[X] My Assistant

[Bill Harris]

A bit OT, but this relates to MER matters.

I have some confusion on how to determine the Sun Azimuth from the MOC image data. This seems like it ought to be straightforward, but the "Explanation page" confounds me.

The example:

Image R1500822, map corrected.
North Azimuth= 92.59 deg
Sun Azimuth= 9.51 deg

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15/im...5/R1500822.html

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15/explain.html

What should the compass direction of the sun be?

--Bill

[mcaplinger]

I have some confusion on how to determine the Sun Azimuth from the MOC image data. This seems like it ought to be straightforward, but the "Explanation page" confounds me.

Seems pretty clear to me. "this is the angle in degrees clockwise from a line drawn from the center to the right edge of the image to the direction of the sun at the time the image was acquired."

Image R1500822, map corrected.
North Azimuth= 92.59 deg
Sun Azimuth= 9.51 deg

North is approximately up. The sun is coming from slightly above right. Of course, the sun is very high (incidence angle is ~25 degrees) so it's hard to see where the sun is coming from just by looking at the image.