Pedro_Sondas Sep 29 2006, 10:19 PM

PHOTOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000823_1720/

Posted by: jabe Sep 29 2006, 10:20 PM

good catch!!

Posted by: Nix Sep 29 2006, 10:33 PM

woah **** anyone got any MRO swearboxes?

Nico

Posted by: nprev Sep 29 2006, 10:34 PM

Individual boulders, dunes, striations, what looks like small-scale channeling at first glance...MRO in a word...WOW!!!

Welcome, MRO...I foresee interesting times! Nix, I hereby formally open the MRO swearbox...we should be able to retire the US national debt with the proceeds by 2008 or so...

Posted by: Sunspot Sep 29 2006, 10:36 PM

It's not just the resolution, the quality of the image itself is amazing.

Where did everyone go? We've been here waiting for theimages and when they arrive everyone disappears lol

I hope they post the whole picture too, rather than just the small crop we've seen so far.

Posted by: jabe Sep 29 2006, 10:48 PM

gotta love it...70 in one week...heheheh..I'm giddy

Posted by: jamescanvin Sep 29 2006, 11:05 PM

Wow! I can't beleve that that image is only 600m x 400m on the ground!

James

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Sep 29 2006, 11:09 PM

Holy smokes! That folding is going to send the geologists over the edge. It looks like the Appalachian Mountains.

There's a really fresh looking little crater down there too.

Posted by: RNeuhaus Sep 29 2006, 11:12 PM

The image is very sharp and it is very good for military purposes looking for anything which is hiding! Very impressive.

Rodolfo

Posted by: djellison Sep 29 2006, 11:14 PM

Want to be scared silly - Victoria would not fit in that image footprint. If centered right on it - you would just about get from the inside of the east rim to the inside of the west rim from side to side- and little more than the dunefield and part of the slope top to bottom.

Doug

Posted by: Pedro_Sondas Sep 29 2006, 11:16 PM

Just the sand dunes

Posted by: jabe Sep 29 2006, 11:30 PM

I thought it would be more of a "longer" picture..thought it had a 3.3 km scale... ah well not complaining though..just hope they can aim well .

Posted by: djellison Sep 29 2006, 11:33 PM

HiRISE is a bit funny remember - it's 10 x 2000ish pixel across CCD's - so this could well be a crop from just one of those CCD's.

The max spec I've seen is the full 20,000 pixels across and over 63,000 pixels long - that would be 6km wide and 19km long - and 1.26 Gigapixels. How often they will use the absolute full capacity for imaging I don't know. The middle two CCD's ( the central 4000 pixels ) are imaged not only in red, but also nIR filter and a G/B filter.

Doug

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Sep 29 2006, 11:39 PM

I just got back. Did I miss anything?

Seriously, though. The HiRISE subframe released today looks good. Kudos to the team.

Posted by: jabe Sep 29 2006, 11:40 PM

gotta love this pic from the http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/HiBlog/

Edit:gotta love this tag line to the blog...

Posted by: odave Sep 29 2006, 11:42 PM

Man, that's a sweet image. I can't wait to see it on my big tubes at work on Monday.

What a great week on Mars - I'm feeling a little overwhelmed! Congrats to the HiRISE and MRO teams for a job well done.

Posted by: lyford Sep 29 2006, 11:46 PM

From the blog- I can't complain at what we have seen so far.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Sep 29 2006, 11:57 PM

Thanks for that perspective. I think Fred could even put in a reclining mystery man. He'd probably be 5 or 6 pixels long if he was lying on his back.

Posted by: Nix Sep 30 2006, 12:13 AM

I've played with a 1x6 pixel black bar in PS and it's..quite fun.

Nico

Posted by: jamescanvin Sep 30 2006, 12:19 AM

Another way of looking at it: MRO will see Victoria's far rim nearly as well as Oppy can! The resolution of Oppy's pancam on the far rim of Victoria is about 22cm/pixel - pretty comparable with the 30cm/pixel from MRO.

James

Posted by: jabe Sep 30 2006, 12:22 AM

I want one of those monitors


a direct link to the data would be good too

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Sep 30 2006, 12:25 AM

For laughs, someone should "tweak" that image to show the HiRISE team looking at UMSF. A good caption (or background music): Carly Simon's "Anticipation."

Posted by: lyford Sep 30 2006, 12:31 AM

http://www.apple.com/displays/specs.html
2560 x 1600 pixels (optimum resolution) but still not big enough for a HiRISE image!
Drool.

Posted by: Nix Sep 30 2006, 12:37 AM

I've used a 30" a few days ago in a shop -they're big, I'd take two good 24inchers over them any time -too big for my taste (for now )

Nico

edit; also HP introduced a 30" recently (apart from Dell)

Posted by: jabe Sep 30 2006, 12:38 AM

only if I had a mac..and money lol

Posted by: Nix Sep 30 2006, 12:45 AM

drool here

http://images.google.com/images?q=30+inch+monitors&hl=en&btnG=Search+Images

and here http://www.digitaltigers.com/zenview-powerscape-ultrahd.shtml

on topic; I think we can expect the second image soon? It has come in.

Nico

Posted by: jabe Sep 30 2006, 01:01 AM

can't wait for pics of polar ice.. curious where all thenext pics will be from...

Posted by: nprev Sep 30 2006, 04:09 AM

Polar ice pic now down...incredible, 0.6m/pixel. Download the full 18MB version from the HIRSE homepage; it's worth it. Here's the browse version:

http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000825_2665/TRA_000825_2665_RED.browse.jpg

Posted by: volcanopele Sep 30 2006, 05:40 AM

a few comments:

1) I left early today, shortly after the first image came down. So, I ended up missing the cake... But I am glad to see every thing is working fine on HiRISE.

2) Despite being Mars, these are incredible images. The amount of detail you can see in these images is amazing.

3) Yes, everyone loves the HiWall. Maybe now, it will do more than just show that one color image from March all the time. Though, it should display Titan RADAR images

4) Yeah, I love those Mac screens too

Posted by: volcanopele Sep 30 2006, 06:17 AM

According to the caption of the first full image, this MOC image should be in the same spot:

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e01_e06/images/E04/E0402418.html

Posted by: Sunspot Sep 30 2006, 08:31 AM

http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000823_1720/

The full size image is 111 MB!!! I dont think my computer is going to be able to handle these HiRISE images

Posted by: Nix Sep 30 2006, 09:24 AM

OMG! That fullres! Incredible!! Congratulations to all who made this happen

Nico

Posted by: Magnus Lundstedt Sep 30 2006, 10:40 AM

Since I cant find this on the official HiRISE page yet, I have put up a zoomable version of the full high resolution image (the >100 meg file). I guess they will do the same on the HiRISE page soon, but until then, use this link if you dont want to download the big file:

http://magnus.infidyne.com/mars/mro/TRA_000823_1720_RED.htm

Posted by: jabe Sep 30 2006, 11:40 AM

great work..thanks..
love the polar pictures .... I need a new computer now

Posted by: NoVi Sep 30 2006, 11:41 AM

..and I don't hope their server runs into bandwith issues .

Posted by: Sunspot Sep 30 2006, 11:42 AM

Brilliant.

I wasnt going to try and download and view this image on my 600mhz Celeron PC with 320MB RAM and 13GB Hard Drive.

