Venera-9 Orbiter, Little-known images of Venus Options

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

Very cool, never seen a CT scan of an apple before.

For image processing, I use a C++ class I wrote that stores images as an array of single-precision floats. It takes up space, but it elimiates all the annoying problems of dynamic range. And I have 8 Gb on my PC, and am running x64 Windows. Now I wish I had put 16 Gb in it!

I use photoshop a lot too, but it is not very good at filters and doesn't do gamma correction properly. I haev GIMP installed too, just to check it out, but its basically an ersatz version of Photoshop, OK for freeware though. Personally, I would recommend Photoshop Elements to people who want a cheaper solution.

I also use ACDsee a lot, for browsing and quick editing. I have a love-hate relationship with that software, and I desperately wish I could find a better replacement. I've looked at ThumbsPlus, FastStone and Irfanview, and they suck. I just can't use them, their interfaces don't support my workflow at all. But ACDSee is the buggiest most horrendously written software on the planet. I have to use the old version 5 because the newer versions crash all the time. Version 5 makes mistakes about locking down folders and accessing files, it messed up jpeg files, there is just no end to it. But I'm stuck with it until someone writes a decent replacement.

Image Analyzer is cool, I only use it for its frequency-domain editor, which is primitive, but the only one available. Its deconvolution filters don't seem to work right, but fortunately Photoshop CS2 has "smartsharpen".

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

The whole issue of the nature of the UV markings always makes me wonder why they pulled the camera from Mariner 5. A Mariner-4 camera, with the light leak fixed and operating at 7 or 8 bits per pixel (granted it could have only stored a few images, but this wouldn't have taken very many pictures to solve) would have resolved this. Incidentally, they almost had Mariner-4 use its camera at 5 bits per pixel so that they could take more pictures. That would have been a disaster!

Had Mariner 5 carried that camera, its photos would apparently all have been close-up like Mariner 4's, vastly reducing its ability to make any sense out of the cloud patterns. But then-- judging from the science team's official document on the science payload (which I have a copy of) -- the main goal for the TV experiment would have been to look for chinks in the clouds through which Venus' surface could be seen.

[tedstryk]

I am discussing what was surprisingly not done, not what some old planning document said was considered. Yes, I realize that they had considered another strip of closeups, but why they never considered an approach sequence is beyond me.