There you go again, dangling a tasty morsel, a tantalising tidbit before our noses then whipping it away again with a silent movie villain's laugh. Booo!!! Booooo!!!! Cruelty, thy name is tuvas...!!!

Come on, admit it, you've imaged a martian's rubber duck floating down a gully, haven't you...

Stu, how on earth did you ever guess..... J/K. HiRISE wouldn't have that kind of resolution anyways...

Just to make your mouth water even more, I checked the upcoming pictures, and there's more fun stuff coming up in the next week.

You've obviously never read the John Carter books. Those martians are big fellers. Their duckies would be proportionately big too...

By the way, you do know that by casually saying "I checked the upcoming pictures" you just confirmed my previously-verbalised suspicions that you are 1) enjoying hiding these priceless images from the rest of us under your bed waaaaaaaaaaaay too much... and 2) deliberately waiting until I go on holiday to Spain on Sunday for a week until you release a breathtaking close-up of that eroded crater in Ganges Chasma I asked for...

Hey, if it helps any, I'm missing the pictures that are being taken over Thanksgiving weekend, which there's some fun ones... This week has had alot of fun ones actually...

Oh, and it's not that I enjoy teasing everyone, merely you Stu;-)

What do you mean by fun ones?

Ask me after they are released, and I'll tell.

hmmmmmmmm

AHA. New Pictures !!!!!!!!! http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/

Moving some MRO posts from the MGS thread here.

What will the HiWEB software do? Will it work like the images on the "zoomify" page. I haven't been able to view any of these new images, they're too big, some are nearly 800MB

Where are these new pictures? When I go to the TRA page it hasn't got anything new since Oct 16..?

I guess there won't be anything new on the TRA page since the TRAnsition phase is over :-)

Well - they're all listed here
http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/

AND

here http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/ (with Nov 22nd after them)

Doug

A few more details about the release here:

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/HiBlog/?p=57

I just started looking through these images and they are almost brand new to me, even though I have scanned through them already. Those were upside down and unmapped (our HiccdStitch products, produced so we can "quickly" visually validate the image). They look completely different right side up and mapped to Mars

We are still trying to automate color images. As a result, the pace of their release is much slower than the B&W images. Right now one team member focuses most of her time on creating the dazzling images with an ISIS program that "slithers" through the individual filters to register, or attempt to register, them. Sometimes it works great; other times it requires more work. When she is done with an image she sends it to Dr. McEwen, who does further work in ISIS and Photoshop. A few of the other team scientists have started to play around with color, too, passing each other tips on proper registration.

One day we were in the middle of a long and agonizing meeting and Dr. McEwen suggested we take a break and look at a color image he was working on:

http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TR...1410/color.html

We all crowded into his office to see the above image blown up on his 30-inch monitor. This was a fantastic respite from the meeting, and it was awesome to hear this planetary geologist describe what he thought we were seeing. Sometimes I get lost in the day-to-day routine of work, most of which does not require me to look at anything pretty. When I get to listen to the geologists theorize about the images, it returns a smile to my face. I want to grow up to be a real geologist someday!

I just hope they spot the anti-satellite laser station that took out Global Surveyor before it gets the next victim...

<warped-grin>

You raise an interesting point there - looking back at the colour segment of the Victoria image, it seems to be not quite registered properly, there's something of a glow around the outcrops etc - almost like a low res image being overlayed on a higher res image.....was there something in the workflow that might have done that and is it something that might improve over time?

Doug

Part of the Victoria image color release is sharp and well registered, the part of the west edge of the crater is color-blurred and not quite registered by a number of pixels. I'm still not sure what the upshot of some discussion we had earlier, concerning variable sharpness and image quality across HiRISE images, is.

The procedures are recent and hislither is a newer program that probably needs some tweaking. Also, even though the CCDs are on the same plane, they do have slight differences between them that causes a slight - I'm not sure the word for it is - twist? tilt? - between them that will need to be better corrected at some point.

The USGS group is working hard on ISIS. It is a tool for many different space missions, and MRO is asking a great deal from them. They have simply been fantastic at creating HiRISE-specific tools and modifying existing tools to better handle the range of missions. In the year and a half I have been with HiRISE, we have tested many a new version of ISIS.

I'm sure someone else can answer this question much better than me. About all I do in regard to color is copy our hislither expert's and Dr. McEwen's products into our color directory.