Posted by: jabe Sep 30 2006, 12:34 PM

thanks for doing the polar as well
http://magnus.infidyne.com/mars/mro/TRA_000825_2665_RED.htm

Posted by: Magnus Lundstedt Sep 30 2006, 12:37 PM

Here is a zoomable flash version of the second full resolution image, its only 18 meg but someone on #space requested it

http://magnus.infidyne.com/mars/mro/TRA_000825_2665_RED.htm

Posted by: jaywee Sep 30 2006, 12:59 PM

In the 1st big picture, is it just me or the stripe on the right looks a bit out of focus compared to the left one?

Posted by: Sunspot Sep 30 2006, 01:01 PM

Heres something VERY interesting, looks like movemet of the crust, kind of like what you see at earthquake fault lines.

Its a screen capture from the zoomable version Magnus posted. You can see the approximste location on the thumbnail in the corner.

Posted by: Magnus Lundstedt Sep 30 2006, 01:14 PM

I have found where the first released "subimage" is located in the big image:

http://magnus.infidyne.com/mars/mro/first_image_released.jpg

Posted by: jabe Sep 30 2006, 01:56 PM

Hires site has the zoom feature working now...
http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/
thanks Magnus for the early peek..should cut down on your bandwidth now

Posted by: mcaplinger Sep 30 2006, 03:12 PM

Old news, though. http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/07/08/

Posted by: jabe Sep 30 2006, 03:20 PM

thanks for finding the "old" picture..great to compare the two...

Posted by: OWW Sep 30 2006, 03:54 PM

Here is the original image:

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e19_r02/images/E21/E2100030.html

Quite an improvement.

Posted by: dot.dk Sep 30 2006, 04:19 PM

A gif to show the difference.

http://www.peecee.dk/uploads/0906/1_mro_vs_moc.gif

Posted by: dot.dk Sep 30 2006, 04:28 PM

http://peecee.dk/uploads/0906/hirise_team.jpg

Posted by: Phil Stooke Sep 30 2006, 04:32 PM

The comparison was interesting, but let's not forget that this MOC image is 3 m/pixel, not the maximum 1.5 m/pixel, and certainly not the cPROTO resolution. The best comparison will come (probably over a landing site) when we can compare cPROTO with HIRISE. HIRISE will still look a little bit better, but the difference will not be anything like what we are seeing here.

(great HIRISE team pic, by the way!)

Phil

Posted by: OWW Sep 30 2006, 04:44 PM

As trekkies will understand, I can only say:

http://ds9itsafake.ytmnd.com/

Posted by: JRehling Sep 30 2006, 05:02 PM

You could look at Mariner 9 images of Mars...

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Sep 30 2006, 05:30 PM

Posted by: nprev Sep 30 2006, 05:40 PM

There's new "zoomify" pic viewer on the HIRSE site....way cool, and you don't have to download these whopper files: http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/

Posted by: OWW Sep 30 2006, 06:49 PM

I noticed the same thing. Anyone knows what's going on here? Only the middle part of the picture seems to be focused correctly. Is this a feature or a fault in the camera?

Posted by: lyford Sep 30 2006, 07:44 PM

That zoomifier is way cool - not sure on the pc but the mac you can zoom in and out with the command (apple) key and shift key, and move with the arrow keys....

I can't wait for http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ as well:

Will there be a 3D zoomer???

Posted by: Phil Stooke Sep 30 2006, 08:40 PM

ElkGroveDan - that's a good one! Too bad our newcomers won't get it - you had to be there... You earned a Canadian with that!

Phil

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Sep 30 2006, 08:59 PM

Of course the newcomers who are interested can go back http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=870&st=645&p=27641&#entry27641 where it started and read through the entire thread if they want.

Make it a Molson's Blue, eh?

Posted by: DEChengst Sep 30 2006, 09:26 PM

That episode is so

Posted by: jabe Oct 1 2006, 01:58 PM

a good article from a http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/149017.php linked at the http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/HiBlog/.
The blog has a few inside jokes. Seems lots of pictures have been acquired. Almost glad they haven't posted others or I'd be looking at them all day
I'm looking forward to the colour pics as well..
cheers
jb

Posted by: Sunspot Oct 1 2006, 05:25 PM

Despite the increase in resolution with cPROTO you still have all the other limitations in terms of image quality such as the CCD and processing on the spacecraft.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Oct 1 2006, 05:29 PM

Very true! But the specific animated-GIF comparison I was commenting on did not represent a very fair comparison between the two instruments.

Phil

Posted by: volcanopele Oct 1 2006, 06:16 PM

LOL, now that I just realized who HiCommander is, (hint: http://www.azstarnet.com/ss/2006/09/30/l149017-2.jpg ). HiCommander isn't Anjani (I don't think).

Posted by: NoVi Oct 1 2006, 09:19 PM

Is there a time schedule available when MRO is going to image the Oppy-Victoria site?

Posted by: jabe Oct 2 2006, 05:20 PM

gotta love the quote from the hires team from the blog site...

Posted by: Roby72 Oct 2 2006, 06:09 PM

It looks a little unsharp at the right side - I suspect they could manage such a little refocusing with HIRISE. I remember equal problems also with the MOC from MGS early in the mission back in 1997.

Robert

Posted by: volcanopele Oct 2 2006, 06:30 PM

Or it was intentional. Each of HiRISE image is a mosaic of 10 or so strips from different CCDs. Perhaps only the central strips didn't use on-chip summing, and where thus at full resolution, while the outer strips used 2x2 summing.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Oct 2 2006, 08:34 PM

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/HiBlog/?p=39

Posted by: jabe Oct 2 2006, 10:01 PM

can imagine something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orUHE9gf3zw using mro data

Posted by: jabe Oct 3 2006, 12:09 AM

TEN PICTURES RELEASED http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/
there goes my sleep!! lol

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Oct 3 2006, 12:13 AM

Thanks for the update, jabe. IMO, the http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000827_1875/ is the "money shot."

Posted by: jabe Oct 3 2006, 12:22 AM

love to see that in 3-d..
my two year old is keeping me from browsing more

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Oct 3 2006, 12:25 AM

If your wife is like mine, she's probably wondering which one is the two-year old

Posted by: jabe Oct 3 2006, 12:34 AM

lol..hit it right on the nose
Possible http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000828_2495/TRA_000828_2495_RED_PolygonalTerrain_01.jpg is kinda cool too

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Oct 3 2006, 01:00 AM

http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/2/wa/SRStoryDetails?ArticleID=13175
By Lori Stiles
University of Arizona News Services
October 2, 2006

Posted by: mchan Oct 3 2006, 01:01 AM

Uh, oh. Lotsa boulders. Big Joe sized.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Oct 3 2006, 01:06 AM

Identifying meter-scale and sub-meter-scale boulders is going to be HiRISE's greatest contribution to landing site selection, IMO. No more relying on estimates from thermal inertial measurements.

Posted by: lyford Oct 3 2006, 02:01 AM

Beyond awesome....
"Where're your http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000834_1835/ now, Arthur??!?!?"

Posted by: tglotch Oct 3 2006, 02:34 AM

On the other hand, every cool place is going to look so scary, the engineers aren't going to let us land anywhere interesting.

Awesome pics, though.

