Has anyone played around with the HiRISE PDS release images yet? More specifically, color images? I have no time to do anything.

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/pds_release.php
http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/Missions/MRO_mission.html

Speaking of the PDS release. I was browsing the CTX images, but they're all in IMG format. So...:

- Is there a way to view these images in JPG/PNG format?
- How can I view the IMG files?
- When is MSSS going to update their site? Mars Express actually released more images this year.

Well - IMG2PNG will help - and/or NASAView (google ) for viewing IMG's.

Doug

Thanks. Works great. I wonder how long it will take CTX to map the entire planet! Like what THEMIS did here:

http://jmars.asu.edu/data/thm_dir/

But then at 6 Meter/pixel! I can't wait.

4,000 gigapixels of 6m res will cover the planet - I think. Maths might be wrong.

Doug

A coworker pointed out an easy way to find the dimensions for .img files:

Open the file with a text editor. The header contains the info you need.

I work on Macs, and prefer using something like Photoshop, Gimp, or ImageJ to open .img files. Once I find the dimensions via Textedit, I open the files as raw files in Photoshop.


HTH,
-Tim.

Thanks for that tip Tim - this is the first CTX image I found of Gusev - a central 2kx2k crop. This is the non-flatted non-projected version.


Doug

I've only just downloaded the next version of ISIS and haven't even got it's support data yet, but am looking forward to stitching together something in colour, either false from hirise or the more accurate MARCI or CRISM.

I'm interested in oblique views of Mars like we used to get from MGS, so I might try searching CTX emission angles.

MouseOnMars

The USGS PIGWAD site has footprint maps for HiRISE, CTX, and MOC (through S23, the MSSS site only has MOC images through S10). HiRISE and CTX images are those of the July PDS release, and each footprint is hotlinked to the corresponding image. Site can be accessed as follows:

webgis.wr.usgs.gov/pigwad/maps/mars.htm (publicly available)

then go to right-hand column "Beginner" and click on "Launch Mars General"

I've always enjoyed footprint maps for their display of surface coverage. You can really tell what features are of prime scientific interest. Mars north polar cap got good coverage by CTX (monitoring retreat/advance?).

That's some interface. Well done Pigwad team

I think the Mars datasets are really starting to look formidable, the way they are combined like this. My only concern is that I don't get lost in all the data and forget why I'm looking at Mars in the first place.

MouseOnMars

Some of you may have noticed that samples of our color processed images have started to show up on the HiRISE website over the last few weeks. Well today we have a treat for you, we have released 143 color images onto the website. Obviously these are all false color, but the majority of them are quite striking. All of the images released today are of candidate landing sites for the Mars Science Lab (or areas nearby candidate landing sites).

Over the next few months we intend to start color processing the rest of the data we have already received, so there will be more coming in the near future.

Enjoy!

Art - pure Art.

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_002101_1315

Now what would be REALLY great would be if you made some 1200x1024 and 1600x1200 so I could use them as desktop images. :-)

--Greg

Actually, our webmaster is doing that, although only for selected images. I also don't think the wallpaper he's making is large enough for high resolution monitors. I've been meaning to mention that to him...

GORGEOUS false colour images released this week, and I have to be honest and say they make a very welcome change from the 'weird shapes at the pole' images we've been seeing so much of

Anyway, these are purely for fun; not suggesting these colours are particularly accurate or anything...

Click to view attachment


Click to view attachment

... and one more...


Click to view attachment

Wow. Beautiful work, Stu. MRO is making Mars look more & more like Chesley Bonestell's original visions...

Its really hard to keep up with the vast amount of HiRise images ...
I'm recently working on some colorizations to keep the "Alien Landscapes" series running




link to the original data:PSP_001816_1410

Welcome back Nirgal! GORGEOUS pic!

Thanks, Stu

One of the most amazing things with the HiRISE imagery is that there are so many interesting detail views waiting to
be discovered among the many many gigapixels ...

For example this one:


original link:PSP_004044_1640

Anyone else want to post their favorite detail MRO views ?

Does anyone know the date of the second HiRISE PDS release? I thought I heard once that releases would be at six-month intervals, so we may be fairly close.

Just to clarify, I see that the HiBlog site mentions that 1200 color images have just been released. These have probably been in the pipeline for quite a while. I was wondering if there would be a forthcoming release of images taken after the first PDS release (June or July?). These I assume would not be fully processed to color images.

