MEX VMC - Back on, and online! |
MEX VMC - Back on, and online! |
Jan 26 2010, 10:31 PM
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#211
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8783 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
I actually see what looks like two specular reflections, Hannes. Might those be from high-altitude ice (H2O or CO2) crystal clouds?
-------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Jan 31 2010, 09:36 PM
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#212
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 10 Joined: 26-January 10 Member No.: 5190 |
They are indeed specular reflections, not ice clouds. Very well spotted! The albedo is very high and the terrain very smooth in that area.
Cheers, Hannes. |
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Jan 31 2010, 10:02 PM
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#213
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 10 Joined: 26-January 10 Member No.: 5190 |
Here is another another annotated composition I made. It shows the area around Huygens crater and Hellas. The horizon circle doesn't match because the spacecraft moved away from the planet as the pics were taken, and in late December when I made that composite I didn't know how to correct for map projection. I obviously also didn't know how to use the vmc2rgb with flat fielding. :-)
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Jan 31 2010, 10:06 PM
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#214
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 10 Joined: 26-January 10 Member No.: 5190 |
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Jan 31 2010, 10:14 PM
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#215
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 10 Joined: 26-January 10 Member No.: 5190 |
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Jan 31 2010, 10:31 PM
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#216
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 10 Joined: 26-January 10 Member No.: 5190 |
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Jan 31 2010, 11:57 PM
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#217
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1582 Joined: 14-October 05 From: Vermont Member No.: 530 |
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Feb 2 2010, 01:00 PM
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#218
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 10 Joined: 26-January 10 Member No.: 5190 |
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Feb 2 2010, 01:04 PM
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#219
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 10 Joined: 26-January 10 Member No.: 5190 |
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Feb 2 2010, 03:35 PM
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#220
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 37 Joined: 27-August 08 From: Darmstadt, Germany Member No.: 4320 |
Hi all!
First off thanks to Hannes for his work on the VMC images, it proves that they can be just as interesting for us working on the mission as for everyone else! We're hoping to post his work soon on the blog, as with any public submission. I just wanted to get in touch to highlight the VMC observation which took place last Saturday (http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/6/972)..we think we've managed to observe the shadow of Phobos crossing the planet as it transits between the Sun and Mars. I've added a special post about this here: http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/6/973 and you can see the full resolution version of my little animation here: http://webservices.esa.int/blog/gallery/6/...sit_Anim_TO.gif. We're always impressed by the results from UMSF so I'm very much looking forward to seeing what you make of these images, and of course seeing if we can confirm that what we see really is Phobos (I've checked and think the size, speed and direction seem right)! If I get some nice results I'll put together a special post highlighting everyone's work. As always, it's your discovery, the amateur community of VMC are our scientists so lets see what we can get! -------------------- |
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Feb 2 2010, 07:15 PM
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#221
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Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
Neato, Thomas! Here's my version.
For the rest of you, I just exchanged emails with Thomas about the point of view of these images -- he told me "the light splat is Argyre Planitia and the chain of 4 craters coming away from it are (from left to right): Lohse, Helmholtz, Wirtz and (my personal favourite) Galle." (Galle is, of course, the famous Smiley Face crater.) -------------------- My website - My Patreon - @elakdawalla on Twitter - Please support unmannedspaceflight.com by donating here.
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Feb 2 2010, 10:03 PM
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#222
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Martian Photographer Group: Members Posts: 352 Joined: 3-March 05 Member No.: 183 |
Amazingly, there was a contemporaneous uplooking photo from Argyre, taken with the amazing SNCam (umm, that would be "Starry Night" Camera), showing the Sun, Phobos, Earth, Moon and Venus in a cosmic right triangle. (SNCam has no difficulty seeing faint celestial objects in the daytime through the dust...)
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Feb 2 2010, 10:46 PM
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#223
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Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
Wow, that's a great camera, I wish we had more of those!
-------------------- My website - My Patreon - @elakdawalla on Twitter - Please support unmannedspaceflight.com by donating here.
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Feb 13 2010, 04:55 PM
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#224
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 2785 Joined: 10-November 06 From: Pasadena, CA Member No.: 1345 |
MEX VMC thumbnails from Feb 11 onwards are now in color!
http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/6/991 -------------------- Some higher resolution images available at my photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/
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Feb 13 2010, 06:26 PM
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#225
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 37 Joined: 27-August 08 From: Darmstadt, Germany Member No.: 4320 |
Was wondering how long it would take someone to notice Yep...the VMC shots are now in full colourful glory! They've actually been colour for quite some time - we've been using ugordan's excellent vmc2rgb v2 tool - but originally the software we wrote didn't do any enhancement so the images were (as I'm sure you're all too familiar with!) very very low saturation and basically looked almost grayscale.
With the work done by our amateur community (and in a large part UMSF!) we've learnt some ways that the "inadequacies" of VMC can be overcome systematically. This started with ugordan's brilliant addition of flat fielding to vmc2rgb, which we didn't use straight away because I needed to track down the problem of the pixel shift which hit some images (now fixed!). I also wanted to find a way of putting the channel mixing techniques into our software...which I eventually managed to work out, along with a touch of saturation boosting and unsharp masking. All in all I think the end result is pretty good, not quite as good as hand-processed images but good for an automated process! I'm going to write a proper post about it early next week, crediting of course all the work put in by you at UMSF, it's really in the spirit of what we're aiming for with VMC that the improvements come from our amateur community and improve the images for everyone! Thank you to everyone who's made this happen...and enjoy the new images! -------------------- |
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