Posted by: Nix Oct 3 2006, 04:39 AM

That Cerberus Fossae image is so I'm going to need a while to take it all in!

I haven't had time to look at the other images in detail but MRO delivers, that's for sure...you can imagine walking down there, in between boulders!

Nico

Posted by: kenny Oct 3 2006, 08:08 AM

Incroyable! Looking at the Cerberus Fossae pic really reminds us that Mars has seen powerful tectonic activity.

A suggestion - could we please have real on-the-ground dimensions in metres (not just pixels) of the scenes, like we get with MGS. Such as, "this scene is 500 meters by 400 meters across", or whatever?

Kenny

Posted by: ustrax Oct 3 2006, 10:57 AM

Posted by: Sunspot Oct 3 2006, 04:23 PM

Indeed

Amazing images, I can't wait to see what the landing sites for Spirit, Opportunity and some of the other landers will look like with HIRISE.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Oct 3 2006, 04:33 PM

I'm afraid this will probably be the case. Mars landing site selection is contentious enough as it stands, even with the "voodoo" methods of thermal inertia-based rock abundance estimation and Earth-based radar measurements of surface roughness. And, of course, let's not forget the planetary protection mavens, too.

There was, ironically, some "benefit" with lower resolution imagery: you couldn't see anything that would really scare you. It reminds me of playing a golf course for the first time. You avoid all of the traps and hazards because you don't know where they are

Posted by: ustrax Oct 3 2006, 04:43 PM

Just compare this http://themis.asu.edu/fullimages/20050321a with http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000827_1875/TRA_000827_1875_RED_CerberusFossae_01.jpg...

Posted by: Phil Stooke Oct 3 2006, 04:43 PM

Revisting the MOC comparison again...

This is my version of the MOC image, compared with HIRISE and the version of MOC they chose to post. So even that MOC image could have been displayed better. And a full resolution MOC and especially a cPROTO would be better still. HIRISE is great - I just don't want MOC treated unfairly in the comparison.

Phil

Posted by: Nix Oct 3 2006, 04:48 PM

Trying to be optimistic, I rather like to think that landing ellipse error margin will be reduced in the future (primarily by retrorockets vs airbags), so that small scale relatively flat areas located within rough terrain can be reached. MRO will help pinpointing such places for safe decent IMO.

Nico

Posted by: lyford Oct 3 2006, 05:32 PM

The latest images are in the http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/HiRISE/hirise_images/ now, not sure if that has been mentioned yet. You can "stroll" along the channel of Cerberus Fossae...

Posted by: Julius Oct 3 2006, 05:33 PM

The Cerberus Fossae pic by MRO says it all.Now we get to see the REAL MARS!No need for planes or balloons!

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Oct 3 2006, 06:05 PM

Thanks, Phil. I, too, thought the HiRISE/MOC comparison on HiBlog was a little extreme.

Posted by: Anoolios Oct 3 2006, 06:19 PM

First image from mapping orbit full frame (548.1 MB .tif file):

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08792

Posted by: Sunspot Oct 3 2006, 06:31 PM

Lots of weird looking oblong rocks in this part of the image, probably ejecta from the eroded craters. (maybe)

Posted by: Sunspot Oct 3 2006, 06:50 PM

More weirdness, of the kooky kind though, lots of faces in this mountain lol.

Posted by: aldo12xu Oct 3 2006, 09:01 PM

My head is spinning!! There I was trying to catch up on all of the Opportunities images and comments posted over the past 3-4 days and now, these incredible images from MRO!! Viewing that Cerebus Fossae image at full resolution is just about like being there. Absolutely stunning!

Will NASA be able to generate 3D perspective renderings from all of the MRO images?

Posted by: jabe Oct 3 2006, 09:25 PM

gotta love this latest http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000828_1805/

they can do a 3-d if they overlap terrain with another pic. Total expected coverage of planet in first 2 years is ~2% (if my stats are right) so they willl have to REALLY want a picture of an area in 3-d to make one since coverage area will be small..

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Oct 4 2006, 12:35 AM

Yes, these HiRISE transition imagery are nice appetizers; the detail is really nice. However, I'm waiting for hi-res subframes of features like the Malin and Edgett seepage sites, slope streaks, and other geologically recent flow features. In fact, I'd also love to see CRISM and SHARAD data for the gully sites well, for example, to test the aquifer model(s).

Posted by: nprev Oct 4 2006, 02:17 AM

<clink> exp nth.... ...guess I'll just have to sign over my paycheck every two weeks, take out some loans...

Re Cerebrus: That looks fresh! In fact, you can still see fissures that will produce slumping on the channel walls all over the place! Just out of curiosity, did MGS' TES record any hint of higher temps in this region? Come to that, how about Mars Express methane readings? This looks like a VERY interesting area...

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Oct 4 2006, 03:07 AM

I'm speechless. Why do I get the feeling that those dunes are comprised of sulfate granules?

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Oct 4 2006, 03:12 AM

I guess everyone has a wish list. The seepage sites were high on mine. MPL and Beagle are my tops. There's something about an unsolved mystery. I bet Phil has an itch to see Viking 2.

Posted by: nprev Oct 4 2006, 03:36 AM

At this point, I have an urge to see EVERY landing (or attempted landing) site purely for context purposes. Intellectually, the power of this instrument was difficult to fully appreciate; the results are far beyond what I had visualized...

Posted by: Decepticon Oct 4 2006, 09:07 AM

Don't forget the russian landers!

Posted by: ustrax Oct 4 2006, 09:47 AM

My wish too!...

Posted by: Nix Oct 4 2006, 10:05 AM

The Russian landers -or what's left of them

Nico

Posted by: tedstryk Oct 4 2006, 10:24 AM

It will be hard to spot them, but if we have a candidate, the color area will help - the color differences between the landers and suroundings, if they aren't too dust covered, should be a givaway.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Oct 4 2006, 01:55 PM

The russian landers will be all but impossible to find because their locations are too poorly known for effective targeting.

I do indeed hope to see Viking 2. At the moment, Mike Malin, Tim Parker and I each have different locations, each one a little lump on the plains, all within a few km of each other. I have tried matching the pattern of large boulders around each one in MOCs, but the result is inconclusive - distances are uncertain so there is too much flexibility in interpretation. And believe me, you can talk your way into believing anything! (cf lizards). But HIRISE should help settle the issue.

The best answer may come from being able to match features between the Viking pans and orbital views in the diastance east of the lander. I personally believe my result is better than the others from that point of view, but my solution has serious difficulties as well. A HIRISE view of the terrain east of the lander might help resolve the issue. I had an LPSC abstract on this a few years ago.

Phil

Posted by: ngunn Oct 4 2006, 03:20 PM

Has anyone else commented on the laterally inverted strip near the left edge of this image? I was examining cliff forms - took me a while to realise what was going on.

Posted by: ngunn Oct 4 2006, 07:42 PM

Just to clarify I mean that a strip of the Cerberus Fossae image appears to be laterally flipped, not an inverted rock formation or anything. Perhaps everybody has noticed this already - or perhaps not. Anybody phoned NASA?

Posted by: djellison Oct 4 2006, 08:16 PM

I would recommend watching these...