Welcome back, Bernhard!
Your pictures are great, but last one, without a scale, is a little disappointing.... (is a MRO or MER MI camera picture? ).

This is my side-by-side comparison of two "Bright Streaks and Dark Fans" pictures taken 4.5 days apart (PSP_002622_0945)
Click to view attachment

Thanks dilo ... and criticism always very welcome

reminds me of my former idea of augmenting the orbiter-images with a small artificial airplane shadow as a scale.
Will try to include this in future images ...
I found that detail shot quite dramatic with the rugged shadows and the oblique viewing angle ...
and I am actually always looking especially for images/crops taken at late evening or early morning local time for the more dramatic shadows IMO those are the best views that look more like viewed from out of an airplane/helicopter window rather than
a satelite image from orbit

[quote]
This is my side-by-side comparison of two "Bright Streaks and Dark Fans" pictures taken 4.5 days apart (PSP_002622_0945)
Click to view attachment

Wow ! spectacular! ... I wonder how close the bluish color of the fans comes to the "true perceived" color ...

BTW.: Has anyone already tried "true calbirated" MRO composites (like slinted's great MER calibration work...) ?

I found the perfect landing site for MSL:

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_004067_1230

Bloody hell!

...couldn't have said it better myself, Doug! (Good one, OWW! )

Where is this, anyhow? There are actually many rocks on top of rocks here. Makes the Viking & Pathfinder sites look like city parks by comparison...

EDIT: Duh. Should have looked at your link. Okay, the perimeter of Argyre is not a happy place. The rim of Hellas is probably even worse. Suspect that heavy winds from the diurnal entrance & exit of air into these deep basins scours away most of the soil at the edges, leaving nothin' but rocks...LOTS of rocks.

Can I ask something that's been on my mind for a while? Is anyone else out there wondering why the good folks behind the MRO mission aren't making more of its images? Or taking... oh jeez, how do I put this without sounding ungrateful... more exciting, more stimulating images?

I mean, looking at that picture up there I thought, like Doug, "B****y hell!!" Look what it can do! That detail! But every week - at least for the past couple of months or so - I've gone to the MRO site on New Release day, looked at the images and although I haven't thought "So what?" I have thought "Hmmm... ok...". Nothing has really grabbed me, not like in the early days when every pic made me shake my head with disbelief. Lots of pictures of polygonal structures at the poles... strange layering here and there... dunefields... all very interesting scientifically, I'm sure, and very useful for planning further missions certainly, but nothing startling, nothing hypnotic for people not directly involved in the field.

I am NOT putting down MRO, no-one suggest that I am, please. But I do know that while this mission had me almost rabid with expectation and excitement in the days just after landing now I find myself getting a little ho-hum about the images being released. I think they're just too large scale. I'd love to see extreme close-ups of surface features, showing more familiar scales. I know anyone with a decent broadband service and a good PC etc can do that for themselves if they download and peruse the images at their leisure, but there must be many, many people like me who are still on dialup who are using less-than-state-of-the-art PCs who would love to be able to see images like the ones OWW and Nirgal posted above.

Again, I'm not disrespecting MRO or anyone behind it. I just think that OWW's pic shows the real capability of the camera, and that, perhaps, more could be made of it. The most amazing images for me have shown crumbling cliff faces, mesas casting long jagged shadows, things like that. I think we need to see more of those - and if they're already on the pictures, then dramatic features like those need to be zoomed in on and posted as pictures in their own right.

Not criticising. Just a little frustrated.

Stu, only thing I can think of is that the MRO team is neck-deep in accomplishing the nominal mission objectives right now...but, of course, that's kind of pale. Cassini's outreach is occurring during the primary mission, and by comparison it's been outstanding (well, to give credit where credit is due, it's been extremely good in its own right).

Only other thing I can think of is that Mars orbiters have taken a much lower profile in contrast to Mars landers. This is probably a huge mistake to make with an instrument suite as powerful as that of MRO's.

Cassini has an encounter every month or two with not much happening in between. MRO takes more data than a Cassini encounter every day. And frankly, the Cassini images are far easier to pick good ones from, don't you think?

I think it's fair to expect that one or two images from MRO will make it onto most lists of the top space images of 2007. I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect a lot more outreach than that. (Though I am disappointed that most likely none of those images will have been taken by an MSSS instrument this year.)