Also, the binning and TDI commanded are generally different between RED, IR, and BG. Would that cause further difficulty in getting the different colors to register?

I think the word you're looking for is parallax. I also noticed the color fringing on the crater rim and it looks a bit nasty. The likely cause is that due to the color CCDs being offset vertically, they produce a slight stereo effect when viewing a target (the three of them don't look at the target from exactly the same angle by the time that area is integrated in the CCDs) that has sharp vertical relief. Victoria's rim certainly fits that scenario. This effect is basically the same thing MEX uses to produce 3D images, only the effect here is less pronounced. Compensating for it would require projections on derived 3D models, just like MEX does. Pretty computationally expensive I gather.

Image TRA_000873_1415 in this release is named "Victoria Crater Warm-Up" but I can't find the connection between it and VC. It was taken one day after the one showing VC & Oppy and at a completely different location.

What't the reason for this title?

This was the image just prior to TRA_000873_1780. It was not taken one day later (you can tell by the naming convention - Orbit 000873).

TRA_000873_1415 - The complete image is centered at -38.2 degrees latitude, 359.4 degrees East longitude.
TRA_000873_1780 - The complete image is centered at -2.1 degrees latitude, 354.5 degrees East longitude.

1415 is 36.1 degrees south of the Victoria Crater image - MRO orbits from south to north on the day side of Mars.

Ah, but there is an error in the date. I have sent an email to our webmaster to correct the date. Thank you for noticing the error.

Now all makes sense, thanks.
I wasn't aware the first number (873) referred to the orbit; btw, what's the meaning of the second number in the image id?

Edited:


If there is an error in the date it might be on the time-of-day too. It might have been taken before 3:28PM.
TRA_000873_1415: 04 October 2006, 3:35 PM
TRA_000873_1780: October 3, 2006, 3:28 PM

I double checked the times in the EDRs:

TRA_000873_1415 - 2006-10-03T12:33
TRA_000873_1780 - 2006-10-03T12:44

I cannot remember if these observation times are in UTC.

The last set of numbers is the target code:

"The target code indicates the target of the observation. If the number is between 0000 and 3595, it is the angle between the nighttime equator and the latitude of the center of the observation, multiplied by 10. It is measured to the nearest half-degree. The nighttime equator is 0000, the south pole is 0900, the daytime equator is 1800, and the north pole is 2700. 1720 is at latitude 8° S."

More information is available at:

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/HiBlog/?p=41

Yes, the time will need to be corrected as well.

OT: Let's see... The first number in the image id is the orbit # and it has six digits, so 1000000 orbits before resetting the number and having a sort of O1M (Orbit 1 Million) effect. Mmm, twelve orbits / day, 4380 orbits / year, 1 million orbits in ... 228 years!
Nah! I don't think HiRISE will suffer this bug.

Hi Rich, the times are local--i.e. the time on the ground at the center of the image--not the time on the spacecraft when the image was taken.

These times will typically be around 3:15 PM, as the orbital plane of MRO is fixed in that orientation relative to the Sun. However, it varies depending on what latitude we are pointed at, and if the spacecraft is on the ascending or descending side of the orbit.

The dates have been corrected, thanks.

Yep, got em now, thanks. When I checked that first time the page hadn't changed. Or maybe it had and I just didn't notice, what with suffering from shell-shock after listening to coverage of the first day's play of the Ashes...

Enjoying a leisurely browse thru the new images now... no sign of martian rubber ducks yet tuvas, where you hidden them?

How are you all viewing these files? Are you downloading them, even some of the giant two/three hundred MB ones?

I only downloaded this one: http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000881_1750/ It opens fine with the latest version of IrfanView (v3.99) but not Paint Shop Pro 7.

To quote the web page "The highest resolution image is provided in the JPEG-2000 (JP2) format. A JP2 viewer application and browser plug-in may be freely obtained...."

Clearly PSP7 can't manage JP2s. I also have PSP7 so time for an upgrade I suppose. Presumably later versions of PSP handle JP2s.

Rob

Try IrfanView too

http://www.irfanview.com/

ACDSee Classic (2.37?) won't show them. Sad. I haven't checked ACDSee 5, which I have but rarely use.
the Classic was a perfect image browser and fine file manager. The later versions are like an 85 tool "swiss army knife" I saw recently.. unusably complex.

I'm using Irfanview as well, with the latest plugins which include the JP2 capbility. But I haven't tried it with the largest images yet. But that Gale crater image is fine.

