HST Albedo Map Processing Options

[ZLD]

I've almost made this post several times today but I had to go back and redo my work multiple times because I really just couldn't believe it.

Going into this, I was absolutely sure I wouldn't get anything from it. It just seemed so incredibly unlikely to work.

Heres the original HST 2002/2003 maps of Pluto to refresh you.


Below is the 2002/2003 combined observations of Pluto, run through my experimental image processing to bring out albedo variations.



Here is an animation fading between the above and scalbers latest high resolution map (downscaled of course). (13MB gif)

(ctrl + scroll wheel to zoom - maximum possible encouraged)

Finally, heres the single frame from the fade.



I've also taken this process further with a different map and it appears to continue bringing out small increments of detail each time, to what limit, I have no idea. One especially important note about all of this, its somewhat like finding Waldo without knowing what Waldo looks like. Without knowing what to look for, it would have been increasingly difficult to know how to set the parameters in each iteration, to avoid corrupting the details.

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I should also note, just in case it wasn't clear, the HST combined map was directly processed. Zero data from NH was involved in pulling out the details. The map from scalbers is just to compare.