Getting Unstuck in West Valley Options

[marsophile]

(sad to dont't have a flexible focus on MI)

If the MI could look through something approximating a pinhole on the rover, that might increase the depth of field.

[SpaceListener]

Very good testing pictures on Oppy's belly. The Doug suggestion really worked!. Now, I look forward in knowing ones from Spirit. According to the pictures photo's quality, we will be able to know better about the progress of wheels advancement in the future attempts.

I appreciate much the participation of LandRover in providing the feedback to us.

[Pertinax]

If the MI could look through something approximating a pinhole on the rover, that might increase the depth of field.

Marsophile, please don't take this with anything but the good humor it was intended with: your comment reminds me of Guy in Galaxy Quest saying "I know! You can construct a weapon. Look around, can you form some sort of rudimentary lathe?" -- I think both MERs are woefully short on usable pinholes.


Paolo: in the MI images taken with Oppy, it looks like the MI was position a bit below the level of the WEB and pitched down several degrees? With any Spirit underbelly MIs, would the MI be positioned so the the center of the FOV would be to be even to just slightly below the WEB so as to capture the best possible profile of the terrain under Spirit? Actually, several pointing with varying pitches and MI elevation relative to the WEB might be the most useful in discerning the rough relative positions of the profile constituents. All of my comments are made with the assumption that the lighting under Spirit will be not be sufficient for anything other than silhouettes.

-- Pertinax

[marsophile]

Marsophile, please don't take this with anything but the good humor it was intended with: your comment reminds me of Guy in Galaxy Quest saying "I know! You can construct a weapon. Look around, can you form some sort of rudimentary lathe?" -- I think both MERs are woefully short on usable pinholes.

Anything that reduces the effective shutter size will sharpen the focus to some extent, for example, looking over the edge of a strut. Pinhole is just the extreme case.

[RoverDriver]

Great images. What is the risk / concern of damage to the underside of Spirt?

The rover might be high centered on a small pile of rocks. In addition, there might be a rock in the LM wheel well.

Paolo

[RoverDriver]

...
Paolo: in the MI images taken with Oppy, it looks like the MI was position a bit below the level of the WEB and pitched down several degrees? With any Spirit underbelly MIs, would the MI be positioned so the the center of the FOV would be to be even to just slightly below the WEB so as to capture the best possible profile of the terrain under Spirit? Actually, several pointing with varying pitches and MI elevation relative to the WEB might be the most useful in discerning the rough relative positions of the profile constituents. All of my comments are made with the assumption that the lighting under Spirit will be not be sufficient for anything other than silhouettes.

-- Pertinax

I wanted to keep the IDD turret as high as possible while still being able to image below the WEB. In this configuration we would have the turret only a few cm above the surface. I would really try to avoid scraping the turret on the ground, they might revoke my driver's license ;-)

Paolo

[Fred B]

I'm surprised nobody has posted a deconvolution of the MI images yet, so here goes. 24 iterations of Lucy-Richardson with a synthetic PSF in Maxim DL, followed by Photoshop unsharp masking at radius 2, 500%. The panel of three is the original, the L-R, and the L-R plus unsharp. The technique is noise limited, so this would work better with better exposed, fully calibrated images and if there were some number of identical frames to average. The ringing near sharp contrast transitions is an artifact that can be reduced, but it's non-trivial to do.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Pertinax]

I would really try to avoid scraping the turret on the ground, they might revoke my driver's license ;-)

Paolo

Thank you -- and please don't loose your license!

-- Pertianx

[djellison]

That ground scraping issue was why I had a go with my cruddy low-fidelity emulation (in here http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...mp;#entry140354 ) of imaging the middle and rear wheels from the 'outside' rather than looking in. That under-belly shot is still going to be usefull and required though - to get that ground clearance data.

[MerAB]

Here is a different (from this Sol) piece of the Calypso panorama:

[ElkGroveDan]

I'm surprised nobody has posted a deconvolution of the MI images yet, so here goes. 24 iterations of Lucy-Richardson with a synthetic PSF in Maxim DL, followed by Photoshop unsharp masking at radius 2, 500%.

That's darn impressive.

[Phil Stooke]

Yes, we should abandon the pancam and use MI for everything!

Phil

[Guest_Oersted_*]

Yes, with deconvolution and several images from slightly different locations, it should be possible to get pretty sharp images. Also, taking images of the Spirit underbelly area against the sun should give good contrasy images to work deconvolution on. Also love the idea of effectively getting a higher f-stop from shooting behind a strut, or something.

[nprev]

That's darn impressive.

I gotta second that! Extremely impressive first post, Fred!

Paolo, do we have any idea if the possible pile of rocks underneath are resting on bedrock or on a sandpile? Might make a difference if the "dig down & spin" method is attempted.

The "pile" part of the rocks is good, though; would presumably make it easier for her to slip off of them.

[RoverDriver]

Paolo, do we have any idea if the possible pile of rocks underneath are resting on bedrock or on a sandpile?

Can't say for sure, but the position of the wheels seem to indicate that this is a sandy area From the 1870 NCAM it looks like these are loose rocks, not one piece.

Paolo