Well, don't the HiRISE team release pretty much EVERYTHING they take to their website eventually? This is in marked contrast to most teams, who do very well to release at most one image per day (which is still quite a lot). If other teams are more selective, it's more likely that each choice will be more exciting. With HiRISE we are getting the ho-hum (*cough* Phoenix landing sites *cough cough*) along with the great, and everything in between. Consider MER. How thrilling is each and every Navcam drive image? (Are the northern plains aesthetically equivalent to the MER Sundial?)

Also, the best stuff in HiRISE images, IMO, is found when you look at the images at near their full resolution, and hunt around for fun features. None of us seems to have time to do that for all the images. So finding true greatness is hit and miss. That makes it all the more important for each of us to post cool stuff here when we find it.

--Emily

I'm in basic agreement with Emily's line of reasoning. The thumbnail HiRISE images on their website look pretty much like Mars images from other spacecraft because of the highly reduced resolution. Very few of us have the hardware (or even time) to download entire HiRISE images, except an occasional one that picques somebody's curiousity. There are subimages for HiRISE on the webpages, but I'm not sure they're full resolution either. I'd like to see full resolution subimages of interesting features featured more prominently at their website (yeah, I know, where's the time for that).
I think the "Wow" factor would go up substantially.

Thanks Emily, appreciate the feedback. That's exactly my point. As most people here know by now, I do a lot of what's now trendily called "Outreach" (aka 'standing at the front of a drafty church hall or community centre showing spacey pics to the public' ) and to be brutally honest I can't really use most of the MRO images as they are. The images that I can and do use succesfully are the smaller scale ones, the crops I've managed to take from the large images, and features people here have picked out and kindly given me permission to use - the crumbling ledges, shadow-casting mesas, etc. I think that the results of HiRISE - heralded as "The People's Camera" I seem to remember? - are not being shared adequately. And by that I don't mean anything is being held back, I know they release everything, but I think it would be a good idea for the team to do some of that "hunting around for fun features" you referred to and put those pics on the website too. That's the way they'll get people more inspired and excited by the camera, the mission, and Mars itself. Because let's be honest, MRO is not exactly enjoying a very high profile right now. Discussion about its images here, on what is probably the most passionate and knowledgeable space exploration forum there is, has reduced greatly. We used to drool over each release of new images moments after they appeared. Now... well, not so much. Which is no big deal, these things wax and wane, but still...

I'm sure the team have images of their own favourite places, screen-grabs of "wow!" features that impressed them. We and the public would enjoy seeing those too, alongside the BIG images that are wonderful in their own right.

No one can. That's the problem. Until someone comes out with a 20,000 x 120,000 pixel projector. Before the advent of the viewer, I tried to download and view these things in full res - and I got a little insight into just how hard it must be to process these things - let alone have an informative web-page for each one.

They do show interesting snippets with a few of them, and we've had four rounds of science output ( http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/sim/ ) which include not only what you're talking about but scientific discourse as well. Missions can't maintain high profiles for ever - it's impossible. Spirit and Opportunity are not high profile at the moment. The effort ( i.e. money ) involved in maintaining an ammount of outreach material like that simply isn't available. I wish it were - but it isn't.

There is so much data that it's going to take decades for it to be appreciated. Wihtout broadband, I'd say it's impossible to appreciate it at all - it's just a symptom of the instrument. The only way to enjoy it is via the IAS Viewer which makes every image brilliantly accesable for anyone with a reasonably good connection. Truthfully, I don't think they can do any more than that. Without that, you're only ever going to get 1% of the picture - metaphorically and literally - and to use it, you've got to have broadband - or extreme patience.

Doug

My connection is okay for the files, and 4 gigs of ram is fine..., processing power is on the edge... - the only 'problem' I'm facing is hard-disk space. I have now a 250 Gb drive stuffed with those .jp2's, but I lack time of searching all of it for interesting 'spots'...

I feel it's up to us though, as Emily pointed out, to provide the community with selected regions from the files.

Nico

Good discussion, thanks for the feedback guys. Guess I'll just have to make do with skimming the cream of the MRO images from UMSF's postings until I can upgrade from my current less-than-state-of-the-art PC. Another reason to appreciate the time people take to post images here.

You don't need a banzai computer to use the IAS viewer (at least, I don't think you do) - just a wider pipe

Doug

Most images in popular books and calendars seem to be the same images released on the Planetary Photojournal, and sadly not the hundreds of gems hiding in the PDS. This CTX image would be a good candidate for a calendar though:

Image P01_001558_1325_XI_47S326W

EDIT: image updated. flipped.

