[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

Just perusing thru the Viking Lander dataseta ( amazing, less than 1CD each - and I've got 9 DVD's for Spirits Pancam Sols 1-270 alone ) and found this three-colour set - I thought it looked fab, and I've never seen it before.

Here's the info...

Product Id  11E123-GRN
Spacecraft Name  VIKING_LANDER_1  Instrument Name  CAMERA_1
Mission Phase Name  EXTENDED MISSION  Target Name  MARS
Start Time  1977-07-31T08:08:51Z  Stop Time  1977-07-31T08:16:12Z
Planet Day Number  366  Local Time  10.70
Start Azimuth  162.50 degrees  Stop Azimuth  245.00 degrees
Center Elevation  10.00 degrees  Sampling Parameter Interval  0.12 degrees
Observation Type  COLOR TRIPLET  Filter Name  GREEN
Gain Number  4  Offset Number  1
Detector Temperature  -18.10  Dust Flag  FALSE
Start Rescan Number  0  Total Rescan Number  0
Scan Rate  16000 BPS  Data Path Type  RECORDED UHF LINK
Line Samples  689  Missing Samples  3

[4th rock from th...]

Couldn't wait!!!

Here's part of tedstryk's image merged (LRGB) with color data!!!



Color resolution is good enough to show individual colors (well... some more brown, some gray, some orange :-) ) on the largest rocks. Unfortunately the distant features are a uniform "Mars orange"...

Even so I'm surprised to find that 6 bit data can give this much information. Perhaps this is because it's uncompressed? Or is it something like Vinil vs CD question ? (old technology giving more human pleasing results?)

[tedstryk]

Couldn't wait!!!

Here's part of tedstryk's image merged (LRGB) with color data!!!



Color resolution is good enough to show individual colors (well... some more brown, some gray, some orange :-) ) on the largest rocks. Unfortunately the distant features are a uniform "Mars orange"...

Even so I'm surprised to find that 6 bit data can give this much information. Perhaps this is because it's uncompressed? Or is it something like Vinil vs CD question ? (old technology giving more human pleasing results?)

By the way, if you want to use this on your site, as long as I get credit for the super-res work, you are more than welcome to use any of the images in color mergers, of if you want to try to improve on them. This goes for anyone.

[4th rock from th...]

By the way, if you want to use this on your site, as long as I get credit for the super-res work, you are more than welcome to use any of the images in color mergers, of if you want to try to improve on them.  This goes for anyone.

Thank you! I'll look into that in the future. Let's see if some more super-res images appear in this thread !
I'd prefer to put a link to the original BW images, besides giving proper credit. Are you going to put this work on-line ?

About the 6 bit images: Gain and offset do make a difference. It's possible to have a high S/N ratio even with 64 levels if you assign them to digitizing a small part of image brighness range. This way the sky area might be clipped but the full avaliable image dinamic can be used to record all the brightness variation of the rocks.
I used to to the same when imaging the planets in 1997 with an old Logitech Quickcam (BW, 6 bits, parallel port camera) webcam and a small telescope...

[tedstryk]

Thank you! I'll look into that in the future. Let's see if some more super-res images appear in this thread !
I'd prefer to put a link to the original BW images, besides giving proper credit. Are you going to put this work on-line ?

About the 6 bit images: Gain and offset do make a difference. It's possible to have a high S/N ratio even with 64 levels if you assign them to digitizing a small part of image brighness range. This way the sky area might be clipped but the full avaliable image dinamic can be used to record all the brightness variation of the rocks.
I used to to the same when imaging the planets in 1997 with an old Logitech Quickcam (BW, 6 bits, parallel port camera) webcam and a small telescope...

Yes, I eventually plan to put some of them up. But I am just really impressed with your colorization of that image...I have been trying but can't quite replicate. I agree about 64 levels IF most of the levels are pretty close together. When the Viking images were coverted from 8 bit to 6 bit for transmission, they tried to maximize use of the levels. Some images suffer more than others.

[4th rock from th...]

... But I am just really impressed with your colorization of that image...I have been trying but can't quite replicate.  ...

Some hints:

After you have your raw color image, go to the "channel mixer" and adjust the source/output channels % to correct the filters vs human vision response

Create a copy of this image. You'll do doing further color adjustment to this version, but will need the original to get good luminance data.

Get a reference mars image from the MER rovers with apropriate illumination and rock/sand distribution and amount of sky visible. Select areas on both images on wich this elements are represented on equal amounts. The use the "Match color" command to match the Viking image to the MER one. This part is trial and error and requires some experimentation with the selection areas. The colors will eventually match, but the contrast on the resulting image will be low. This is OK, because this is just color data to paste over the original image. It's important to keep the visible part of the lander unselected, as it will fool the matching process.

Select the new color image and paste it on to a new layer over the original. Put the layer as "color" and 100%.

That's it for the most part.

If needed you can play with the levels and adjust the image some more, but the processing I described gives good results and corrects most of the bluish hues from the sky and lander.

Hope this helps ;-)

I'm working now on super-resolution compositions myself, after seeing the latest images posted in this thread !!!
This is a 3 monocrome images + 2 color images super-resolution image I'm testing with.



It looks more and more like Pathfinder...

[Mark Rejhon]

Some hints:

Great looking! It does need a little "Salt And Pepper" filtering to remove those dark and bright specks.

I assume you split out the luminance channel of the color images to stack with the monochrome images, before recombining, to help sharpen the color images!

[tedstryk]

There are no color images. Just monochrome images taken through different filters. In the case of Viking, usually the rgb images are of so much lower resolution than the broadband images that they are useless in the super-res stack, but on other image sets, such as Voyager, where the color-filtered images can be just as sharp, they can be added to the stack. I think (and I could be wrong) that, film cameras that were returned (Apollo, Zond) nonwithstanding, the first spacecraft to transmit color images in a single frame will be MSL.

[dvandorn]

...I think (and I could be wrong) that, film cameras that were returned (Apollo, Zond) nonwithstanding, the first spacecraft to transmit color images in a single frame will be MSL.

I think you're right. Even the color TV cameras on the Apollo missions were color-wheel systems, in which a wheel of R-G-B filters spun in front of a monochrome vidicon tube. When the image was received back on Earth, it was passed electronically through a set of video generators that combined each tri-color triplet into a single colored TV frame.

I believe the shuttle and ISS are now both equipped with TV cameras that send color frames, and I know they have been using digital color still-picture cameras on shuttle and ISS flights, so MSL won't be the first spacecraft of any type to transmit single-frame color pictures. But I think you're right, it will be the first lunar or planetary probe to do so.

-the other Doug