At last I've been able to do something I have tried to do for quite a few years now - find the full resolution digital Viking 2 panoramas. Viking 1 pans are on the Photojournal. Viking 2 pans were not. But I found them by luck and persistence, on CD-ROMs in PDS.

Go to:

http://pdsimg.jpl.nasa.gov/data/vl1_vl2-m-...2012_sddpt/fns/

and the full pans are in the directories numbered 19 to 24. Earlier directories contain the same pans in sections. This file:

http://pdsimg.jpl.nasa.gov/data/vl1_vl2-m-...ex/rng_info.txt

is an index to the CD contents.


The files are not in a convenient format - presumably they are VICAR format, but without headers. By trial and error I got the file sizes and opened them as raw images in Photoshop. The full-length pans are 8570 pixels by about 1800. Some postings will follow.

Phil

Phil,

Glad to hear you have located the hi-res mosaics from VL-2. These are apparently later versions of the mosaics I worked on while at JPL from 1976-77. I had only saved hard copy prints/negatives from this work, so it's interesting to see you located them in digital form.

I wish you had asked me about that...I had seen those, but had no idea what to dowit them. Plus, although the format is frustating, it was my understanding that the files found here are full resolution.

Ted, the full resolution images your link goes to are the individual frames, not the full mosaics. They use small versions of the mosaics as a sort of browsing or indexing tool, but you don't get the mosaics. But the files I got are the original mosaics. They come in morning, noon and afternoon illumination versions, for each camera. The index page I linked to says - if I understand it right - that there are polar versions too (edit - no, it's stereo images, not polars).

Phil

Here's one pan, full size but very compressed (by me)

Click to view attachment

Yes indeed, there were three mosaics for VL-2 as compared with just two for VL-1. There was one of the VL-2 mosaics previously posted on the MSSS site, so you have found a more complete set. A summary of what I had previously known about these mosaics can be found at this URL

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

These are higher resolution than the MSSS set, and they have the tilt corrected.
Phil

Don't know if this one has been mentioned before:

http://www.solarviews.com/cap/mars/vlmos2c.htm

That's a really nice pan, but it is only one of the views (the 'new' ones give stereo and different lighting), it's not a full 360 (which you can only get by combining pans from both cameras), and it's copyrighted, whereas these are not.

Phil

Working on your new book Phil?

I'm just wrapping up the documentation on the old one. and, yes, looking ahead to the new one.

Phil

I think that the files that you seek are here in TIF format

http://pdsimg.jpl.nasa.gov/data/vl1_vl2-m-.../vl_2011/hires/

Hmmm - so they are! Thanks. If you follow the 'parent directory' links back you just get to the Imaging node home page. but I can't see the link that would go in the opposite direction from that page. So I never found this before. But it's very nice to have them in that format.

And there looks to be other good stuff in those links on the data page as well...

(edit - for instance, the Clementine link includes the graphic-based browser for Clementine basemap mosaics, long gone from its original host)

So, Indian3000, may we ask you to perform some of your magic with these Viking panoramas? Vertical projections would be interesting to see.

Phil

Wow, thanks for the image links and bringing them to our attention. It looks pretty obvious now that Viking 2 landed in a 'blueberry' strewn area. If there had been an MI on the trenching arm we would have known of them back in the 70's and they wouldn't have been such a big surprise when Oppy saw them all over.

Which book are You planning Phil ? Always looking forward to new books on the subject of unmanned spaceflight and planetary exploration

I replied privately to PhilCo126, but I'm working on atlases of exploration of Venus and Mars.

Phil

I made a composite of the panoramas, using one as a base and parts of the others to fill the missing horizon segment and areas hidden by masts etc. Then I made a polar version of the composite panorama. Here it is:

Click to view attachment

This is rotated a bit clockwise from north at the top.

Phil

That's astounding work Phil!

(Now where's the anaglyph? )

still some lines of code and projections verticals will be there…

but while waiting .. some images

lander 1 camera 1

Click to view attachment

and a small screenshot, just add file and projection are create ... simple ...

Click to view attachment


a linear polar projection ...

Click to view attachment

and some others pseudo polar

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Nice! And these images have lots of scope for anaglyph-makers too...

Phil

Should be cool if these images could be imported into the midnight mars browser. The Viking sites in the 3D-bubble viewer. Yum Yum.

you can use FSPViewer ... my panorama are in 360 x 180 °