Sorry, but that's just frakking* gorgeous!! If that's what's hiding on MRO images I think this Saturday I'll go down to the library and take advantage of their mega-fast broadband pcs... their pipe is a lot wider than mine.

* Note to UK board members: SKY is showing the special BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: RAZOR tonight at 9pm!

Here is the remarkable image OWW posted zoomed-in.

Click to view attachment

Zoomed-in even more.

Click to view attachment

Now, you see, that's just rubbing it in...

I think part of the reason for this loss of interest, so to speak, is that the MRO images are taken from a vertical point of view. This is very useful scientifically, but for the average person, this is an unusual way of viewing surface features, and meaningful mainly to specialists. We are used to seeing landscapes from the surface, and sometimes obliquely from an airplane. For public outreach, the MRO team should release more oblique views created from the stereoscopic coverage of the Martian surface. It would give the public a more vivid sense of "being there". In another thread, I asked about the possibility of constructing these views ourselves, but apparently, it is a high tech trick unavailable to "amateurs".

If the DEM's make it out - I'll do HD animations of them as flyarounds. I'd love to - but that data isn't on the HiRISE PDS 'to do ' list unfortunately.

Doug

This must explain why a MER image is on the front cover of TIME every week.

Frankly I'm not sure this loss of interest is any different than what we saw with MGS. The images would have to be pretty spectacular to elicit a "wow" response day after month after year. I think you guys have just gotten to the point that the instrument teams arrived at a long time ago.

THEMIS still releases an image every week. Does anyone here look at them? I'd wonder about the cost-benefit ratio of making a lot of effort to do regular releases, if even enthusiasts express dissatisfaction with such outreach efforts. Better to dump the data to the PDS and let you find the pretty ones.

Wow, phaaaantastic !

OWW, could you also post the original link to the image ?
I could not find it at the MSS CTX web-site ...

Yup -I have a THEMIS image of the day item on my dashboard using webclip on OSX.

You have a point about the sustainability. Perhaps it's because the initial 'wow' isn't actually at the science or the image per se - but the capability inferred by the images - the demonstrated ability of the instrument. Once that 'wow - 30cm' or 'wow - 5000 pixels across' has died down - it's hard to find much to be excited about if you're not trained to know what you're looking at.

There are odd-balls to that pattern, you can always get a 'wow - a lander seen from orbit' or 'wow - the Earth!' moment. But generally, I don't think any ammount of outreach effort could maintain a laymans interest in instruments like HiRISE, CTX, THEMIS etc.

What I think I WOULD return to day after day is daily MARCI maps in the way I regularly check into the MODIS rapid response page to see how the UK's looking most days. The MARCI weather reports are a great treat in that regard - nice to see that instrument getting 'out' a little more.

A comparative analysis between MER, Cassini, SOHO, MRO and other missions website stats would be an interesting statistic. I may try and pull together forum-view stats for UMSF to see if the 'traffic' to each section varies in an obvious event-by-event way.

Doug

Nirgal, the image was downloaded from the PDS:
http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/Missions/MRO_mission.html
And converted with the img2png tool.

Mcaplinger, I still look at the THEMIS daily releases and I'm sure a lot of people on this board do.
I have to admit I was a bit disappointed that the MOC/CTX daily releases stopped on msss.com. Nirgal's question in the previous post proves that more people hunger for more than the 7 CTX images currently on msss.com. Just dumping it all on the PDS means downloading and converting 50 Mb files, and that may be a bit too much for the average person interested in Mars.

I'm pleasantly surprised though that the weekly weather updates are back:
http://www.msss.com/msss_images/latest_weather.html

Great. Now the same for CTX and I'm in heaven.

EDIT: Doug, you beat me to it on the THEMIS images. So I'm not the only one checking those images as I suspected.

I'll make you all an offer: there are plenty of people on this forum who can process the raw CTX images just as well as we can. Find some images you consider worth sharing from the current released PDS data, process and format them as you like, and I'll link to them from my own page on the MSSS web site and credit you accordingly.

Do it soon and maybe we can get a CTX image on Emily's best of the year list, which would make me very happy.

I'll also point out that the CTX PDS volumes are pretty good; there's a cumindex.tab that has text lines describing each image on every volume, and there's a pre-processed JPEG browse image for each image on the volume.