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vjkane2000
I've been wondering what the focal lengths are for the two New Horizon cameras (Ralph and Lorri). Curious to know how much Alan et al. were able to squeeze into their weight budget.
gpurcell
QUOTE (vjkane2000 @ Apr 22 2005, 03:57 AM)
I've been wondering what the focal lengths are for the two New Horizon cameras (Ralph and Lorri).  Curious to know how much Alan et al. were able to squeeze into their weight budget.
*


And will they have a way to focus 'em if the bake off doesn't fit the modeling profile!
Bob Shaw
The sad thing about the optical calibration issues that appear to be cropping up on so many current/future missions is that 35 years ago, they had the thing done and dusted:

http://members.tripod.com/petermasek/mariner9.html

"...star images were taken during the interplanetary cruise and also while orbiting Mars to determine and then monitor other geometric properties of the cameras. The narrow angle camera had a detection threshold of 9th visual magnitude, enabling at least a few stars to be imaged in any long exposure picture. Focal lengths and relative camera alignments were computed from the star images and were found to be stable to an accuracy of a pixel throughout the mission."

Of course, that was before all the fun with Hubble!

You'd think, though, that after Hubble, and MCO, and Genesis there's be a sorta checklist cum diary on each of the mission staff's desks - you know, things like:

* Fix Focus by Friday
* Go Metric on Monday
* Set pyros after Sunday (AKA This Way Up on Wednesday!)
aharris
QUOTE (gpurcell @ Apr 22 2005, 02:14 PM)
And will they have a way to focus 'em if the bake off doesn't fit the modeling profile!
*



"Go metric on Monday" ... ? Ouch... smile.gif
hendric
QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Apr 22 2005, 08:07 PM)
The sad thing about the optical calibration issues that appear to be cropping up on so many current/future missions is that 35 years ago, they had the thing done and dusted:

http://members.tripod.com/petermasek/mariner9.html

*


Well, I'd bet $10 that the pixels now are at least an order of magnitude smaller, if not more, than the pixels for Mariner 9. I'd bet $1 they're 2 or more.
edstrick
The Mariner 4 images of Mars were badly degraded by a design-defect light leak. They were salvaged by digital image processing. The 6 bit data was inadequate for lower exposure images and after picture 11 of 21 1/10, the imaged degraded rapidly into digitization contour patterns

The Mariner 6 and 7 Mars images were badly degraded by analog tape recorder noise (the oxide flaked in flight and accumulated on the tape-heads), and electronic interference noise patterns, together with considerable geometric distortion of the images, severe shading across the images and bad residual images.

The Mariner 9 images were all-digital once the vidicon image was readout, but the cameras still had distortion, shading, and severe residual image problems. In addition, the color filter wheel stuck some 70 days into the mission, ending up at a polarized-orange position which was acceptible, but didn't help. The narrow angle camera also had severe defocus in images that had high exposure levels (not saturated)

Mariner 10 (Venus-Mercury) fixed the residual image problem by putting lightbulbs INSIDE the camera to create a uniform saturated-frame residual image (after the saturated frame was erased), permitting for the first time reasonable decalibration of the images, but the cameras had real problems with dust specks and lint shadows, and the spacecraft stability was inadequate for the narrow field of view, causing severe pointing wander. Look at Mercury flyby-2 mosaic segments for example. The real time 100,000+ bits/sec communication (experimental) was barely adequate at Mercury so the majority of images (other than the relatively few that could be taped for later playback) had severe salt-and-pepper noise.

