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Posted by: elakdawalla Feb 10 2014, 10:38 PM

I've been talking with Mark Lemmon about rover imaging of planetary targets, and he shared with me a list of the observations made by Spirit and Opportunity over the years. Some of these may already have been posted on this forum, but not with image data from the PDS. Would anyone here be interested in digging into the archival data on the analyst's notebook and producing pretty versions of some of these observations? I can help with locating and downloading data if you need it. Here is the list:

Sol A/1998: Earth? & Deimos? Pancam with Navcam context that includes horizon. http://an.rsl.wustl.edu/mer/merbrowser/browser.aspx?sol=1998&cat=PROD&m=MERA

Sols A/1943-1949: Earth (marginal) and Venus, with horizon & Navcam. These include "pre-point" images (p2736) in addition to the observations (p2737). Data taken sol http://an.rsl.wustl.edu/mer/merbrowser/browser.aspx?m=MERA&sol=1943&cat=PROD, http://an.rsl.wustl.edu/mer/merbrowser/browser.aspx?m=MERA&cat=PROD&sol=1944, http://an.rsl.wustl.edu/mer/merbrowser/browser.aspx?m=MERA&cat=PROD&sol=1945. In next ones, observation seq id is p2739: http://an.rsl.wustl.edu/mer/merbrowser/browser.aspx?m=MERA&cat=PROD&sol=1946, http://an.rsl.wustl.edu/mer/merbrowser/browser.aspx?m=MERA&cat=PROD&sol=1947, http://an.rsl.wustl.edu/mer/merbrowser/browser.aspx?m=MERA&cat=PROD&sol=1948. Now it's seq id p2741: http://an.rsl.wustl.edu/mer/merbrowser/browser.aspx?m=MERA&cat=PROD&sol=1949.

Sol A/63: (already publicly released). http://an.rsl.wustl.edu/mer/merbrowser/browser.aspx?sol=0063&cat=PROD&m=MERA

Sol B/718: Earth & Jupiter rise movie, also Venus in a single frame at the end, Navcam context. Yes, three planets in a single observation. http://an.rsl.wustl.edu/mer/merbrowser/browser.aspx?sol=0718&cat=PROD&m=MERB.

Sol B/687: Earth, Jupiter, & clouds. Again, not sure of the sequence ID on http://an.rsl.wustl.edu/mer/merbrowser/browser.aspx?sol=0687&cat=PROD&m=MERB.

Posted by: djellison Feb 10 2014, 11:45 PM

Some of these may have been processed well and put up on the Pancam Page...

http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_instrument/projects_2.html

http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_instrument/projects_3.html

Posted by: mhoward Feb 10 2014, 11:59 PM

Re: the unknown sequences

http://www.midnightplanets.com/web/MERB/image/00718/1P191899681RAD64KWP2733L1C1.html

http://www.midnightplanets.com/web/MERB/image/00687/1P189147530RAD64KCP2731L1C1.html

Posted by: elakdawalla Feb 11 2014, 12:30 AM

Ah, indeed the Opportunity ones are, at that link (these are all "twilight" images). The Earth and Jupiter one is especially nice with the clouds being visible also. I think that people in this community could make something prettier of the data

The later Spirit ones (sols 1943 and 1998) are not available at that site.

Posted by: djellison Feb 11 2014, 12:31 AM

I think Jim ran out of grad students

Posted by: James Sorenson Feb 11 2014, 10:25 AM

I will do more of Emily's request later, but here is the Sol-718 Jupiter/Earth rise image with the movie sequence using PDS images.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43581439@N08/12454708083/
Original Image:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43581439@N08/12454708083/sizes/o/in/photostream/

EDIT: Starry Night View:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43581439@N08/12455560803/

The Movie
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43581439@N08/12455054504/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Posted by: elakdawalla Feb 11 2014, 03:52 PM

James, I was hoping you'd work on these. Really lovely work.

Posted by: James Sorenson Jun 25 2014, 10:35 PM

Here is the MER-A Sol-1946 Pancam sequence of Earth and Venus. I couldn't pull out Venus in the PDS images, and most likely wasn't detectable.

https://flic.kr/p/o51B1s

Flickr is undergoing yet another annoying layout change, here is the original resolution.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/43581439@N08/14485232646/sizes/l

Posted by: fredk Jun 25 2014, 11:18 PM

Venus should be the bright, easily visible speck in those images. Earth is considerably fainter, to the right of Venus. I was able to pull Earth out of the 1946 (and several adjacent sols) pancams - check out http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=6042&view=findpost&p=142925, and read back for more about that very cool set of sequences.

Posted by: James Sorenson Jun 26 2014, 12:16 AM

Hmmm...You are right! Thanks you for pointing that out, rechecked starry night and you are correct. I'll get that fixed. Its interesting that I couldn't pull anything else out. I'll have to re-check that again to.

EDIT I know what I did wrong in the ID, pointing was slightly off. That put Venus on the left. I Didn't check the distances and magnitudes. Venus was 1.06 AU from Mars, and Earth was 1.916 AU away.

Posted by: fredk Jun 26 2014, 02:08 AM

I think that stacking the frames for each sol was crucial in pulling out Earth from the noise. Let us know if you find magnitude estimates for the two planets - I'm curious how bright they'd look by eye.

Posted by: James Sorenson Jun 26 2014, 04:15 AM

Starry Night shows an apparent magnitude of Earth -2.23 and Venus -3.83 at the time of that specific observation on Sol-1946, I have wondered before how accurately Starry Night is with that. Of coarse dust in the atmosphere and scattering would affect whats visible from the surface.