Rob Manning of EDL fame wrote this in another thread, which was closed, so I couldn't reply in there. Anyway, I think that this image surely deserves a thread of its own.



Rob, it will become one of the signature images of space exploration.

Up there with
Apollo 8 Earthrise,
The Pillars of Creation, and
Pantheon, Earth and Moon.
...(just kidding about the last one, I took it of the oculus of the Pantheon in Rome )

What a wonderful story this is. Despite the meticulous planning that went into the HiRise shot, despite the effort of tracking, slewing, yawing and whatnot of the MRO, despite all of that, serendipity took you all on a crazy roller-coaster ride of discovery and threw in this awe-inspiring background by complete chance!

Part of what defines a great photo is the framing. And what do you know: ALL of Heimdal crater is included in the shot! - How perfect is that? - Had it been cropped, the image would still have been fantastic, just for the engineering effort that went into it and for capturing Phoenix. With the whole crater included it moves from engineering excellence to a Work of Art. Perfect framing, and perfect 16:9 aspect ratio for that Hi-definition viewing experience . It is an image that will make for great big-size poster art, so that it won't be marred by the close-up box in the corner, which must go away, just for the sake of beauty.

Part of what defines a great photo is timing, and as a result of that, composition. Henri Cartier-Bresson was the acknowledged master ("Man Jumping Over Puddle"). Again, you guys painstakingly did all you could to assure that HiRise would capture the right instant. But AGAIN serendipity totally took over and delivered perfect composition! - Little Phoenix could NOT have been placed better against the backdrop of the crater: with the crater's edge drawing an ellipse, the lander is almost exactly in the left-most focus point, with an uncluttered background and in perfect counterpoint to the more feature-rich right-side of the crater bowl.

In my country we have a saying that goes more or less like this: you have to strive for it, if you want to get lucky. The group behind "Phoenix over Heimdall crater" certainly got lucky, but you ONLY got lucky because you strived for this shot. You worked hard and intelligently, and for that Mother Nature rewarded you MORE than handsomely.

This picture will be there when we are all gone (my take on how to present it):



Poster-size version here

It is a truley breathtaking image and composition.

Reminds me of Lunar Orbiter frame 162 http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/lunarorbiter/frame/?2162

Another image whose beauty is mostly fortuitous.

Perhaps Phoenix, Backshell and Parachute against Heimdall will be the 'Picture of the century' for our time.

Agreed, it is an utterly iconic image.

However, the extremely high definition, large image size and miniature nature of the spacecraft image against the enormity of the crater, does raise portrayal issues. Unlike Apollo 8 moonrise, put the Phoenix image in a magazine full page spread, cropped to the width of Heimdall plus a bit more, and the average reader won't see the spacecraft. Most of us still haven't seen it without the blown-up sub-image showing the chute in the corner. Its scale is most unlike any other iconic space image -- if you want to show the enormous context of the whole of Heimdall.

So how this image will be shown in future, to best display its awesomeness, is a real issue. Maybe an entire wall in the Air & Space Museum?

Blown up to huge proportions it would be stunning.

I think the image could pose reproduction problems in print but overall the small size and apparent fragility of the descending spacecraft really compliments the yawning maw of Heimdall.

Its like when you look at the famous Apollo 17 image of Jack Schmitt with the Split Rock on the South Massif, think its amazing and then spy the tiny glint of Lunar Module Challenger sitting lonely out on the valley floor.

Gives an image such perspective.

It is a particuliarity about the image that the "center of interest" is utterly small, but I prefer to think of it as a strength rather than a problem. It tells a story about the small size of the man-made object vs. the enormity of an entire planet. What a way to visualize that!

I would think that a 300dpi glossy magazine spread would be sufficient to show the image without a box. There's practically no detail to Phoenix even in full-size, so not much is lost when it is just apparent as two small, spindly dots. Present-day computer screens don't hack it, that's for sure, but future screens might.

No, what this image is made for is poster art: a huge big wonderful crater, and then this little white smudge that tells such a wondrous story.

We have to get rid of the abomination of the blow-up box, that is for sure. It is good engineering, but not good art I'm sure the image wizards here on UMSF can do something nice to the image, as Astrosurf has already done. If you really can't just show the original image for technical reasons, then maybe a black edge around the original image, and then a much smaller image box centered in the black edge below the big image, with a close-up of Phoenix.

i'd like to see a video with a zoom in, ending on the full res parachute image.

BTW, for those who don't know: Heimdall is a God of the Nordic Pantheon, one of a merry band that include Thor, Odin (Wotan), Loki, etc. Heimdall is the Guardian of the bridge from the land of human beings to the land of the Gods. The bridge was called Bifrost and do you know what it is? - The rainbow! - Isn't that a nice piece of mythology? - The rainbow being a bridge to the land of the Gods. Heimdall rode a chariot and had magnificent senses: he could hear the grass grow, see to the end of the world.

