CRISM Corner Options

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

APL-Built Mineral-Mapping Imager Begins Mission at Mars
JHU/APL
For Immediate Release
September 27, 2006

See also A.J.S. Rayl's story at TPS.

EDIT: I changed the topic title because, as I understand it from the press release, the cover was opened, not jettisoned.

This post has been edited by AlexBlackwell: Sep 28 2006, 04:48 PM

[slinted]

First off, for finding CRISM data, I've been really impressed with the Orbital Data Explorer over at the Geoscience Node. They have a very slick interface with maps and, once you learn the file extensions, you can search directly for a specific product type.

In terms of the CRISM PDS release itself, the furthest calibration that seems to be available right now are the I/F images. Unfortunately, these products don't take into account the atmospheric contribution. That light that makes the trip through the atmosphere twice turns out (...wait for it...) fairly dull shades of red. Eventually they will be releasing files that remove any atmospheric effects, both in image form and as a global gridded map. These will inevitably be much more pleasing to look at from a pretty picture perspective.

So far, I've just been playing with the VNIR (near infra-red and visible). (Ugordon, I guess I'm the exception to your suggestion about what people might be interested in) If 6 filters of visible light from pancam are good, then ~107 filters of visible light from CRISM is better, right? But, the images below are heavily enhanced to get through the atmospheric blur, and thus, false-color.

Here are 3 images from the Phoenix landing area:
1| http://www.lyle.org/~markoff/crism/frt0000...if168s_trr2.jpg
2| http://www.lyle.org/~markoff/crism/frt0000...if168s_trr2.jpg
3| http://www.lyle.org/~markoff/crism/frt0000...if168s_trr2.jpg
and a map of their positions, based on the landing ellipse basemap:
http://www.lyle.org/~markoff/crism/phoenix_crism.jpg

Images 1 and 2 overlap this CTX image, 1 on the left side, and 2 on the right.

And, just for fun, here is one of the Columbia Hills:


and one of Victoria Crater (I think...)


For processing, I've been using a version of Bippy that I kludged into working for the CRISM data. If people are interested, I can see about getting these changes worked into a future version.

[dburt]

And, just for fun, here is one of the Columbia Hills:

and one of Victoria Crater (I think...)

Slinted - Those are really neat images. The Columbia Hills one, if nothing else, shows there there is certainly no shortage of various sizes of impact craters in the vicinity, consistent with the hypothesis that the Home Plate deposits could just as well be a small erosional remnant of impact surge as of volcanic surge.

The "Victoria Crater" one (actually, as noted in a later post, Endeavor and the top half of Erebus) clearly shows a linear pattern of what appear to be crater ejecta, radiating topwards either from Victoria or, more likely, from what appears to be an older, larger, sand-filled crater just to its left - consistent with the hypothesis that the finely layered rocks of Meridiani could be fine impact ejecta (impact surge deposits) resulting from multiple impacts. Such a radiating pattern is difficult to see in simple visible images. Keep up the exploratory imaging work. You could make some discoveries!

-- HDP Don