Viking orbiters used twin cameras with silicon vidicon detectors instead of selenium-sulfer vidicons (I believe). The data storage system couldn't handle the 2 second (approx) raw readout rate from one camera while the other was taking an image in a rapid-fire left-right-left-right sequence for 50 meter/pixel landing site mapping from periapsis. The 7 bit (inadequate... orbiter images often have digitization contouring) data were split into several pixel channels and dumped in parallel tracks onto the tape recorder, which were then read out sequentially. Pictures (and there were many) where all tracks didnt' make it back to earth are missing columns of pixels in varying amounts which have to be filled in by interpolation. The zero-level of the camera ended up negative, instead of small positive numbers, so a blank exposure of black space was all ZERO's, and it was impossible to directly measure the dark-image shading of the cameras. Inflight calibration of shifts in the camera shading was difficult and generally inadequate. As each picture was being readout the other camera was shuttering it's exposure, then resetting the shutter. The mechanical shutter slap vibrated the cameras, resulting in a series of sine-wave interference patterns for a number of lines in the other camera's image, one near the bottom of the frame, one near the top.. due to "microphonic' vibrations of the photocathode in the camera that was beign read out.

Voyager's cameras were again selenium-sulfer vidicons, using the same lens as Mariner 10 for the narrow angle camera (with improvements). Dust specks were minor, calibration techniques reasonably well worked out. The cameras could be operated with light flood on for optimum calibration, or light flood off for low-light-level sensativity. Inflight calibration between encounters greatly helped maintain decalibrated image quality, though a lot of the cal data has annoying levels of bit errors and missing lines etc, and I had poor luck using the calibration target images to decalibrated flat-field shading from Voyager images (they had an aluminum plate they could get sunlight on by reorienting the spacecraft and then point cameras and other instrumets at). Image stability and pointing was better than Mariner 10's but still less than ideal. Stability was improved after Saturn for the extended mission by reprogramming the attitude control system. The vidicon cameras still had a problem with image distortion, and the images are literally "stretched" toward bright objects by a pixel or two due to electron-beam deflection by the charge pattern on the vidicon surface. This made truely precise geometric measurements in navigation images and the like quite difficult. CCD utterly don't have that problem!

but: "The sad thing about the optical calibration issues that appear to be cropping up on so many current/future missions is that 35 years ago, they had the thing done and dusted"... Uh.. done and dusted?.. no way!
tedstryk
QUOTE (edstrick @ Sep 12 2005, 09:13 AM)
but:  "The sad thing about the optical calibration issues that appear to be cropping up on so many current/future missions is that 35 years ago, they had the thing done and dusted"...  Uh.. done and dusted?.. no way!
*


More accurately, most IMAGES we see now from these missions have been dusted wink.gif
Bob Shaw
I take the point regarding the steep learning curve on past missions - but it doesn't change the fact that nowadays the problems are known yet dumb mistakes keep getting made. I have every sympathy if it happens once, but after the Hubble mirror fiasco (and it's expensive recovery, for which all credit to those involved) you'd think that the word 'focus' would be at the forefront of everyone's mind...
edstrick
Bob Shaw: "... but it doesn't change the fact that nowadays the problems are known yet dumb mistakes keep getting made. "

AMEN.

I think it was a BAD mistake not to have a coarse focus adjustment on the deep impact camera.

A big "Uh... I thought we knew about this..." problem... Stardust had a massive problem with condensate from outgassed crud fogging the optics. The earth-flyby image of the moon was 90% fog and 10% image.... massively blurred. Repeated heating of the camera to degass the optics got most of it, but I'm not at all sure they ever did get all of it and the Wildt comet flyby pics I think are somewhat degraded by it. NEAR's optics were significantly fogged by hydrazine byproducts during the loss-of-control event at the first arrival burn attempt that nearly lost the mission (not the camera's fault), and Cassini has had significant fogging problems between Jupiter and Saturn that I think still has some residual that makes it impossible to search for low brightness outgassing plumes at Enceladus.

Fogged optics seem to be the other problem-of-the-decade, besides out of focus cameras.
tedstryk
QUOTE (edstrick @ Sep 12 2005, 08:44 PM)
Fogged optics seem to be the other problem-of-the-decade, besides out of focus cameras.
*


This has really been a problem since they got rid of scan platforms....
mcaplinger
QUOTE (edstrick @ Sep 12 2005, 12:44 PM)
Bob Shaw:  "... but it doesn't change the fact that nowadays the problems are known yet dumb mistakes keep getting made. "

AMEN.

