Here's a little goodie from my visit to Brown University earlier this summer (and big thanks to everybody there for the help, both in the archives in the John Hay Library and in the RPIF).

This map shows the first serious effort to pick landing sites for Viking. If you read the NASA history volume 'On Mars', by Ezell and Ezell, those authors mention a meeting late in 1970 when the members of the Viking Landing Site Working Group proposed 'several lists of sites, including six by Carl Sagan'. But Ezell and Ezell don't identify the sites. I hoped to find the committee minutes, among Tim Mutch's papers in the archives. I did get to see his papers, but mostly material on Mars 1984 (a rover mission) plus some interesting personal things about his Himalayan expeditions before the one he died on.

But in the RPIF I found - or rather Peter Nievert found for me - a real gem. Ezell and Ezell had written a much more complete account of the site selection process, in a hand-annotated typescript. It must have been condensed for the later history volume, but this version had all the missing bits in it - very nice indeed. So here is a map of those sites, chosen when the only spacecraft data were from Mariners 4, 6 and 7 (so plotted on a Mariner basemap).

Phil

Click to view attachment

Viking 2 lander site in years 1976 and 1978.

"High speed" panorama from Viking 1. Its low-res, not so good as from vikingmars (really awesome job!).
But its all around panorama.

Morning on Mars from Viking 2 lander. First image was transferred to Earth without middle part.

Here by the way is a montage of the quadrant pairs in the MSSS versions of the VL2 Camera 1 pm mosaic. These are less than the full resolution however they are corrected for the VL2 tilt.

Click to view attachment

Steve

...and the same for camera 2.

Click to view attachment

As a reminder I have links to the full resolution VL1 mosaics from the JPL photojournal about halfway down in this web page:

http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/viking.html

Also noted is Calvin Hamilton's mosaic from VL2 (full resolution, corrected for tilt). I had worked on VL2 hi-res mosaics for morning, noon, and afternoon with each camera (as available) so it would interesting to see these all assembled into one place.

scalbers, Machi - just fantastic work, guys, genuinely thrilling to see those images. I wonder what amazing sights we'd enjoy if we - and by "we" I obviously mean geniuses like you! - went back through the all Viking data and used modern image processing techniques on the lesser-known images...

Stu - one "modern" thing I've long been interested in would be to combine low-res color information with the hi-res mosaic intensities. This might look pretty good if the lighting were close enough in each.

Steve

All these ideas are very good - and exactly what I was hoping to encourage when I started this thread. I'll dig out some more of my stuff too...

Phil

I've tried it and it's very hard to do. You have to correct the lowres color for tilt and camera distortions. Then, light doesn't match at all most of the time.
My guess is that the best approach would be to reconstruct a full mosaic using only color images with consistent lighting and at the best possible resolution.

Yes I can appreciate the hi-res color mosaics might be challenging, yet I believe the effort may be worthwhile. The hi-res is three times the angular resolution of the low-res so there is a significant gain in detail (9 times the pixels). I recall back in 1977 that this type of combining was done at least in the context of individual hi-res images and it looked pretty good. It was done at JPL/IPL using VICAR so any geometric corrections would have been doable (e.g. with the GEOCAM program).

I wonder if the original imagery can still be reprocessed with VICAR somehow. Otherwise something like IDL or other languages can fairly easily correct for camera tilt. The other camera distortions might require something like what VICAR/GEOCAM did if they are significant. If there are offsets in shadows then maybe a fancier program can be put together that would use "nearby" color information when needed.

Looking online, here are some hi-res/low-res combo color images from Mary A. Dale-Bannister.

Here's another one from Ricardo Nunes who also worked with Ted Stryk's super-resolution images as mentioned in post #5 of this thread.

The black and white mosaics do have fairly consistent lighting, so I'm checking whether there are any wide angle panoramic color images (or mosaics) from similar times of day where this can be attempted. Using Phil's PDS link in post #19 I was able to construct this fairly wide angle low-res color view. I can see the lighting and geometry issues when matching to the hi-res mosaic. The missing vertical lines need to be filled in as well - there used to be a VICAR program called FILLVL to do this.

Click to view attachment

That's what I've found so far.

