HiRISE PDS release, Has anyone done anything yet? Options

[elakdawalla]

Can I ask something that's been on my mind for a while? Is anyone else out there wondering why the good folks behind the MRO mission aren't making more of its images? Or taking... oh jeez, how do I put this without sounding ungrateful... more exciting, more stimulating images?

Well, don't the HiRISE team release pretty much EVERYTHING they take to their website eventually? This is in marked contrast to most teams, who do very well to release at most one image per day (which is still quite a lot). If other teams are more selective, it's more likely that each choice will be more exciting. With HiRISE we are getting the ho-hum (*cough* Phoenix landing sites *cough cough*) along with the great, and everything in between. Consider MER. How thrilling is each and every Navcam drive image? (Are the northern plains aesthetically equivalent to the MER Sundial?)

Also, the best stuff in HiRISE images, IMO, is found when you look at the images at near their full resolution, and hunt around for fun features. None of us seems to have time to do that for all the images. So finding true greatness is hit and miss. That makes it all the more important for each of us to post cool stuff here when we find it.

--Emily

[monitorlizard]

I'm in basic agreement with Emily's line of reasoning. The thumbnail HiRISE images on their website look pretty much like Mars images from other spacecraft because of the highly reduced resolution. Very few of us have the hardware (or even time) to download entire HiRISE images, except an occasional one that picques somebody's curiousity. There are subimages for HiRISE on the webpages, but I'm not sure they're full resolution either. I'd like to see full resolution subimages of interesting features featured more prominently at their website (yeah, I know, where's the time for that).
I think the "Wow" factor would go up substantially.

[Stu]

Also, the best stuff in HiRISE images, IMO, is found when you look at the images at near their full resolution, and hunt around for fun features.

Thanks Emily, appreciate the feedback. That's exactly my point. As most people here know by now, I do a lot of what's now trendily called "Outreach" (aka 'standing at the front of a drafty church hall or community centre showing spacey pics to the public' ) and to be brutally honest I can't really use most of the MRO images as they are. The images that I can and do use succesfully are the smaller scale ones, the crops I've managed to take from the large images, and features people here have picked out and kindly given me permission to use - the crumbling ledges, shadow-casting mesas, etc. I think that the results of HiRISE - heralded as "The People's Camera" I seem to remember? - are not being shared adequately. And by that I don't mean anything is being held back, I know they release everything, but I think it would be a good idea for the team to do some of that "hunting around for fun features" you referred to and put those pics on the website too. That's the way they'll get people more inspired and excited by the camera, the mission, and Mars itself. Because let's be honest, MRO is not exactly enjoying a very high profile right now. Discussion about its images here, on what is probably the most passionate and knowledgeable space exploration forum there is, has reduced greatly. We used to drool over each release of new images moments after they appeared. Now... well, not so much. Which is no big deal, these things wax and wane, but still...

I'm sure the team have images of their own favourite places, screen-grabs of "wow!" features that impressed them. We and the public would enjoy seeing those too, alongside the BIG images that are wonderful in their own right.

[djellison]

I can't really use most of the MRO images as they are.

No one can. That's the problem. Until someone comes out with a 20,000 x 120,000 pixel projector. Before the advent of the viewer, I tried to download and view these things in full res - and I got a little insight into just how hard it must be to process these things - let alone have an informative web-page for each one.

They do show interesting snippets with a few of them, and we've had four rounds of science output ( http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/sim/ ) which include not only what you're talking about but scientific discourse as well. Missions can't maintain high profiles for ever - it's impossible. Spirit and Opportunity are not high profile at the moment. The effort ( i.e. money ) involved in maintaining an ammount of outreach material like that simply isn't available. I wish it were - but it isn't.

There is so much data that it's going to take decades for it to be appreciated. Wihtout broadband, I'd say it's impossible to appreciate it at all - it's just a symptom of the instrument. The only way to enjoy it is via the IAS Viewer which makes every image brilliantly accesable for anyone with a reasonably good connection. Truthfully, I don't think they can do any more than that. Without that, you're only ever going to get 1% of the picture - metaphorically and literally - and to use it, you've got to have broadband - or extreme patience.

Doug

[Nix]

My connection is okay for the files, and 4 gigs of ram is fine..., processing power is on the edge... - the only 'problem' I'm facing is hard-disk space. I have now a 250 Gb drive stuffed with those .jp2's, but I lack time of searching all of it for interesting 'spots'...

I feel it's up to us though, as Emily pointed out, to provide the community with selected regions from the files.

Nico

[Stu]

Good discussion, thanks for the feedback guys. Guess I'll just have to make do with skimming the cream of the MRO images from UMSF's postings until I can upgrade from my current less-than-state-of-the-art PC. Another reason to appreciate the time people take to post images here.

[djellison]

You don't need a banzai computer to use the IAS viewer (at least, I don't think you do) - just a wider pipe

Doug

[OWW]

I think it's fair to expect that one or two images from MRO will make it onto most lists of the top space images of 2007. (Though I am disappointed that most likely none of those images will have been taken by an MSSS instrument this year.)

Most images in popular books and calendars seem to be the same images released on the Planetary Photojournal, and sadly not the hundreds of gems hiding in the PDS. This CTX image would be a good candidate for a calendar though:

Image P01_001558_1325_XI_47S326W

EDIT: image updated. flipped.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Stu]

Sorry, but that's just frakking* gorgeous!! If that's what's hiding on MRO images I think this Saturday I'll go down to the library and take advantage of their mega-fast broadband pcs... their pipe is a lot wider than mine.

* Note to UK board members: SKY is showing the special BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: RAZOR tonight at 9pm!

[n1ckdrake]

Here is the remarkable image OWW posted zoomed-in.

[n1ckdrake]

Zoomed-in even more.

[Stu]

Now, you see, that's just rubbing it in...

[charborob]

[snip]
Nothing has really grabbed me, not like in the early days when every pic made me shake my head with disbelief.
[snip]
While this mission had me almost rabid with expectation and excitement in the days just after landing now I find myself getting a little ho-hum about the images being released. I think they're just too large scale. I'd love to see extreme close-ups of surface features, showing more familiar scales.

I think part of the reason for this loss of interest, so to speak, is that the MRO images are taken from a vertical point of view. This is very useful scientifically, but for the average person, this is an unusual way of viewing surface features, and meaningful mainly to specialists. We are used to seeing landscapes from the surface, and sometimes obliquely from an airplane. For public outreach, the MRO team should release more oblique views created from the stereoscopic coverage of the Martian surface. It would give the public a more vivid sense of "being there". In another thread, I asked about the possibility of constructing these views ourselves, but apparently, it is a high tech trick unavailable to "amateurs".

[djellison]

If the DEM's make it out - I'll do HD animations of them as flyarounds. I'd love to - but that data isn't on the HiRISE PDS 'to do ' list unfortunately.

Doug

[mcaplinger]

I think part of the reason for this loss of interest, so to speak, is that the MRO images are taken from a vertical point of view.

This must explain why a MER image is on the front cover of TIME every week.

Frankly I'm not sure this loss of interest is any different than what we saw with MGS. The images would have to be pretty spectacular to elicit a "wow" response day after month after year. I think you guys have just gotten to the point that the instrument teams arrived at a long time ago.

THEMIS still releases an image every week. Does anyone here look at them? I'd wonder about the cost-benefit ratio of making a lot of effort to do regular releases, if even enthusiasts express dissatisfaction with such outreach efforts. Better to dump the data to the PDS and let you find the pretty ones.