I think it was a BAD mistake not to have a coarse focus adjustment on the deep impact camera.


I don't know all the details of the DI story, but I don't think you guys are being completely fair here.
You might recall that in the "old days" cameras had all-metal structures and masses of over 50 kg. For example, the Cassini ISS mass is about 58 kg, fully 4x heavier than the MOC on MGS with its graphite-epoxy optical structure. But for that mass savings, you have to work with a much trickier material. To say that all of the problems are known at this point is not really accurate.

You can usually assume that with optics, even mistakes that seem dumb with 20:20 hindsight are fairly subtle and hard to avoid once you appreciate all the details.

As for focus adjustment; it may be nice to have, but it's heavy and complex and if it fails, you can easily be worse off than before. We studied this trade very carefully for MRO CTX and ended up with no focus adjustment, and we intend to do the same for our LRO instruments. The MOC has focus control heaters, by necessity, but they have only a fairly limited adjustment range. See Ravine, M. A., et al., Graphite-epoxy optical systems: lessons learned on the way to Mars, Proceedings of the SPIE, 5179, 311-322, 2003.
Bob Shaw
QUOTE (mcaplinger @ Sep 13 2005, 10:42 PM)
I don't know all the details of the DI story, but I don't think you guys are being completely fair here...
*


I'm sure you're right (and closer to the subject matter, too!). But (and it's a big but) if graphite-epoxy structures have inherent problems, but are lighter, and metal structures are well-understood, but heavier, then that strikes me as being an excellent argument for 50Kg heavier spacecraft! The MSS kit has all worked well so far, and we all hope that it will continue to do so, but there's no virtue in weight loss if something then fails to perform - it's not as if there was a production line of interplanetary spacecraft and another could just be tweaked and slotted into the cycle for the next launch window!

There *have* been some dumb mistakes, and I'm sure that some technological adventures have also - in hindsight - appeared less than sensible, although they seemed like good ideas at the time. And there have been some technological innovations which have been utter triumphs, too!

The fact remains that what appear to be 'no-brainer' errors are bad for everybody, even if the root cause is subtle and unexpected and actually nobody's fault. The folk who fund (or try not to fund) our toys shouldn't be given any free ammunition with which to shoot 'em down, and words like 'out of focus' or 'basic errors in arithmetic' are way too easy for them to grab hold of. Those guys don't do subtle...
edstrick
The Deep Impact defocus problem has distinct similarities to the Hubble problem. Tester malfunction, and not enough independent testing to catch the error. Granted, the Deep Space camera was assembled out of focus so that as the structure degassed, it would drift into focus, but images of real objects at or near infinity are remarkably good targets for a final check on optics... even if you only measure the defocus independently. (granted, it's not easy to get images of objects at infinity from a cleanroom)

Sadly, the noise added to the Deep Impact images will probably render multispectral imaging of the nucleus useless due to noise amplification during the deconvolution process. There may well be no usable color information with the original s/n of the camera, but all we may now see is the brownish overall color described in postings from the DPS meeting.
dvandorn
QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Sep 14 2005, 04:44 AM)
The folk who fund (or try not to fund) our toys shouldn't be given any free ammunition with which to shoot 'em down, and words like 'out of focus' or 'basic errors in arithmetic' are way too easy for them to grab hold of. Those guys don't do subtle...
*

Amen, brother. Amen.

For want of a better term, the lawyers who decide on the fundings for these things think of them all as "rocket science." That's a paradigm statement for something that only a few people really, truly understand. If rocket scientists get it *wrong*, then it's got to be so hard to understand that maybe we shouldn't spend good money on it, eh?

Yeah -- let's not give the lawyers more ammunition than they already have.

-the other Doug
edstrick
Anyway.... there's essentially no such thing as "Rocket Science"...

It's ROCKET ENGINEERING.