Steve

Can anyone help me with this? I'm trying to find out how many images were taken by Viking Orbiter 1 and how many by Viking Orbiter 2. All I can find is the combined value.

Phil

Sorting the CUMINDEX.TAB file for Viking Orbiter on SPACECRAFT_NAME, I get

34918 VIKING_ORBITER_1
15582 VIKING_ORBITER_2

Does this sound reasonable?

That was quick! Thanks very much. Yes, very reasonable because VO1 lasted twice as long as VO2.

Phil

Just to follow up, that number may not include some approach views, calibration images, satellite and ring search images etc. (Yes, there was a satellite and ring search at some point fairly late in the mission) - but it seems to match the archived image totals - as of course the source would suggest it should. I have a suggestion that 1039 images are not included in those totals. That may also include some which were either lost in transmission, and lost or unreadable on the old tapes.

Phil

It includes the following:
547 VO1 images targeted at "STAR" or "MARS" during cruise -- there's your approach and calibration images;
8 VO1 images of the bicentennial emblem;

I don't see any VO2 approach "STAR" images, but there are the PRE_ORBIT images of MARS, 91 of them.

One thing I know for sure that the PDS archive does not include is the Earth-Moon departure images. I tried to inquire with someone at the geosciences node about these but I don't think she understood that I was looking for original data, not cruddy old press-release images; she didn't seem interested in pursuing them.

You can explore the file for yourself here:
ftp://pdsimage2.wr.usgs.gov/cdroms/viking.../vo_1064/index/ (cumindex.tab and cumindex.lbl)

--Emily

Thanks again!

Phil

This is an image that, as far as I know, has never been compiled or published before. Earlier I posted mosaics of images taken underneath the two Viking landers using small mirrors on the sampler arm. This is another one. It's from Viking Lander 2, showing images taken over three sols far apart in the mission, looking at the area near Footpad 2. This footpad carried a temperature sensor. They needed to know if it was buried or not - Viking 1's was buried, this one is not. The sensor is near the right end of the mosaic, but I couldn't tell you which object it is.

Phil

(EDIT: I changed 'left' to 'right' in the last sentence - it's correct now. I forgot I had flipped it to remove the mirror reversal.)

Click to view attachment

Very cool - I have been transported in time AND space!

Phil, I'm pretty sure : this is the temp sensor
Click to view attachment

...And by the way, phil : you did a GREAT work !

i would say that the temp sencer is this ( in red ) and it's cable ( in green )
Click to view attachment

Here is the comparable mosaic of images of the footpad temperature sensor from Viking 1. This sensor, on Footpad 2, was found to be buried (or partly buried?) in the fine drift material which covered the footpad itself. Like the Viking 2 mosaic, I don't think this was ever previously assembled like this and published. The images were taken on sols 40, 203 and 520.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Hello,

Thank you all, especially those that process and share their pictures !
Oliver, The Viking High-resolution panorama are magnificent !!

The few Viking Lander high-resolution color images of good quality that I saw were also Olivier :

VL1:
http://www.planete-mars.com/goursac/2006/v...7-1280x1024.jpg
http://www.planete-mars.com/goursac/2006/v...07-1440x900.jpg
http://orbitmars.futura-sciences.com/galer...ursac-Mars8.jpg

http://www.planete-mars.com/goursac/2006/v...8-1280x1024.jpg
http://www.planete-mars.com/goursac/2006/v...08-1440x900.jpg
http://orbitmars.futura-sciences.com/galer...rsac-Mars11.jpg

VL2 :
http://orbitmars.futura-sciences.com/galer...rsac-Mars15.jpg

http://orbitmars.futura-sciences.com/galer...rsac-Mars13.jpg

http://www.planete-mars.com/goursac/2006/v...9-1280x1024.jpg
http://www.planete-mars.com/goursac/2006/v...09-1440x900.jpg



There are also "old" cited in post # 61:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/photo_gallery/p...rs.html#surface
But quality is not perfect ...


So I tried (for testing) the assembly of the luminance of the panorama of Olivier (post # 41) and the color of the Scalbers image (Post # 61), it is not perfect for several reasons:
- There is not color image with the arm in this position
- Several holes and pebbles are moved between the two.
- The sun is not at the same position.