October 6, Friday
11 a.m. - NASA's Mars Rover News Briefing - HQ (Public and Media Channels)

October 16, Monday
1 p.m. - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter News Conference - JPL (Public and Media Channels)

Doing an MRO entry for the blog now

Doug

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Oct 4 2006, 08:18 PM

You're right, the JPEG in the zoomer does show what you describe. However, the 30+ Mb version, which is what I've been looking at, appears okay.

Posted by: ngunn Oct 4 2006, 09:52 PM

Well that's good news. Idle speculation I know, but I wonder which version came first? A correction seems more likely than an incorrection. Another idle speculation: - I've only zoomed a tiny fraction of the published images. Does this happen often? In certain kinds of terrain it might be hard to spot.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Oct 4 2006, 10:45 PM

Perhaps. But if I'm not mistaken, the "zoomifier" uses, among other things, Adobe Flash for the web display, so it's possible the original image was sliced and incorrectly assembled for the "zoomable" version. Who knows.

Posted by: nprev Oct 5 2006, 12:33 AM

Oh, absolutely, I meant the Russian landers, too...maybe more than the US ones! Mysteries aplenty there.

I agree that it's a real long shot, though. Still, maybe someday someone will stumble across them when doing research on the MRO data. Looks like it'll take decades to do a thorough job on this deluge to come; heck, there might be Martian colonies by the time the job's truly done!

Posted by: lyford Oct 5 2006, 12:44 AM

This would be my guess as well, having looked at all the versions of the Cerebus image. Blame the web team!

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Oct 5 2006, 07:54 PM

An interesting http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/10/03/mars-up-close-and-personal/#comment-55352 from The Bad Astronomy Blog.

A comment about the passage: "...ever since Malin lost the competition to build the MRO camera, Malin & Ball have been taking pot-shots at each other in various venues." I've heard scuttlebutt that MSSS's proposal for the high resolution imager http://research.hq.nasa.gov/code_s/nra/current/AO-01-OSS-02/sections.html#2.2.3 in the http://research.hq.nasa.gov/code_s/nra/current/AO-01-OSS-02/ was judged to be technically superior to HiRISE, but that HiRISE edged ahead on overall points for reasons having to do with, if memory serves, guaranteeing a higher slice of targeting time for people not on the team (i.e., guest scientists, Joe Q. Public, etc.).

Posted by: OWW Oct 5 2006, 08:24 PM

To restate the question this threads asks:
First pictures, when and where? From the CTX camera that is....
I can't find them on the msss site.

Posted by: Pavel Oct 5 2006, 10:05 PM

My wishlist:

Opportunity location in Meridiani - Victoria and surroundings.
Spirit location in Gusev crater, especially what's on the other side of McCool hill.
Ma'adim Vallis - the "river" flowing to Gusev from the south.
One of the big craters in the north with massive ejecta relative to the crater size.
The deepest point on Mars in Hellas Planitia at 11 o'clock.
Two jumbo gullies in Hellas Planitia at 2-3 o'clock.

Posted by: Jyril Oct 5 2006, 10:19 PM

I'd like to see places with recent changes; fresh gullies, landslides including boulder tracks, dust devils...

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Oct 5 2006, 11:16 PM

Eleven more images http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/ today.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Oct 5 2006, 11:28 PM

Check out the http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000861_1530/ of the layering in Holden Delta. Impressive.

Posted by: lyford Oct 6 2006, 12:10 AM

I think the MRO team has found the secret to protecting their work while releasing it - flood the market so much that you prevent your discoveries from being scooped by the sheer volume of data...

Only someone who is actually paid to be on the team could afford to take that much time to go over everything in detail!

I am still in shock - between Victoria, Spirit's WHR's coming back up and MRO returning science, November is going to be a doozy. The images from MRO are more detailed than I dreamed. Now if I can only make it through the solar opposition...

Posted by: Sunspot Oct 6 2006, 09:36 AM

Do you think HIRISE will be able to resolve some of those dunes that Oppy traveled over at Merdiani?

Posted by: djellison Oct 6 2006, 10:48 AM

Yes.

You can see 2m wide dunes even in one of the 50cm (2x2 binned) images that I sub-sampled for my blog entry on MRO.

Doug

Posted by: maycm Oct 6 2006, 02:47 PM

Ustrax would be in abyss heaven round http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000828_1805/ parts

Posted by: Reckless Oct 6 2006, 02:52 PM

Hi all just some comments on this Hirise picture of Ius Chasma

The order of events near the fault seems to be

1 deposition of dark and light toned layers (not sure which first)
2 Compression faulting
3 Tilting of all these beds
4 Small impact cratering

I was wondering if craters should be visible edge on within the layers or would the pressure of the overlying layers squash them out of existence. Because of the extreme close-up of these pictures, any craters that might have been present here would have been too small to survive.
The arrow points to a possible edge on crater but I’m very doubtful.
If anyone could spot one it would show which way the layers were deposited.

Anyone have any ideas on which layer came first ( oldest )

Roy F

Posted by: Phil Stooke Oct 6 2006, 08:17 PM

Well, people... I stood up bravely and argued that HIRISE images were going to be better than MOC, but not THAT much better... and that the comparison posted earlier was a bit misleading...

OK, I admit, I really underestimated how amazing these images would be. The Victoria crater images, where we can compare HIRISE with cPROTO, do make it clear, we have a major improvement here.

Phil

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Oct 6 2006, 08:22 PM

I'll second that, Phil. Not only today's Victoria Crater release but that image of layering at Holden Delta really blew me away.

Posted by: jabe Oct 6 2006, 09:13 PM

ok..first colour pic of mars released was the rover..mm can it get any better than this...
you bet it can..
lets get the other rover , landers and that long lost crashed ufo people keep claiming is there..
looks like Oppy will be just looking around for a few months before heading in to look up close, so the MRO
will be more center stage..or at least for me

can't wait for MRO's press conference!!
keep up the great work all..both the "mechanical" people and real....
cheers
jb

Posted by: Nix Oct 6 2006, 09:35 PM

Well, I'm sure Spirit's location will knock our socks off! Patience now, they're working hard already

Nico

Posted by: Sunspot Oct 6 2006, 11:59 PM

I cant wait to see some of the other landing sites with HIRISE. Pathfinder in particular, do you think MRO will be able to spot the little Sojourner rover?

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Oct 7 2006, 12:05 AM

I predict yes. It should be a pixel or two in each dimension and possibly larger with a shadow. The region around the lander is very well documented, so any extraneous object should be identifiable.

Perhaps this would be a good time for our polar image experts to begin mapping out an overhead view with existing imagery (if it hasn't already been done).

Posted by: Julius Oct 7 2006, 09:37 AM

Looking at the huge stack of sedimentary layers in Holden crater would seem to show Gusev site as rather disappointing due to lack of such layers.One could only imagine such layers hidden underneath where Spirit is now.Perhaps a good look at Maadim vallis could show any previous traces of flowing water and traces of the once lake inside Gusev crater!

Posted by: Roby72 Oct 7 2006, 09:46 PM

Has anyone seen this linear feature in a recent HIRISE image ? (see link below from TRA_000862_1710)
I suspect a boulder travelling down the slope, but the markings are much to regular in my opinion.
Another possibility is a image sensor defect or equal.

Robert

Posted by: Steve Oct 8 2006, 01:17 AM

Very interesting Roby.

