MEX VMC - Back on, and online! Options

[djellison]

I heard about this 24 hours ago, and couldn't believe it - this is EXACTLY what has been missing from ESA. MASSIVE kudos to the ESOC MEX flight ops team for doing it

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/VMC/index.html

The last time I wrote a post and hit 'submit' at UMSF with a smile this big on my face, was when Oppy successfully got out of Purgatory.

[djellison]

FWIW - I've attempted to debayer a tiny piece of image, by hand (using a 90x1 pixel selection again and again, to select alternate rows to cut them to a new layer - then again on columns, to split it into 4 layers. Then, I figured out which were the blue ones ( the darkest ) and from that established the red and the green. I then duplicated those layers to fill out the 2x2 pattern, and then copied into channels on a new image.

Hopefully someone will figure out a better method of doing this

[djellison]

I THINK I got a bit cleverer in making selections - this may or may not be accurate.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Stu]

ESA often get a hard time here for what they do - or don't do - but this is a BIG step in the right direction, and shows that ESA really are trying to do more with the wealth of data and material they have. As Doug said, congratulations to everyone involved, and here's hoping the site attracts a lot of attention, not just from dyed-in-the-wool spaceflight enthusiasts like ourselves, but from the public too. Will definitely be worth keeping an eye on, looking out for great images. I can hear my hard drive groaning already...

And yaaay! An ESA crescent Mars image at last!!! Great job!

[PDP8E]

I always though that the Lunar Prospector team was absolutely CRAZY by not taking any type of camera to the Moon.

They did manage to bring an Alpha Spectrometer, Electron Reflectometer, Magnetometer, Neutron Spectrometer, and a Doppler Gravity thing-a-ma-jig.

Lunar Prospector was in a low polar orbit! and not a single image.
Then they decided to crash it into the Moon's south pole!
Any snapshot from a couple hundred meters would have been iconic.

And now, if you are not a Lunar scientist or a UMSF'er, the impact of Lunar Prosepector (pun intended) is ZERO

Note to spacecraft all designers: this non-science type of camera (MEX-VMC) is worth putting on all future space craft.
This is outreach at its best. This is how to capture the imagination of that next person.

This camera represents how we all pack for any trip ...DONT FOR GET THE CAMERA....and unmanned space craft take the most amazing trips!

Bravo to ESA and the MEXMARS Webcam! (...tons of images in the VMC archive...!)

[ugordan]

Wow, great work, Doug. My method of making a Bayer mask in Photoshop doesn't exactly work as I'd hoped. A new approach is in order.

Here's a messed-around crescent view, with an ad-hoc color balance. Might be completely wrong.

[djellison]

I always though that the Lunar Prospector team was absolutely CRAZY by not taking any type of camera to the Moon.

Spinning at 12rpm does kind of making taking pictures a bit hard - and if you do some research on the long term history of LP...it had NO money - none at all.

Doug

[Tman]

Here's a messed-around crescent view, with an ad-hoc color balance. Might be completely wrong.

But absolutely a gorgeous perspective!

[djellison]

Oh boy oh boy


http://esamultimedia.esa.int/multimedia/vm...46/target0.html

[ugordan]

I'm gonna give it a go at writing an app for automatically converting the raw files into RGB. Doug, have you figured out what the exact Bayer matrix looks like, starting from top left - I'd rather not try reinventing the wheel?

EDIT: Nevermind, I think I have it figured out.

[Juramike]

Even better, it looks like they'd like submissions of your best images!
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/VMC/SEMANKXIPIF_0.html

BTW, here is the syntax for the filenames of the individual jpeg images:

YY_DOY_hh_mm_ss_image-sequence-number.extension

For example: 08_213_14_25_16_vmc_img_no_8.jpg was:

* Taken in 2008
* On Day of the Year 213 (31 July)
* At 14:25:16 (hr:min:sec) UTC
* And is the eighth image taken in a series

Go ESA!

[Could they please do this for Venus too?]

[Paolo Amoroso]

Does the Picasa logo on VMC images imply that they are hosted at the popular photo sharing site? If so, double kudos to ESA.


Paolo Amoroso

[ugordan]

I've got a basic app going, it performs a rudimentary interpolation (if someone knows of a good de-Bayer algorithm, I'm open for suggestions) of the RGB data. When I clean it up a bit and sort out a command line interface I'll release it. Any requests in the meantime?

In the meantime, two gif animations:

A crescent (2.3 MB) and a partially overexposed north->south flyover (3 MB). Looks like the camera could benefit from a flatfield frame, if one were to be made. For some reason the RAW frames appear to be truncated in the ZIP archives, the last frame the most.

[Tman]

Very nice Gordan!

What could that illuminated be behind the terminator http://esamultimedia.esa.int/multimedia/vm...20/target7.html

Something atmospherical or even one of the volcanos that get also already sunshine?

[Paolo Amoroso]

Does the Picasa logo on VMC images imply that they are hosted at the popular photo sharing site?

Or maybe it's just a gallery generated with Picasa.


Paolo Amoroso