But in a small piece, This is not bad :
Click to view attachment

now I try to make a low-resolution color panorama which corresponds more to high-resolution panorama ...
To be continued ...

Thanks for sharing your nice work Vanden. Next time please post your image as an attachment rather than a link to the full image. (your post above has been edited to do so.) A lot of people use slow connections or browse with their handhold phones and these large images can present a problem. Best to give people the choice of viewing the entire image.

Ok, I had not seen ...


Here is my low resolution color panorama :
Click to view attachment

And here a portion of the assembly :
Click to view attachment

Beautiful. Thanks!

Always love looking at Big Joe...wonder how he looks now. IIRC, V1 observed that a small part of his sand-cap fell off at one point.

Not his cap but the drift at his base!

Phil

Was it? I always thought that a piece of the cap fell off & impacted the base dune, but by now I should know better than to trust a 30+ yr.-old memory.

(My God...I'm old now!!!)

Thanks, Phil.

The only visible change was at the base, no change on top, so that can't be right. I'll post pics tomorrow.

Phil

Oh, I believe you, man; love to see the pics!

As I recall, NASA stated that this was the first example of small-scale natural erosion on another world ever observed (actually, unless the MERs or Pathfinder saw something as well it might still be the only one. Not sure if the sublimation seen by Phoenix counts, and can't call the polar landslides "small-scale".)

Regardless of the cause, the fresh gullies identified with MGS probably should be included, and some of them are very small. I guess it's all about where you draw the line and what falls in the category of erosion. Certainly the disappearing rover tracks is a form of natural erosion.

Viking 1 saw a second similar change later, as well. Spirit saw the little dust ripples move during a dust storm, with a nice animation posted on here at the time. We also saw tracks filling in with dust where we crossed old tracks (Home Plate, exiting Endurance, etc.) Pathfinder wasn't on the surface long enough to catch anything, and normally the MER rovers were not in one place long enough to see any changes.

Phil

Here are the two Viking 1 changes with a little bit of super-resolution to sharpen them. This is from the forthcoming Mars Exploration atlas - first draft now finished.

Phil

Click to view attachment

I should add that the Viking Lander imagery is ripe for re-analysis, looking for smaller overlooked changes. It can be tricky getting the lighting similar enough, but there's lots to do here.

Phil

Awesome. I forgot all about the Whale slump.

Thanks, Phil; anxiously awaiting publication of your atlas!!!

Here's another comparison image showing changes at the VL1 site:

Click to view attachment

Conical Piles 2, 3 and 5 were constructed to see if wind would erode them during the mission. In the long automated mode imaging period late in the mission, one of the targets they covered was this area with three soil piles. Sure enough, more than 2000 sols into the mission, all three piles were found to have disappeared. Ray Arvidson et al. described the change in a paper in Science in 1983.

Phil

That's fascinating Phil, thanks. I honestly wasn't aware they'd even done that.

Vanden, very nice to see your efforts as I'm catching up on this thread. Glad to see the lowres / hires combination is working. Seeing all the details that Viking showed, and in color really does better justice to the imagery.

How nice Vanden ! Your work is just GREAT (and thanks for your nice quote).
To help you, here are some versions I made in 2001 extracting the colors from a low-res (BLU, GRN and RED diodes) mosaic and paste them on the b&w hi-res BB3 & BB4 diodes mosaic (one of the versions you know already). For the "Sandy Flats" pic (the one you are working on), was added a low-res BLU diode "sky dynamics" image above the meteorological mast (pic taken earlier).
=> Your results show really good improvements in color quality and paste... Congratulations to you !
Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

...And another one, done using the same techniques, and just found in my archives. Enjoy too !
Click to view attachment

Tremendous, I really dig that last one...
... thanks for posting...

Thank you for these images and explanations.
I like see "new" images of old missions !!

Here is the complete panorama :
Click to view attachment

Wauw! to that complete panorama, new desktop!

Finally full size, high-res, color panorama from Viking. Spectacular!

Thanks Vanden : how nice to see my old b&w mosaic now in full colors, thanks to your wonderful work. You did it greeeaaaat !!!
to you !

A little experiment. This is a super-resolution composite of five HiRISE images of Viking Lander 2.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Wow. That is sharp.