I don't think it's an image defect of any kind, since traces of the same kind seem to continues to the southeast of your image. This means its something geological. What do the geologists think of a crack of some kind in a near surface stratum, allowing the surface sand to filter down into the crack, creating a chain of circular cup-like depressions?

Steve

Posted by: MaxSt Oct 8 2006, 07:01 AM

I hope they'll target Columbia Hills soon... The whole Gusev Crater would be even better!

Posted by: jabe Oct 8 2006, 06:00 PM

Not sure when they added the pictures on http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/HiRISE/hirise_images/ but they have doubled the number of pics there.

Posted by: nprev Oct 8 2006, 11:06 PM

Nice!!! I really like the new global context image index as well...so far, I'm most impressed with the HiRSE team's Web outreach efforts.

Posted by: volcanopele Oct 9 2006, 01:19 AM

So am I. Considering that they lost their webmistress a couple of weeks ago

Posted by: nprev Oct 9 2006, 05:12 PM

Really? It sure doesn't show. She obviously planned the site very well from the outset.

Posted by: Sunspot Oct 10 2006, 04:50 PM

The zoomable images have all disappeard from the website

http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/HiRISE/hirise_images/

Posted by: jabe Oct 10 2006, 05:24 PM

looks like they just reorganized the data.. this way you can see "thumbnails".
you timed it wrong looking a tthe website
cheers
jb

Posted by: Sunspot Oct 10 2006, 10:44 PM

Imagine having a rover here:

http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/HiRISE/hirise_images/TRA/TRA_000847_2055/

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Oct 10 2006, 10:50 PM

Some people already are http://themis.asu.edu/landingsites/mslsite_04 at Marwth Vallis for MSL 2009.

Posted by: jamescanvin Oct 11 2006, 04:40 AM

It's been mentioned around here already that the HiRISE images are so amazing, and so far above what we expected, because of the much lower noise level rather than the increase in resolution when compared to MOC.

Here's a quick demonstration of this:

Victoria, Cape D1 and boulder field below.

Beagle, Waco & Beta Craters & Jesse Chisholm.


Far left is the HiRISE image and far right is the best cPROTO MOC image. Second from the left shows the HiRISE image reduced down to 1/3 resolution to get something similar to the MOC resolution. As you can see this would still have been jaw dropping. I have to add a whole stack of noise to this (3rd from left) to get something with about the same visiblity of features as in the MOC image.

James

Posted by: mcaplinger Oct 11 2006, 06:08 AM

You guys can give all this amateur image processing a rest any old time now. I think we all acknowledge that the HiRISE images are so remarkably fabulous that we might just as well turn MGS off right now and fire the MOC team.

Posted by: jamescanvin Oct 11 2006, 06:53 AM

OK Mike, I'll promise stop making comparisons if you promise to keep MGS/MOC turned on.

Posted by: ugordan Oct 11 2006, 07:02 AM

I'm sorry, I just can't hear you over the sound of how awesome HiRISE is.
Just kidding, don't even think about turning MGS off!

Posted by: Sunspot Oct 11 2006, 01:08 PM

Do we have any explanantion for why the centre segment of the HiRISE frames is so much sharper than those on either side? Are they taken in a more copressed mode, say by combining pixels, 2x2 binning I think its called?

You can see what I mean in this image:

Posted by: ugordan Oct 11 2006, 01:16 PM

It sure looks like binning to me, as volcanopele already suggested earlier. This dramatically cuts down on bandwidth required to download the images.

Posted by: Sunspot Oct 11 2006, 01:27 PM

Oh, thats a shame as some of the more interesting terrain is on the left side of the image and much lower in resolution.

http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/HiRISE/hirise_images/TRA/TRA_000847_2055/

Im also having trouble finding where the cropped subframe is in the larger image, has anyone found it?

Posted by: ugordan Oct 11 2006, 01:36 PM

That appears to be a more extreme case of binning, looks more like 4x4 binning than 2x2. Still, it's better to have lower resolution coverage in that area than no coverage.

Posted by: Sunspot Oct 11 2006, 06:21 PM

Maybe this image will help them make a decision.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Oct 11 2006, 07:57 PM

Hey Mike most of us bow down in awe every day over MGS and MOC and what your team has accomplished. I still shake my head in amazement over the genious of PROTO and cPROTO. Every inch of recent Mars exploration, the MERs' progress and astounding discoveries, even the targeting of HiRISE's wonderous pictures, all ride on the backs of the team down at MSSS. You guys rock.

Posted by: Nix Oct 11 2006, 08:28 PM

I'll second that! I have downloaded in the past (a project still in progress) all of the imagery through ftp. I have several dozens of cd's and DVD's containing MGS-MOC data.

My life just wouldn't have been the same without Mars Global Surveyor.

Nico

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Oct 11 2006, 10:43 PM

All of the excitement surrounding HiRISE notwithstanding, I think everyone acknowledges that MOC NA revolutionized our view of Mars. And given that the camera system is approaching a decade of near flawless operation, I think its record speaks for itself.

Posted by: tedstryk Oct 12 2006, 01:17 AM

MOC is truly amazing...especially when one remembers that it is 1980s technology. And it has really revolutionized the way we envision the Martian surface.

Posted by: nprev Oct 12 2006, 04:01 AM

You know, I knew this would happen to MGS & Odyssey when MRO started cranking, and I posted that we gotta show these teams some love. Guys, don't ever doubt what you did & continue to do for human knowledge and UMSF; your work still blows us all away every time we look at it!

If I ever run into any of you in a bar, you'll never pay for a beer!

Posted by: lyford Oct 12 2006, 04:00 PM

Well, now that I moved to the San Diego area, I could make good on that... Mike - just wear a "MOC kickin' it Old Skool" t-shirt so I will know you
We should hope that all missions last so long as to fall victim to spec envy with the next generation of exploration craft. It's a testament to the hard work and ingenuity of the team that we even have this "problem."

Posted by: tedstryk Oct 12 2006, 10:43 PM

I can't wait until we get some color imagery over some of the really neat topographical areas, both in terms of HIRISE color strips and CTX color overlays. I imagine it somewhat looking like this image of Eos Chasm, which is a cPROTO MOC image with a color overlay from low resolution MOC data. But the color is of such poor resolution that it is of course very limited.

http://img169.imageshack.us/my.php?image=eosgi4.jpg

Posted by: djellison Oct 13 2006, 07:15 AM

CTX is B'n'W

Doug

Posted by: tuvas Oct 13 2006, 06:32 PM

Hey folks. I was the one posting the pictures of everyone at HiRISE looking at the pictures, sorry for not posting something of the image itself, but, well, I'm a lowly student, and I didn't know what the process of the whole thing was... All I can say is I didn't want to be the one to jump the gun and get NASA mad at us. The reason that the first image was cropped was that we hadn't received the whole thing yet, it took several hours to get the rest of the image in. If you look at the HiBlog (http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/HiBlog), you'll see somewhat of a summary of the process we use to take images. We release them as soon as possible, but there isn't as many MER images, nor do they require as much processing as our images, so, well... Anyways, just thought you'd like to know.

Posted by: djellison Oct 13 2006, 06:57 PM

Hi Tuvas - I don't think you have anything to be sorry for. The majority appreciate that HiRISE is a complex beast, and it's product require work before going online. Also - it's very different to the whole MER idea of streaming products straight online.

