[X] My Assistant

[tuvas]

It's sure to be alot. MRO returned more data in it's first picture at Mars then Galileo during it's entire mission. It's sure to be an exciting time!

As for MGS, well, it's sad to see it go, but not all hope is lost (Just most of it), and it's certainly served it's purpose well. I've personally been looking at the HiRISE pictures, it's alot of work to carefully look for something out of the ordinary... There's still a glimmer of hope that there is something near the noise level that is MGS. FYI, the pictures weren't of the entire 2 minute uncertainty window that MGS currently has, only a few seconds of it, based off of two canadates from the nav. camera. Still, they are among the largest HiRISE images taken... Cheer up though, there might still be some exciting news from HiRISE in the short term future. The release of pictures was delayed in part due to the press conference today, and with the holiday in the US, but it will be coming shortly. MRO in many ways is an upgraded MGS, it will allow for photographing the entire weather patterns at Mars, and for high-resolution pictures anywhere, just like MGS, only it's spacial and spectral resolution will be better. That's not to say that MGS couldn't have done something more, only that it served it's purpose to the day that it was replaced, and not a day longer. Sad it is there couldn't be a bit more overlap, to compare the data sets a bit more, but it's something that will take MRO quite some time, to build up the great reputation that MGS left for us.

[Stu]

Cheer up though, there might still be some exciting news from HiRISE in the short term future.

There you go again, dangling a tasty morsel, a tantalising tidbit before our noses then whipping it away again with a silent movie villain's laugh. Booo!!! Booooo!!!! Cruelty, thy name is tuvas...!!!

Come on, admit it, you've imaged a martian's rubber duck floating down a gully, haven't you...

[Phil Stooke]

"Have you 'found' it in the 12m Themis Vis mosaic yet"

No, it's too small. The Gale image is only 2000 pixels wide, or 1 of their CCDs. That makes it only 600 m wide, so individual craters are too small to be seen in the Themis Visible images. I used the original images rather than using the mosaic.

I really like this detail of it. You even see cracks and irregularities in the bigger rocks.

Phil