[X] My Assistant

[Tman]

What may you estimate? Which direction have they decided for Spirit?

http://www.greuti.ch/spirit/which_route.jpg

Thanks Phil for this map!

I put my money on 3.

This post has been edited by Tman: Jun 2 2005, 07:59 PM

[Tman]

Ustrax your bet was 50:50 and nice exciting - I enjoyed it either way.

There is still the basic question about its origin. And it looks very useful for me - I guess we look there at the internal composition of Husband Hill, cleared by wind erosion and visible as steps-shaped arrangement. Much better than in Tennessee Valley.

[tty]

Ultreya definitely seems to have a different texture than the surrounding rocks. Could it be a stratigraphic "window" exposing a more fine-grained deposit?

[ustrax]

Ustrax your bet was 50:50 and nice exciting - I enjoyed it either way. 

There is still the basic question about its origin. And it looks very useful for me - I guess we look there at the internal composition of Husband Hill, cleared by wind erosion and visible as steps-shaped arrangement. Much better than in Tennessee Valley.

Tman...I'll raise my bet...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v352/ustrax/ultreyah.jpg

[ilbasso]

I had a dream last night that in continuing with their predilection for giving features different names than we give them in this forum, the MER team was calling Ultreya by the good ol' American name, "The Horseshoe Pit". That kind of goes with "Home Plate" nearby. The other thing I remembered from the dream was that someone on the team remarked that the Pit looked like an abandoned rock quarry.

I guess that's what I deserve for reading this forum before going to bed every night!

[djellison]

Dont worry - I had a VERY strange dream two nights ago..

I was walking around the Natural History Museum in London, and I saw SS over the other side of the building, so I introduced myself and we proceeded to look at this strange small golden rock like thing in a cabinet. Quite random

I blame Brian Muirhead - as I was reading a book he's co-written before I fell asleep.

Doug

[ustrax]

I had a dream last night that in continuing with their predilection for giving features different names than we give them in this forum, the MER team was calling Ultreya by the good ol' American name, "The Horseshoe Pit".  That kind of goes with "Home Plate" nearby.  The other thing I remembered from the dream was that someone on the team remarked that the Pit looked like an abandoned rock quarry. 

I guess that's what I deserve for reading this forum before going to bed every night!

I actually, some nights ago, dreamt that I was walking in the E side of Husband Hill and reaching Ultreya and it was not an abyss, it was something like this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v352/ust...treyadreamt.jpg

[ustrax]

Same area with which time between both images? Phil?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v352/ustrax/ultreyah2.jpg

[Phil Stooke]

April 2001 to February 2003, the streak one first.

Phil

[ustrax]

April 2001 to February 2003, the streak one first.

Phil

Thank you Phil.

[ustrax]

And now...for something completely different...

http://ultreyamars.blogspot.com/

[dilo]

I am strongly disappointed from the differences between images... I cannot persuade myself that in most recent image (E0300012) Ultreya wasn't deliberately manipulated in order to hide something like some satellite Earth images, where military/strategic objectives are canceled...
I know it's crazy, but both lake and volcano hyopothesis aren't satisfyng, because the "canceled" region appear too uniform and "too gray" to me... However, I must admit that central stripe (or crack) visible in older image show approximately the same gray shading of final "lake", so there must be some correlation... this is simply amazing!!!!
At this point, I cannot wait for the Spirit arrival in this region! I believe there is a high probability to make sensational discovery here!!!

[um3k]

I am strongly disappointed from the differences between images...  I cannot persuade myself that in most recent image (E0300012) Ultreya wasn't deliberately manipulated in order to hide something like some satellite Earth images, where military/strategic objectives are canceled... 
I know it's crazy, but both lake and volcano hyopothesis aren't satisfyng, because the "canceled" region appear too uniform and "too gray" to me... However, I must admit that central stripe (or crack) visible in older image show approximately the same gray shading of final "lake", so there must be some correlation... this is simply amazing!!!!
At this point, I cannot wait for the Spirit arrival in this region!  I believe there is a high probability to make sensational discovery here!!!

I suspect the featurelessness of the more recent image is due to underexposure, which caused no detail to be recorded in that region. It is a rather dark area, after all. What do you think, Mr. Stooke?

[Phil Stooke]

I also think the featureless appearance is due to the exposure. The original of the last image is very low contrast - I stretched it a lot - but the feature in question covered such a narrow range of brightness that even this contrast stretch reveals nothing. What we really need is a good cPROTO image. Perhaps the next MGS data release will give that. I also expect the area is inherently rather bland itself, a talus slope or dusty patch with limited contrast. The first image showed a dark streak, but dark streaks can be ephemeral on Mars - dust devil tracks or small landslides are both observed to fade as dust settles on them.

Phil

[slinted]

I am strongly disappointed from the differences between images...  I cannot persuade myself that in most recent image (E0300012) Ultreya wasn't deliberately manipulated in order to hide something like some satellite Earth images, where military/strategic objectives are canceled... 

Well, if you can't persuade yourself, let me take a shot. E0300012 has detail in that area that doesn't show up in the jpg/gif images. The PDS .img release of this image shows variation in that area, but it is one of the darkest parts of the entire 1024x12160 image. So, instead of leaning towards a sinister reason for hiding it, I think we can look no further than the auto-contrast stretching that we see on the MER images as an explanation. Since that area is probably in the darkest 0.2% of the image, if auto contrasting were done to write out the most 'interesting' GIF/JPG images and a threshold greater than 0.2% were used, it would clip that entire area to 0. The shape of the featureless spot, in Phil's image, corresponds perfectly to the shape of the darkest area in the PDS image.

That being said, the "abyss" is the darkest spot in the image, so getting details out of the minimal data required mangling the image quite severely. Phil, however you are achieving locally adapted contrast beats the pants off anything I've been able to do

Here's E03-00012 size-doubled, brightness stretched (high end only), gamma curve of 1.4, unsharpmask (gimp settings: radius 4.0, amount 2.0, 0 threshold):


edit: I updated the image, which has now been destriped in gimp (handy for getting rid of some of the MOC vertical line artifacts)

[dilo]

Thanks, Slinted. Now I'm persuaded that the uniform "lake" was not real but only the result of poor image dynaminic range joined to application of some enhancing filter... we must pay attention when manipulating images before to reach wrong conclusions!
In fact, I downloaded original GIF image, but the 8 bit precision isn't sufficient and the abyss is uniformly dark (R=G=B=0)!
At this point, I would like to read IMG/IMQ formats and I absolutely need some photo-edit software which can andle 12/16 bit per channel!
Do you have some suggestion? (I know is OT, so I'm posting same question in the "Imagery & Tech Issues" subForum and you can answer here! ).