It's been a brave decision to do the 'peoples camera' model of throwing the images out there quickly, but one I hope that the team will be proud of over time!

Doug

Posted by: Stu Oct 13 2006, 07:15 PM

Absolutely nothing to be sorry for tuvas, you and the whole team have done a superb job so far and we all know the best is yet to come. You'll find people here are quite savvy to the behind-the-scenes pressures people like you face; we're just glad to see anything that appears!

( Having said that, get a move on and release the pic you're keeping secret showing Beagle 2 landed safely, but couldn't beam back images as it came down right in the middle of a big martian "Little Shop of Horrors" plant, thus proving in a totally unexpected way that there is life on Mars, as we all hoped the little guy would..! )

Posted by: helvick Oct 13 2006, 07:20 PM

Tuvas, just to echo the Boss and Stu on this - you have nothing to apologise for. We love the images and really appreciate the speed with which the team is releasing stuff to us.

Very nice explanation of the data and processing pipeline too in your blog post.

Posted by: tedstryk Oct 13 2006, 09:32 PM

Oops Make that CRISM....too many names....

Posted by: Sunspot Oct 13 2006, 10:23 PM

Are many other landing sites high on the cameras observing list?

Especially the proposed Beagle 2 crash site below. Just trying to imagine what this feature would look like to HiRISE, it would certainly give a definitive answer.

Posted by: tuvas Oct 13 2006, 10:27 PM

I was just glad to see it somewhere in print... It took me really until this last imaging session to fully understand the pipeline (Well, to the point that I could write such a document), it's a mess... And I have only the slightest clue how uplink works... But hopefully this will help people to know that we aren't keeping a horde of images somewhere (Althought we do still have on the order of 20 images to release, don't quote me on that, it's a guess...) The ones that are released are the more interesting ones. The problem is, we don't want to release pictures until we've at least got a chance to look at them and have a caption (I've even been helping with that effort a bit, I did a review for one of the upcoming releases). We're all learning that to have comprehensive captions takes alot of time, I'm sure we'll get to the point where we won't care quite as much, but, for the time being, we want everything to be our sharpest.

Oh, and I'm sorry to inform you, but we haven't taken a picture of the Beagle 2 yet. If I recall, that landed further south, our emphasis has been more of the north pole with this batch, due in part to the optimal season to take pictuers, and more due to the fact of looking for a landing site for the Phoenix Lander. Due to Martian seasons, that must be done as soon as possible, I think we have until the end of the year to photograph all of them. You have to understand that MRO hadn't been fully tested in flight mode, and we wanted to make sure we could hit our targets before. We only had one day of off-NADIR pointing (NADIR is pointing straight down, off-NADIR is pointing in another direction), which was the only time MRO had been fully tested in this mode. So, we didn't anounce that we were planning to take a picture of Victoria Crater until we had actually done the job. However, MRO performed spectacularly, as it has every time we've tested it out thus far! So, what I'm saying is, one rover was enough to photograph in our full scale test mode, called Transition Imaging. We'll save the others for later, quite likely in the upcoming months, but don't quote me on it. Nothing has been decided yet...

Posted by: Sunspot Oct 13 2006, 10:47 PM

But is it something the team would consider if the opportunity arrises?

Anyone want to try and simulate what some of the other landers (Pathfinder, Viking) might look like to MRO?

Posted by: tuvas Oct 13 2006, 11:16 PM

It's one of the things we've talked about in PO meetings and in the posters in our lobby (For those of you who ever pass through Tucson, we have an open lobby dedicated to Planetary Science, most of which is HiRISE stuff, along with a fair amount of Cassini). So, yes, we will certainly consider it.

I don't know if you all know, but we're in the final testing of a program called HiWeb, which will be a way for your average Joe to request locations for us to take pictures of. Right now it's only people in the Ops team who have access, but soon it will be opened to the general public. So, that will mean you can request locations to take pictures of. I'm sure that all of the past landing sites of missions will be among the top requests (I have a bet that 10% or more will be requests for Cydonia...). I don't know fully how the system works yet, so... But I can tell you that it will be very cool, just give it time.

Another thing that's coming up will be the use of a program we're developing called HiView (If you didn't notice, everything at HiRISE is HiSomething. They even joked at calling the students (That's me...) HiStuds at one point in time...). HiView will allow a normal home user to acess the images something like the zoomify program, only it will allow quite a bit more features, including adding coloration, possibly measuring distances, etc. I haven't seen the program yet, and I know that it's the front end of it that's still being written, but I've heard good things about it. It's based off of JPIP, the JPEG 2000 Internet Protocol. JPIP isn't in much use right now, outside of the government, but we have hopes that it will revolutionize the way interplanetary data is transmitted to your average user. The program is set up so that it can be compatible with other missions as well, so long as they have the data in JPEG 2000 format (And we're writing a converter to take an image and put it into JPEG 2000 format, from the required PDS format). I don't have dates as to when this will be released, it's a fairly large technology leap, so...

Posted by: Rakhir Oct 14 2006, 01:06 PM

This looks very promising.

Thank you for all the information Tuvas !

Posted by: jabe Oct 14 2006, 08:11 PM

Any guesses on what will be released/said at the press conference monday?..
Tuvas..inside info not allowed here
guesses only lol
cheers
jb

be nice to see data from all the instruments..overlap of all data from one spot..

Posted by: tuvas Oct 15 2006, 05:19 AM

LOL. Funny thing is, I don't even know. I'm only a lowly programmer on the team, although it certainly is the funnest job I've had from an overall perspective:-) I only know that there will be a press conference, and at least one new image will be released. And it won't be another rover image... I suspect it will be just that MRO is flying fine, and a few image releases, but, well, that is truly guessing... If I wanted to know, I could find out, but, well, I'm just not that curious... As for anything outside of HiRISE, well, I really have no idea... Perhaps some of the other instruments will also release images. For all I know, they found a big sign saying "The Face is Real" (Not really, just joking...) But, well, I haven't really said anything that isn't quite obvious, and this is without any inside info at all. I couldn't post any such thing even if I did have it.

Posted by: Stu Oct 15 2006, 08:20 AM

Sorry, my computer's playing up, obviously infected with a particularly evil virus that mixes up words; I could have sworn I just read a note from someone actually working on HiRise saying they're "not that curious" about what's in tomorrow's press conference, and I know that couldn't be right, cos if it was me I'd be crawling through ventilation ducts and peering through spy cameras like Sidney Bristow on ALIAS just to get a glimpse of the new pics...

Posted by: jabe Oct 15 2006, 01:31 PM

I'm with you Stu.. love a sneak peek of what they are offering

Posted by: tuvas Oct 15 2006, 01:57 PM

LOL. You guys just have to understand that I'd know if anything MAJOR was happening before the press conference. In fact, for the time I've worked with HiRISE, I've already known at least an idea of anything that's happened before there was any press about the issue (Just to name a few, CRISM opening, ABX, Victoria Crater, SHARAD's deployment, etc.) So, the things released in the press conference are generally irrelevant, except I can talk about them freely afterwords.

Although, you guys have made me a bit curious, so I took a peak. But, mum's the word.

Posted by: Stu Oct 15 2006, 02:22 PM

Now, why do the words "rubbing", "salt", "into" and "wound" spring to mind..?!?!?