But 99% of reporters doen't even know the difference between a Scientist, an Engineer and a Technician.
tedstryk
QUOTE (edstrick @ Sep 14 2005, 09:58 AM)
Sadly, the noise added to the Deep Impact images will probably render multispectral imaging of the nucleus useless due to noise amplification during the deconvolution process.  There may well be no usable color information with the original s/n of the camera, but all we may now see is the brownish overall color described in postings from the DPS meeting.
*


What did MRI get? I don't think I've seem images from it pre-impact near closest approach. Perhaps its data could be used to look for large scale variations.
djellison
I think the MRI, as with the impactor camera ( they were exact copies I believe) were sans-filters, the Cometary equiv of Navcam.

Doug
um3k
QUOTE (djellison @ Sep 14 2005, 09:23 AM)
I think the MRI, as with the impactor camera ( they were exact copies I believe) were sans-filters, the Cometary equiv of Navcam.

Doug
*

No, the MRI has filters: http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/tech/mri.html
djellison
Oo - my bad, thought it was a straight copy. Perhaps it was just a copy of the electronics and optics - but had the filter wheel dropped in for the flyby.

Doug
BruceMoomaw
I've heard nothing to suggest that they didn't get color-filter images through MRI. I may recheck that recent article in "Space Science Reviews", which mentiones among other things what kinds of geological color observations they had hoped to make.
tedstryk
In addition, if they can get what appear to be color variations in the HRI pics, then MRI could be used perhaps to verify that they aren't artifacts. If they are not artifacts, HRI might be able to tell us more precise positions of regional boundaries given the MRI "ground truth."
RNeuhaus
QUOTE (edstrick @ Sep 12 2005, 03:44 PM)
...be the other problem-of-the-decade, besides out of focus cameras.
*

Does the photograph camera wear an automatic focus in order to solve the problem of out of focus? Every modern camera has an automatic focus. Here, I am naive with the images...You can correct me if I am wrong.

Rodolfo
BruceMoomaw
The article on Deep Impact imaging of geological features on Tempel's unimpacted surface is at http://www.beltonspace.com/bsei_web_page_g000000.pdf . Specific references to color imaging are on pages 2, 3, 6 and 9. The impression I get is that they could still get quite a bit of useful color data -- if, of course, there are any significant color differences to be found.
djellison
Well - I saw a reasonable colour image at the BAA conference - it showed a general brown colour, but there were different shades across the surface, some brighter areas etc.

Doug
edstrick
Bruce Moomaw: ".... -- if, of course, there are any significant color differences to be found."

That's the rub. Small bodies tend to have vanishingly small color variations and it's very easy to go from noisy but usable data to unusable data on small scale features.

While overall color or spectral properties tell you about bulk composition, variations tell about chemical variations, or to a lesser extent physical property variations...they tell you about processes that made the surface, distinct from what you're told by feature morphology.
MarsInMyLifetime
At risk of reopening what appears to be a dead thread (and mods may want to move this post for that reason), my search for LORRI optical characteristics led to this thread where the original question about Ralph and LORRI focal lengths was never answered. That information has been published elsewhere but the thread needs closure for the sake of other seekers who arrive here, and I have a follow-on question that is not answered anywhere else, so this thread may yet be useful.

The optical characteristics of the Ralph visible/NIR/IR camera are described in this paper, principally in Table 2 on page 6:
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/pkb/ssr/ssr-ralph.pdf
(TL;DR:
an unobscurred, off-axis, three-mirror anastigmat design;
Telescope Aperture: 75 mm
Focal Length: 657.5 mm
f/#: 8.7)

The optical design of the LORRI camera is described in these slightly variant resources, in Table 6 on page 10 and in section 3.1.2 Optical Design on page 12:
http://lanl.arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0709/0709.4278.pdf
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/pkb/ssr/ssr-lorri.pdf
(TL;DR from the abstract:
a narrow angle (field of view=0.29°), high resolution (4.95 µrad pixels), Ritchey-Chrétien telescope with a 20.8 cm diameter primary mirror, a focal length of 263 cm, and a three lens field-flattening assembly)