Phil

Ahh - someone else who went straight for the Gale image

Have you 'found' it in the 12m Themis Vis mosaic yet - it's not a great mosiac but I really can't pin it down.

Doug

The Gale crater image is the only one i've downloaded, the others are too large

"Have you 'found' it in the 12m Themis Vis mosaic yet"

No, it's too small. The Gale image is only 2000 pixels wide, or 1 of their CCDs. That makes it only 600 m wide, so individual craters are too small to be seen in the Themis Visible images. I used the original images rather than using the mosaic.

I really like this detail of it. You even see cracks and irregularities in the bigger rocks.

Phil

Click to view attachment

What do you think of it from an MSL landing point of view? It's JB's proposed site and I must admit I like it - BUT - I get the feeling that HiRISE has done to Gale the very same it will do to just about every sq. metre of Mars.....make it look too dangerous to land on.

1.5 to 0.25 m res may not be a HUGE difference, but somehow, (and not to belittle the achievments and importance of MOC2), a HiRISE image just makes immediate 'sense' at a human scale. That little crop looks like a photo taken out of an helecopter...I love it

Doug

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/dec00_seds/gale/
http://themis.asu.edu/features/galecrater

Thanks for that account Richard -- the image is perfect in light of the historical account Mike Caplinger directed us to yesterday.

At a meeting of the MGCO Science Working Group, Malin was told "there was no need to fly a camera." "Viking had already taken all the pictures we ever needed of Mars,"

The Struggle to Capture Images On Mars, Space.com, June 23, 2000

It kind of reminds me of that famous Bill Gates quote where he says no one should ever need more than 64k memory.

Re: Doug's question about landing at Gale.

I don't think it looks too bad. This is the plains area just NW of the layered deposit in central Gale. The plan (if I'm remembering correctly) is to drive from the landing area southeast into the mouth of a deep valley that cuts through the layered deposits. This image area needs to be safe for landing, and suitable for driving across, and I think it probably is.

Phil

That sounds about right - JB's Landing Site Workshop pres ( http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/...2-Bell_Gale.ppt ) puts the landing 20kx20k ellipse in the NW area of the crater floor, with a traverse to the south then east up the central peak.

Going on the Lat and Long - this HiRISE image would be toward the SE part of the ellipse

Doug

It was 640Kb and Bill Gates always denied to have made that quote...

So which images have people downloaded from this latest batch?

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers"
(Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.)

ps. Some sources claim that Watson actually said it would be three computers. But, with 20/20 hindview, I think we should give him those extra 2....

I'd second that request. If you've noticed anything cool in this recent batch of images, please crop it and share it. I'm also finding Irfanview to be pretty darn good at the JP2's.

My computer took about 45 minutes to open this one, but it eventually managed:

http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu//images/TRA/TRA_000856_2500/

I'm using Photoshop CS2 with this plug-in for opening JP2 files.

The whole region was pretty uniform in appearance -- uniformly strange! Here's a little piece at full res.

Click to view attachment

I have NO theories as to why the little bouldery patches line up in periodic, linear deposits on top of the patterned ground.

--Emily

I don't know how I missed this thread for so long, but well, I've found it at long last. I just can't imagine what you all are going to do when we dump the (hundreds?) of images on you already taken from PSP.

Oh, the fun images I was refering to were all taken within the last week (Except for one), but all after PSP.

You also might be interested to know I helped write one of the captions, the Moreax Crater one. Didn't do much, but it's a fun thing to say I helped with it.

I really feel I need to download everything because otherwise I can't know which images I'd want to download . These images are absolutely amazing, I knew HIRISE would return better images than MOC but the difference is greater than I expected.

Following the big downloads I may need to write some utilities to split the images up into 'tiles' once I have converted them from JP2s to something else (PNG?) - something like ImageMagick requires too much temporary disk space in my opinion.

These are monster images, the only comparable stuff I've run into previously are the Blue Marble Earth maps.

With the ExpressView browser-plugin the images load very fast on my computer (less than 30 seconds on 1Gb RAM), even the 700 Mb images of the Northern Plains!
So if it's snapshots you want, it may be faster to take screenshots of the ExpressView window with a capture tool. I use Paint shop Pro 7, so I don't know if Photoshop CS2 has one. That way, you don't have to wait 45 minutes.

You downloaded the 700MB files????