Posted by: Nix Oct 15 2006, 02:30 PM

uuuh, you asked for it Stu

Nico

Posted by: tuvas Oct 15 2006, 03:05 PM

Sure did:-) Let me just say this much, there's more to it than I suspected:-) But, it'll be worth the wait.

Posted by: DEChengst Oct 15 2006, 03:32 PM

I bet tuvas just took a look at Spirit

Posted by: Stu Oct 15 2006, 04:35 PM

Sheesh... only been posting for a couple of days and already he's blowing "ner ner ner ner ner!" raspberries at us, and smugly concealing secrets and surprises under his evil, swirly black cloak.

The Dark Side of the Force is strong with this one, my friends... we'll have to watch him.

Closely.

Posted by: mcaplinger Oct 15 2006, 04:49 PM

I was in this guy's position, more or less, about 15 years ago on Mars Observer. Let's say that it's the dilemma of people with inside information as to how much to say in a public forum. That's why I am always very careful to only talk about stuff that can be found in public sources, even if it seems innocuous. It's too easy to get into trouble with the PI or JPL otherwise, and for what?

That said, my prediction, on the basis of no inside information whatsoever, is that the HiRISE people will discuss some science results that the MOC team knew about years ago but nobody else understood or appreciated :-)

Posted by: centsworth_II Oct 15 2006, 05:00 PM

Yeah, but they'll have PICTURES!!!

Posted by: Stu Oct 15 2006, 06:07 PM

I absolutely agree. I'm sure tuvas knew my tongue was firmly in my cheek as I said that (and I sent him a PM to make sure he did!)

Posted by: RNeuhaus Oct 15 2006, 09:47 PM

Good to have a guy who is sharing us with that super inetersting kind of information. The question is: Do you know what channels will inform about the HirSE's news?

Rodolfo

Posted by: jabe Oct 15 2006, 10:41 PM

It is amazing how successful the rovers have been and how quickly we have gotten fabulous results back from MRO. The public is going to always assume getting to Mars and exploring it is easy. I can only imagine what the http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/index.html will find out. (is it only me that finds the "skycrane" a scary way to land it ? ) The http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/future/phoenix.html might be considered "boring" to the public... releasing the same pictures every day... well not really if it lands where the "ice" melts away or grows..
But i digress.. Can't wait to see the press conference. Time to rearrange my lunch time tomorrow
cheers
jb

Posted by: tuvas Oct 16 2006, 05:29 AM

I'll admit it (And hope none of my friends on the phoenix program note) that I'd find the phoenix mission a bit boring... But, I do know it'll be capable of alot of cool science, so... I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

I do find the MSL mission to be absolutely amazing, and can't wait for it! I do know that we've taken a picture of at least one site that's a canadate landing site for MSL, there's still alot of time for those however. Still, the area was quite interesting. MSL's going to totally revolutionize Mars, it'll be for rovers what MRO is for Mars orbiters, or so I suspect.

I've decided with the whole knowing things before they happen thing that I could never work for the CIA (Which I did consider), it's just too hard for me to keep some things a secret. But, well, that's life I guess. Oh, and I do hold to the statement that there isn't any pictures of any rovers, at least, if there is, we don't even know about them. Nor any other lander. If I were you guys, I'd just look on the MRO website, it's the most likely to reveil information about the press release, I don't think it's big enough news to warrent anything like CNN. But, I wouldn't really know these things, don't pay too much attention to me. It very likely will be of interest to the type of people who frequent these boards, however. Personally, I'm surprised someone hasn't posted about it, I couldn't beleive you guys found the Victoria Crater picture before it was released... Only a few hours really after we had the color image too... Still, I guess this isn't quite as big of news...

Posted by: Nix Oct 16 2006, 09:26 AM

That was one person actually and he was banned from the forum for doing it. The honor to release the image was for the people involved in the mission, not for any of us.

Nico

Posted by: MahFL Oct 16 2006, 04:11 PM

News conference is on, I only have access to still pictures but looks like they have been photographing the North Pole somewhat.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Oct 16 2006, 04:22 PM

Pics!

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/main/index.html

Phil

Posted by: mcaplinger Oct 16 2006, 04:52 PM

MARCI and CTX images at http://www.msss.com/mro/ctx/images/2006/10/16/index.html

Posted by: tuvas Oct 16 2006, 04:57 PM

Good to hear it.

So, you all probably know already, but this was the first Science press release of the mission. We've discovered alot more evidence for a past Mars at least in part carved by water. It's the first of we hope many to come giving many new scientific discoveries. And all this from just our first image. Wow:-)

Also released were several more color images. These take quite a while to process, and currently are largely done by hand, so, well, it's a bit difficult... Still, we're getting better, and eventually they will be released almost as fast as the black and white, once we can figure out the exact steps to take.

Posted by: Nix Oct 16 2006, 05:00 PM

WOAW- talk about context images
It's going to be a long night...

Nico

Posted by: helvick Oct 16 2006, 05:06 PM

As I understood the commentary http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/pia01923.htmlshows gully forms and that strongly indicates flowing liquid water in the recent past and that the channel braiding indicates that it is carrying sediment that is depositing out as the gully changes over time.
Did I hear that right?

Posted by: Nix Oct 16 2006, 05:10 PM

Yes, did we hear that right?!?

Nico

Posted by: tuvas Oct 16 2006, 05:15 PM

Direct quote from the press release:

Observations of a southern-hemisphere crater show fine-scale details of more recent gullies, adding evidence that they were carved by flowing water.

So, well, that's pretty much a given. More recent is not several billions of years old, we're not sure, but they do appear to be sometime fairly recently, maybe in the hundreds of millions of years ago (Don't quote me on that), but not in the several billions of years (Directly from the press release)

Posted by: Stu Oct 16 2006, 05:25 PM

See? This is why I love martian gullies! They prove Mars was dynamic, a restless world... look at that picture and imagine you've travelled back in time to Wet Mars; from your vantage point you can see water, yes, muddy, red-tinted water, trickling down the gullies, glinting in the sunlight, carrying with it gritty sediment...

Can't wait for some close ups of other beauties!

Posted by: helvick Oct 16 2006, 05:31 PM

So that brings us back to what Mike Caplinger said prior to the press conference - this proves that the gullies first found by MOC and MSSS really are liquid water gullies.
The question I have now is whether there is any evidence for liquid water in the very recent past. Those gullies look to me like they are currently active but then what do I know.

Posted by: Julius Oct 16 2006, 05:43 PM

Those North polar layer ice deposits look exactly like a glacier here on Earth!Amazing

Posted by: Stu Oct 16 2006, 06:16 PM

Let's not forget that image showing the appearance of "new gullies" on photos taken just a couple of years apart...

Posted by: djellison Oct 16 2006, 06:38 PM

Early Nov - a UHF relay test with Spirit.

Cool

Doug

Posted by: helvick Oct 16 2006, 07:07 PM

The other item that I got a kick out of was the 300 and something odd Gigabits of data returned from one short week of testing - ie more than both MER's have returned to date.

Wow.

Posted by: tuvas Oct 16 2006, 07:21 PM

We've received more data from one image than quite a few missions during their entire lifetime, I think more than Galileo. MRO as a whole will produce more data than every single other past JPL missions combined, it's really insane the amount of a data jump we're receiving...