I gathered that the LORRI primary and secondary mirrors are made from low thermal expansion silicon-impregnated silicon carbide. The field-flattening lenses are of fused silica. This design was based on monochromatic imaging (color via filters) therefore the refractive components are not achromatic (they can't be, being all of the same refractive index). This goes a long way in explaining some of the transmissive properties of the system. Yet two details don't seem to be mentioned anywhere:

1. What reflective coating was used on the mirrors (aluminum? something more exotic?)? Was the reflective coating hardened or overcoated in any way (such as silicon monoxide commonly applied to terrestrial mirrors)? Is deep space tarnishing even an issue?

2. Were the optical components coated in any manner? In a monochromatic environment, I suppose that spectral multicoating may be meaningless, but how durable are fused silica surfaces? And aren't internal reflections (ghosts) still a design problem for a multiple element field group?

The papers are otherwise helpful about nearly all other questions one might have about these camera systems. But even if coatings were not needed, that design point was not clear to me in the papers. Thanks for any... erm... illumination on this.
mcaplinger
QUOTE (MarsInMyLifetime @ May 26 2015, 10:48 AM) *
1. What reflective coating was used on the mirrors (aluminum? something more exotic?)?

2. Were the optical components coated in any manner?

I can't speak to the specifics of these instruments but generically:

1) Typically the most reflective stuff available is used. Formulations may be proprietary but "protected silver" is typical for the visible.

2) The best possible AR coatings are used.
Gerald
QUOTE (MarsInMyLifetime @ May 26 2015, 07:48 PM) *
...http://lanl.arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0709/0709.4278.pdf
..
2. ... And aren't internal reflections (ghosts) still a design problem for a multiple element field group?

P.24:
QUOTE
The ghosts are dominated by out-of-field illumination at the red extreme of the LORRI passband, depending on the radiance distribution over field angles just outside the FOV up to approximately 0.37° off-axis. The ghosts are strongly dependent on source spectrum and will be characterized extensively with Jupiter observations

An application I've been pondering has been, whether this effect could be used to retrieve color information from LORRI images.
MarsInMyLifetime
Thanks, all. I had read this on p. 12 and somehow inferred that baffles were the primary mitigation for ghost suppression. It makes sense that AR coatings were still involved.
QUOTE
All baffle design features were optimized through TracePro ray tracing analysis. This analysis shows that out-of-field stray light is adequately suppressed and that ghosting is acceptable.
MarsInMyLifetime
QUOTE (Gerald @ May 26 2015, 03:41 PM) *
An application I've been pondering has been, whether this effect could be used to retrieve color information from LORRI images.


If each image is filtered, won't any out-of-band ghost artifacts likewise be removed? Moreover, if they are off-FOV, isn't that the same as "not imaged?" I'm not sure where in the recorded field this unfiltered color information could get in.
Xcalibrator
QUOTE (mcaplinger @ May 26 2015, 01:20 PM) *
2) The best possible AR coatings are used.


I heard a recent talk (abstract) (video here) by Roberto Abraham (U. Toronto) about Dragonfly, "a robotic imaging system optimized for the detection of extended ultra low surface brightness structures." A key technology was the anti-reflection coating developed by Canon which lets Dragonfly go a couple/few magnitudes deeper on extended sources than conventional telescopes. Their "coating" is actually nanostructured tapers/wedges that provide a continuously varying index of refraction so there are essentially no reflections. I'm not sure how useful this would be for cameras on planetary missions but it's pretty cool. Canon is keeping the details to themselves but a quickie search found some info here and here.
Brian Swift
Just came across a 1/2021 (open access) paper that goes into a bit of detail about various LORRI low light level imaging biases and methodology to remove them.
New Horizons Observations of the Cosmic Optical Background

Also, NASA PR page about result https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-s...w-dark-is-space
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