Deep Impact camera data, Messing about with images from the PDS Options

[elakdawalla]

I'm wondering if anybody here has spent any time working on the Tempel 1 images from Deep Impact. The data are available at the Small Bodies Node (see e.g. http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/holdings/dif-c...0/dataset.html), and Version 2 of the PDS archive (which appears to have been published 3 years ago) includes versions of the data that have been calibrated, cleaned of instrument artifacts, and converted to units of radiance and also I/F. The HRI data have not been deconvolved to remove the blur: a bit of playing shows that without deconvolution, HRI images look pretty similar to MRI images. Attached is a color composite I made of the highest-resolution full-globe shots of Tempel 1 captured by the MRI before the impact. The image isn't big but there's more variety in color than I expected. This is made from the I/F images and is an RGB composite of red, green, and violet continuum filter images, overlaid over a clear image that I sharpened slightly. It's very red, but I think that's real.

Has anybody else worked with these?

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[elakdawalla]

Nice, is that one of the lookback frames?

Funny story...I was at Von Karman for the DI impact event. During the Q and A session following the briefing where they showed the lookback images for the first time, some random TV reporter chick asked A'Hearn whether he could "explain what was going on in that tunnel image." Everyone on the panel, and everyone in the room, looked confused for a few seconds as they tried to figure out what the hell she was talking about. Then you could feel a mix of contempt and horror wash across the room as everyone realized she was talking about the lookback image, and had had absolutely no idea what she was looking at; trying to make sense of it, her brain had matched it to the view through a dark tunnel. Contempt -- what was she doing in this room, how could she have no idea what she was seeing? And horror, especially on the part of the panel -- does anybody out there in the public have any understanding of what we just accomplished? A'Hearn stammered some sort of basic answer describing that photo. Afterward, I think all the other reporters asking questions worked harder to sound like they were smart and knew what was going on.

--Emily

[tedstryk]

It is a large stack of deconvolved lookback frames.