Q & A With Steve Squyres, Coming in September Options

[djellison]

Arhgh - those codes on the DVD's had Helen and I going nuts

You got a good deal mind you - as the Spirit one was imaged twice I think...

Sol 2 - You got a REALLY sharp L4, highly compressed L5, a 2:1 downsampled L6, and a nice L1.

If you make a colour image from the L456 - then overlay it onto the L1 - you get great results.

Bog standard L456
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...pir_dvd_456.jpg

L456 as colour over L1
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...r_dvd_456x1.jpg

L456 and L1 stretched a bit - and multiplied
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...dvd_456x1xD.jpg

One problem is that it's just short of being in focus - it's a bit too close to the pancam.

However - sol 37 comes along and we get L24567R2 - all full res and with mild compression

The 456 comes out as
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...r_dvd_2_456.jpg

and an L2/R2 anaglyph
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...r_dvd_2_ana.jpg

Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet
Full sized L1 and L4, but this time downsized on both L5 and L6

L456
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...opp_dvd_456.jpg

L456 x 1
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...p_dvd_456x1.jpg

L456 x 1 with tweaking
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...dvd_456x1xD.jpg


Sol 12 - Oppy got another shot

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im.../opp_dvd_12.jpg

Sadly - in the part-taken L4,5,7 mosaic
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...nest_mosaic.jpg

The DVD isnt there - it's off to one side.

All this is on the Planetary Soc website - but it was fun to recreate it all myself as well - ahhh...sol's in single digits..those were the days



That was a fun blast from the past.

Doug

[elakdawalla]

Arhgh - those codes on the DVD's had Helen and I going nuts

Can you believe that before the operational rehearsals, Squyres was actually worried that the codes would not be legible -- that the Pancams couldn't resolve the detail? (Jim never doubted, of course.)

--Emily

[djellison]

Well - I can see why he might be nervous - certainly inside the 3m point at which Pancam gets nicely focused (hence the 2:1 downsizing of all the deck-pan selfportrait images ) - but if Jim says pancam will do X ...pancam will do X+1

I was amazed to find that those first few sols were using really slow UHF passes - no wonder they compressed-to-hell those first pancam octants.

Pity that the media abandons such missions early on - as the success pans were the lowest quality of the lot

Doug

[CosmicRocker]

Thank you, edstrick, helvick, Emily, and Doug.

Well, I guess there is more to the resolution of pancam images than I realized. You folks clearly know more about the subject than I do. Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me. I must admit that I am still puzzled by the fact that the L7 and R1 full frames always appear to be the highest resolution to me, and the resolution appears to decline from there as the wavelength increases.

I spent some time tonight looking at some pancams more carefully. Perhaps the longer wavelength ones only "appear" to be lower resolution.

[djellison]

Here's a cunning point for you

If you can find a red LED a green LED and a blue led around - have a look at them.

You cant focus properly on the blue one - wavelength if just a bit too far over for the eye to focus onto the retina

Doug

[ustrax]

Doug...

Can I still throw mine?...Please! I was on vacations!!!

1# - IF (let's cross our fingers) any of the rovers reaches Sol 1000, is there the possibility for an organized web community visit to the facilities from where
the MER team coordinates the mission?

2# - have you ever heard talking about Ultreya?...

[um3k]

Here's a cunning point for you

If you can find a red LED a green LED and a blue led around - have a look at them.

You cant focus properly on the blue one - wavelength if just a bit too far over for the eye to focus onto the retina

Doug

It would be more accurate to say that you cannot focus on both of them at the same time when they are both located at the same distance from you. However, you can (as long as they are within a certain distance range) focus on one or the other. Also, if you move one closer or farther away from you, you can focus on both at once.

Of course, none of this applies if you have lousy eyesight.

EDIT: Oops, I skipped over the part about the green LED when I read your post. What I said still applies, though--just group the green and red together (and count them as one).

[djellison]

Really - you cant focus on the blue ones - your eye isnt clever enough to do 'different' focus on it because it's a different wavelength

Have all three lined up - the blue one just wont focus.

It's very odd - I read it on the internet ( so it must be true ) and had a try myself and it's actually true

Doug

[helvick]

Really - you cant focus on the blue ones - your eye isnt clever enough to do 'different' focus on it because it's a different wavelength

Which may be true for something you hold in your hand but once you get sufficiently far enough away then they will all be in focus, at the same time. Well, provided your eyesight isn't as bad as mine. :-)

The Pancam's focus at range(3m and out) should be close to perfect across all the filters, certainly more than good enough to yield images at their designed resolutions with all filters.

[um3k]

Really - you cant focus on the blue ones - your eye isnt clever enough to do 'different' focus on it because it's a different wavelength

Ah, but I have manual focus.

[ljk4-1]

Squyres writes the book on Mars and the little rovers that could

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Aug05/....roving.lg.html

Aug. 23, 2005

By Lauren Gold
lg34@cornell.edu

ITHACA, N.Y. -- It has been an amazing mission from the beginning.
Getting two tremendously intricate machines funded, designed, built,
tested, approved, launched, landed safely on a planet millions of
miles from Earth and functioning nearly continuously for more than a
year and a half is an extraordinary feat.

[deglr6328]

Really - you cant focus on the blue ones - your eye isnt clever enough to do 'different' focus on it because it's a different wavelength

Have all three lined up - the blue one just wont focus.

It's very odd - I read it on the internet ( so it must be true ) and had a try myself and it's actually true

Doug

Hmmmm, I do believe this is not because the lens of the eye has trouble focusing the short wavelength, but is instead because your retina's concentration of blue sensitive cones is, well, crap compared to the green and red sensitive ones. Thus the spatial resolution in the blue is greatly reduced for the eye. Recently, this fact was verified at the UofR by imaging the retina microscopically,in vivo using adaptive optics.

[edstrick]

You *can* focus on the short wavelength image, but not at the same time as the red/green image. The eye does not have the option of mixing two refractive lenses with different chromatic abberation in order to cancel out chromatic abberation over the wavelength range it's sensative to. The short wavelengths, rarely the brightest thing in the visual field (other than the sky, which doesn't need acuity) tends to lose out in the focus contest.

[stellarlight]

Hi there!

I did an interview to Robert M. Manning (Chief Engineer for JPL's Mars Program Office) some months ago. Probably you´ll remember him as you see the picture:
http://www.astroenlazador.com/mer/entrevis...g/interview.htm

Probably this could be useful for you to think about new questions, etc.

But I would be very grateful if you could ask one of them to Mr. Squyres:

Spirit landed on a volcanic rock area and had to drive more than 3 Kilometers (1.86 miles) to find important clues to confirm the past presence of water on Mars. If this mission had consisted in a static lander, it would have been impossible to obtain that important scientific information. Do you think sending static landers to Mars is still worthwhile or reliable?

(As you´ll suppose, I´m thinking about Phoenix Mission for 2007)

Cheers!

[djellison]

Right - time's up - I need a couple of days to sort thru all the questions I've had via email ( like I asked ) and here ( like I didnt )


Doug