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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Mars Express & Beagle 2 _ Dust Storms as seen by Mars Express HRSC

Posted by: kyokugaisha Aug 14 2011, 06:12 PM

The latest HRSC upload (June '11) contain some pretty incredible dust storm images. I've put together a few colour animated gifs to see the movements of the storms and associated dust devils.

The gifs are all https://picasaweb.google.com/108410941701922252626/DustStormsOnMars (BTW Picassa doesn't seem to like them being animated so you might need to download them to see the movement).

This one is a particular favourite.



There is a little chromatic smearing as there was movement within the RGB images but I think the overall effect is pretty nice.

Posted by: kyokugaisha Aug 14 2011, 06:28 PM

In fact some of the features look so "cumulus" like that it's hard to believe you're looking down on another planet!


Posted by: Drkskywxlt Aug 15 2011, 12:48 PM

Very nicely done! Are HRSC images available freely online?

Posted by: kyokugaisha Aug 15 2011, 06:04 PM

The files are all available here.

ftp://psa.esac.esa.int/pub/mirror/MARS-EXPRESS/HRSC/MEX-M-HRSC-5-REFDR-MAPPROJECTED-V2.0/BROWSE/

The dust storm images seem to begin soon after orbit 8500.

Posted by: machi Aug 18 2011, 12:49 PM

Nice findings! It looks like good candidate for some longer animation. ph34r.gif

Posted by: elakdawalla Aug 22 2011, 05:53 PM

I'm putting together an explainer on how to get to the HRSC full-res data and process it into an animation, but I have a question: what's the best way to *browse* the HRSC data set when there is a new release? I've found a couple of browse interfaces but none of them have been updated since orbit number 5000something. The best I can find is the PDS Geosciences Node's Data Explorer, but it's not all that great for browsing.

Posted by: djellison Aug 22 2011, 08:46 PM

http://global-data.mars.asu.edu/bin/hrsc.pl goes higher than that I think - but not all of them.

Posted by: ugordan Aug 22 2011, 10:23 PM

Here's a very rough attempt at natural-ish color with atmospheric extinction mostly removed. 3 filter color except the actual storm where 2 filter color was used since the "red" filter had too much shift. Massive color noise reduction as well. Some color fringes remains - the entire scene was mostly blanketed with a thin layer of dust clouds.


Posted by: stephenv2 Aug 30 2011, 04:34 PM

I was inspired by Emily's animation and used the frames she posted to extend and uprez to 1080p the animation she did.

http://www.vimeo.com/28335894

I have not looked at the source data but am intrigued if enough data exists for doing IMAX scale resolution for cloud motion on Mars.

Posted by: Sarunia Sep 3 2011, 09:04 PM

QUOTE (elakdawalla @ Aug 22 2011, 07:53 PM) *
I'm putting together an explainer on how to get to the HRSC full-res data and process it into an animation, but I have a question: what's the best way to *browse* the HRSC data set when there is a new release? I've found a couple of browse interfaces but none of them have been updated since orbit number 5000something. The best I can find is the PDS Geosciences Node's Data Explorer, but it's not all that great for browsing.


If you are looking for a browser which take into account all realased pds, you can try this:
http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?project=PSA&page=index (And click on "Map-based Search" or "Advanced Shearch").
This is of course slower than others but it's the price to pay if you want see all released pds...

Thanks for your animation, is awesome ! smile.gif

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