January 10, 2007, HiRISE release Options

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

January 10, 2007, HiRISE release.

This post has been edited by AlexBlackwell: Jan 11 2007, 01:54 AM

[CosmicRocker]

I'm glad to see another release, but it's pretty clear to me that it's completely impossible to keep up with the data stream, even on a cursory level.

The new summary page design is more attractive than the original one, but I really miss the listing of file size information and the next/previous image links. I'm hoping the design is still under construction.

[jamescanvin]

I agree - looks better but is missing some important info.

Note, for this release at least, you can remove the 'diafotizo.php?ID=' bit from the URL and get to an old style version.

James

[CosmicRocker]

Thanks, James. Playing the URL snipping game also corrected a little glitch on this end that caused one of the images to arrive with "some assembly required."

I had been waiting for another stereo-pair, and that anaglyph of the inverse topography at the Eberswalde deltaic landform was the gem of this bunch for me. I could only see the small version on dialup today, but tomorrow I hope to grab a bigger picture from a fatter pipe.

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

January 10, 2007, HiRISE release.

This release has been updated to include the image of the Mars Pathfinder landing site, which we're discussing in this thread.

[DataMiner]

The new summary page design is more attractive than the original one, but I really miss the listing of file size information and the next/previous image links. I'm hoping the design is still under construction.

The design is still very much under construction, in fact, keep your eyes peeled as a redesign of the website is in progress. Our current method of releasing image is an interrim solution while we continue to get all our ducks in a row. Among the things we are working on is making the image pages dynamically generated from content in our database, as well as integrating our own local image retrieval system with what we are also building for our Planetary Datasystem System releases. That way we won't be trying to maintain two different parallel data retrieval systems.

Also, once we have the database backend functional, we'll be able to start adding search capabilities as well. So searches by latitude, longitude, keyword, etc will become available. And for those of you that are interested in the nitty gritty details like geometric angles, etc you will be able to get at that information too.

[MizarKey]

Re: DataMiner's post...this truly is a data revolution (evolution?) - thank you, thank you, thank you. Cudos to the MER team again for getting the data ball rolling and high fives to the HiRise/MRO teams for picking it up and running with it. MGS posted a lot of images too, but sometimes they were way way behind on their own scheduling. ESA, are you paying attention to what's going on here?

Thank you again for providing all of us endless hours of fascination.

[tuvas]

Just wait though, as DataMiner stated, the HiRISE website is in the process of undertaking a major reform, to something I think all will greatly appreciate around here, hopefully making things considerably easier to find and see what's going on.

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

As for the actual images in the release...

Aside from the ever-popular MPF image, some of the other images in the release are as or more interesting, at least from a science perspective. HiRISE's ability to resolve the fine-scale layering at, for example, the interior mound of Gale Crater, as well as the detail in the stereo anaglyph of Eberswalde Delta are impressive.

[Guest_zoost_*]

After watching the stereo Anaglyphs of Ada Crater, I hardly can believe this crater was caused by an meteorite impact. Or is my sense of anaglyphs depth playing with me.

EDIT: Ah, "We acquire stereo pairs with separation angles much greater than that of our own eyes, in order to extract for accurate measurements." But still beautiful.

[Bjorn Jonsson]

I agree that the new pages look better but I really miss the file size information. The reason in my case is that I use GetRight to download the images and the file size affects both the download order I choose and the time I start the download because I have noticed that at certain hours the download speed is much higher (may have something to do with the fact that much of the US is sleeping at these certain hours ). Needless to say I can check the size by starting a download and then stopping it if I don't like the filesize but that's something I shouldn't need to do IMO.

Also I would really love to have direct links to the JP2 files (like the links to the browse images). The URLs for the JP2 files have a "?" in them and apparently this makes it impossible to resume the download if it fails. The ability to resume a failed/unfinished download is very important when downloading these huge files and probably results in significant bandwidth savings. Fortunately I have found that I can get a direct link to the JP2 files by taking the browse file URL, changing JPG to JP2 and removing ".browse" from the filename. By doing this it's possible for me to resume failed downloads instead of having to start all over if an error occurs. I hope the changes to the HiROC site (dynamically generated webpages etc.) do not make this impossible. Those of you from HiROC reading this take note .

I'm glad to see another release, but it's pretty clear to me that it's completely impossible to keep up with the data stream, even on a cursory level.

I feel totally swamped with MRO and Cassini stuff, something I'm usually happy about . The only problem is that downloading and taking a look at the MRO images is so time consuming that I have hardly given myself any time to participate in the MRO discussion here .

[DataMiner]

Bjorn, comments noted. The hirise webmaster and myself will be putting our heads together next week to begin making the big database integration push, so I will bring these issues up then.

As for JP2 access issues, I think (and all of us on the team sincerely hope) that the majority of these problems will get resolved once we are able to release a good client viewer. I certainly hope that the need to worry about how big a file will be before you start downloading it will go away...unless you are just a glutton for punishment and *want* to download these huge things in their entirety. We will fully support your ability to knock yourself out with that! We all realize what a pain in the neck it is to try and work with the data that we are releasing right now, and we are really counting on our hiview client to resolve this. I know it sounds like a whole lot of vaporware at this point, but once it becomes available, I think that this will be THE way to get at hirise data. It looks like it holds the promise of doing that, if we can resolve the remaining technical issues.

[edstrick]

I rather preferred the previous incarnation of the new pictures pages to the current one, with one "grumble".

I've often printed out many of the picture information pages as a reference. I "select" the title, image and text of interest, skipping "framing" and the "boilerplate" text at the bottom, then "print selected text" to print it. I don't need a "printable" page, but it would be a very great help for pages to be designed for optimum printing by selecting desired text. (I ***hate*** it when I waste page after page of paper and toner on a few lines of boilerplate and webpage crud on a "page 2 of 2" when there's nothing there worth printing.)

My "grump" with the old pages was that I could not select the text block with image file names, dimensions and megabytes in the same selection as the rest of the useful page.

[ngunn]

Another crop request from this cyber-challenged spectator: The Terra Meridiani image has a feature I would like to see in full detail. At the left hand end of the scarp (or large crater rim?) crossing the top part of the image there is a semicircular 'bight' which itself has scalloped edges and fairly steep cliffs - almost like a half-Victoria.

[CosmicRocker]

Bjorn: That is exactly the thought I was referring to. This is indeed an amazing era of exploration and discovery. I try to cut crops to post with a small caption, but then I become lost in the huge image.

It hasn't been mentioned explicitly, but the descriptions of what is to come suggest we will have the ability to select HiRise imagery and perhaps other data from a planetary index map. Can we hope that will be the case?