Posted by: paxdan Oct 16 2006, 07:38 PM

Is there the possibility that the relay capacity of MRO could up the data return rate from the rovers, specifically, opportunity?

Posted by: djellison Oct 16 2006, 08:17 PM

The possibility is there, and if MODY dropped out of the Martian sky tomorrow, I imagine it's a posibility that might become a reality - but for now, MODY does all the relay that MER really needs and MRO's primary science mission is more of a priority than MER relay.

Doug

Posted by: DEChengst Oct 16 2006, 08:33 PM

I'm sure Seagate just loves this mission With the current state of instrument technology we're really just limited by the bandwith the spacecraft has to return all the data back to Earth. With a maxium of 6 Mbit/sec MRO is also a huge improvement in this area. With Ka-band transmitters probably becoming common on future missions data volumes will become so large the science teams won't be able to digest all data returned. I guess those mission will need some structure like SETI@home with us space geeks doing crater counts to determine surface age or counting boulders to determine landing site safety.

Posted by: volcanopele Oct 16 2006, 11:15 PM

More images (including quite a few color swaths) have been released by the HiRISE team:

http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/

Tuvas, as I told you last week, you might want to mention to the caption writer for the Cerebeus Fossae color frame to put in BIG words "FALSE COLOR" in the title, before Hoagland gets a hold of it

http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000827_1875/color.html

Posted by: marsman Oct 17 2006, 12:01 AM

Fantastic images! The detail is truly remarkable. The apparent freshness of many of the gully features is tantalizing. I hope for more evidence of dynamic activity on Mars. Got to go watch the press conference I taped earlier.

Posted by: tuvas Oct 17 2006, 12:20 AM

No, you're kidding, they released the Cerebeus Fossae color without such a declaration??? Wow, it's probably too late by now... Well, there is the statement: The color has been enhanced to better show the subtle color differences. It is not natural color or how it would appear to normal human vision. For those of you who don't know, http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000827_1875/color.html is the image. It almost looks like a river in a rock, of course, this is false color, but still...

Volcanopele and I work in the same room quite often, BTW, we are both undergrads, but work in very different contexts, he's on the science side, I'm a programmer... And he's for anything other than Mars, Cassini especially, I'm only HiRISE. But we both are fascinated with this kind of stuff, so... Even the anti-Martians are starting to become converted with such great images;-)

Posted by: Nix Oct 17 2006, 04:28 AM

these color images -I just got out of bed..unreal!

Nico

Posted by: Sunspot Oct 17 2006, 04:23 PM

Some incrediblly fine detail in the gullies at Terra Sirenum Crater, some just a pixel or two across.

Posted by: Anoolios Oct 17 2006, 04:34 PM

University of Arizona MRO article on recent press conference: http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/7/wa/MainStoryDetails?ArticleID=13234

The 10/16/06 MRO press conference can be downloaded from this 3rd party site: http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php

I'd like to suggest that while some recent imagery shows apparent water flow action in gullies, this doesn't rule out dry avalanches in other areas producing liquid-like flow appearances.

Posted by: ustrax Oct 17 2006, 04:53 PM

F****** unbelievable!
Cropped and losangalized :
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b14/ustrax3/hrs.jpg

Posted by: prometheus Oct 18 2006, 01:26 AM

Is that wet soil on those gully slopes?

Posted by: Edward Schmitz Oct 18 2006, 02:01 AM

This is the color swath that was taken at the same time.

http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000878_1410/color.html

It would appear that the darker areas are frost free and not necessarily wet. Although they might be. Probably not though.

Posted by: Stu Oct 18 2006, 06:16 AM

Thanks for clearing that up...

Posted by: prometheus Oct 18 2006, 07:23 AM

Maybe not wet but maybe rich in salts from past weeps and as such acting like an anti-icing agent for the frost. So maybe just a clue that at some time in the past those darker areas were where salt rich water weeps actually occured.

Posted by: Tesheiner Oct 18 2006, 07:59 AM

Could anybody explain the reason for those discontinuities between the "strips" which make a HiRISE image?
See, for instance, the image from Terra Sirenium Crater as posted by prometeus.

I could understand that effect if each strip was related to an individual pass but I'm pretty sure that's not the case. I would say each strip is related to one of the 10 CCDs making the whole sensor but why those gaps?

Posted by: edstrick Oct 18 2006, 09:48 AM

Data is progressively transferred off the CCD chips as the electrons are bucket-brigade transfered across individual pixels in the chips' fields of view and track the moving planetary surface across the chip. I think we're seeing the data transfer off chips as a data-take ends, but I don't have a clear idea why it causes the sawtooth effect.

Posted by: djellison Oct 18 2006, 09:50 AM

Distortion induced by off nadir imaging?

Doug

Posted by: helvick Oct 18 2006, 10:29 AM

Since http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/HiBlog/?p=45 that they geometrically reproject the images so that the result is an image that distances can be read from I suspect that this is an artifact of a http://erg.usgs.gov/isb/pubs/MapProjections/projections.html#sinusoidal.

Posted by: Tesheiner Oct 18 2006, 12:31 PM

> I suspect that this is an artifact of a sunusoidal equidistant map projection.

I thought about something related to the map projection too, but look that we are talking about images which cover a quite small space (e.g. Terra Sirenium Crater's picture covers only 5km x 5km). We shouldn't have projection artifacts on this map scale.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Oct 18 2006, 12:54 PM

Tesheiner's right - over such a small area map projection effects are insignificant. Helvick's idea could apply for images spanning several tens of degrees (individual strips made from Map-a-Planet images in sinusoidal projection and fitted together) - but that's clearly not the case here.

Phil

Posted by: Tesheiner Oct 18 2006, 01:16 PM

Ok, here is what I've got by overlaping part of the huge B&W VC image (http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000873_1780/victoria.html) on top of the same region of it's color version (http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000873_1780/RGBcolor_Full.html). Remember that the first *is* map projected while the second isn't; I had to rescale and rotate the color part to match with the map-projected overlay.
What we see is that the sawtooth gaps are not distortions but actually missing data.

It seems this data may have been lost during the map-projection process because it is actually there on the RGB version.

Posted by: tuvas Oct 18 2006, 06:25 PM

I don't fully understand the sawtooth affect myself, but I can tell you it's introduced in the Geometrically projected image stage. As to what's causing it, well, your guess is as good as mine...

Posted by: ugordan Oct 19 2006, 06:53 AM

A bug in the code?

Posted by: nprev Oct 19 2006, 08:39 AM

Almost looks as if it's a spherical projection artifact, but the scale's so small... Did someone change Mars' radius to that of Phobos by mistake?

Wait a minute...just thinking out loud, here, but is the HIRISE FOV so small that spherical distortion does in fact take place at the edges of frames? If, so, then the sawtooth effect might be an attempt to correct this distortion.

BTW, if that is in fact wet soil, then I propose a future lander with a garden shovel to dig for worms!

Posted by: ugordan Oct 19 2006, 08:51 AM

On the contrary, the very small FOV means the curvature of the surface at that scale is so small it can effectively be regarded as flat. Just as Phil said, you need several degrees wide footprints to end up with significant map projection distortions.
The sawtooth appears to occur only in the upper part of the swaths which is also inconsistent with map projections.