I'm sure our house UMSF poets can work wonders with that and the Bird rising from the Ashes

Here is a drawing of Heimdal (as we prefer to spell his name in Denmark) as he appears in a great series of comic books about the Nordic Gods by Peter Madsen. The series is called Valhalla (Castle of the Gods):

http://www.petermadsen.info/pages/vh/hv-er-hv/heimdal.html

This is cartoon based on the comic book series, for kids it is a great way of getting to know the Nordic Pantheon:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_quer...mp;search_type=

One of the Tucson newspapers, the Arizona Daily Star, has it above the fold in today's issue.

Quite so; and as I mention in the other thread
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=5173
it really should be able to be used as a massively inspirational educational tool. After all, just show a full scale blow up of that, explain exactly what it is and what is going on, and then you can branch off to just about any aspect of science you want - let's face it, you can link everything from chemistry to physics to geology to engineering to, well, you name it! You can even factor in the aesthetics of it and the history of science fiction literature etc etc etc.
I was about to say it's worth its weight in gold, but then I'm not sure how that would be quantified in the digital age

This image most surely needs a warning note though. Something like :

"ATTENTION: view at your own risk. Might result in permanent jaw damage."

It's a bit hard to describe what this image really signifies when considering how far we've come in such a brief period.

All I know is that it makes me proud to be a human being, and so happy to be alive at this point in history. This simple picture of a speck of our ingenuity blasting through the atmosphere of an alien world iconically represents the best within us.

At the first, the mentioned picture has scared me since due to its optical illusion that Phoenix was falling into a very beautiful crater in fact that it has a very nice concave bowl! Later, after studying and analyzing the picture, my reaction has changed to start in thinking that the nature close to a very tiny Phoenix spacecraft is of a great beauty.

True...makes you think of the awesome vistas that must exist on Mars, even from orbit. There are so many craters just like Heimdall; imagine standing on its rim and hearing a faint sonic boom through your helmet as Phoenix made its passage!

Also makes you wonder what MARDI would have seen if it had been taking images during descent. And
also calls into question whether you'd not also want side-looking, rather than just down-looking, images
during descent...

(Sigh)...yes. I am certain that MSL will make up for this loss, and then some.

Somehow, I knew you had poetry in your soul, Ralph!

I agree. This is an iconic, jaw dropping image for the ages that evokes both the poetry and humanity which Rob described in that referenced post.

Personally I think the close up box is absolutely required for context: Parachute plus Crater makes the magic.

the position of the box is debatable

just a thought as I try to detach my jaw from the table

ken

As to the frequent comments of looking for the heat shield, well, it should be there somewhere close, but it would be very hard to tell a tiny heat shield from the rocks at the bottom of the crater. The parachute being so bright and very much unnatural, well, helps alot... A heat shield would look alot like a rock...

I suspect that the way it will be found is by a future HiRISE image of the site, looking to see if any of the black dots in the area are missing...

I, like others, am also of the opinion that the zoomed box is required.
The WOW factor on the image is based not only on our knowledge that those little "dots" are the parachute & lander but (and more important, imo) on the fact that (almost) all of us already saw the zoom image the day before and have that picture on our minds. But this image with the crater is not only for us here at this and similar forums, it's for the whole mankind; it should be understood by anybody else looking at the picture. Without the zoom, those little dots are just that: little dots.

BTW, yesterday I submited a request to APOD and I'm pretty sure I was not alone...

Judging by this line on the APOD site: "Tomorrow's picture: dramatic oblique", I think we know what's coming up tomorrow!

About the zoom box, I almost feel guilty nitpicking this image, but my only criticism is that the diagonal lines don't connect corresponding corners...

I noticed that too, fredk.

Fredk : maybe something like this?

Beautiful, Ant! And I see you've got the small box more accurately indicating the zoomed area, too.

Looks a bit pumpkin-orange to me -- I'd prefer more muted colors.

--Emily

Okay Emily . An other try with a bit desaturation :

We have made higher resolution versions available of the crater and the contrast enhanced spacecraft (look for "unannotated" near the bottom of the page).

I've put together a new version of the descent image with inset using the higher-resolution versions. It is 4096x2038 and 5.1 MB.

Awesome, GuyMac, thanks. I assume the answer to this question is "no" but I'll ask anyway: was any color data taken at the time that this photo was shot?

EDIT: Just saw this at the bottom of the page Guy linked to: "HiRISE is currently producing its standard product images for this observation, but it is unlikely that a color version will be available, since the above image is not within the camera’s color swath."

--Emily

Sweet! I presume that's the version up on the HiWall now?

I was thinking the same thing about the color in the Heimdall image. I'm guessing not. If we could encourage someone to arrange for a color image from either HIRISE or other device at a similar angle at a time in the near future, it wouldn't be difficult to drop in the color behind the original.

Right, we may be able to get the center of the crater in color, but it failed the automatic color co-registration, probably because the CCD offset and overlap corrections don't match anything we've done before.

Wow. I am glad that you all feel the same about this image as I do. (actually you may feel stronger about it ... I am simply way too biased)

Oersted, while being compared with Henri Cartier-Bresson would make my photo-loving wife laugh her head off ... the truth of the matter is a bizarre multistate photography session.

In Denver CO: the MRO team first points the UHF antenna (and camera by default)
In Pasadena CA: (in a final PHX EDL risk review) they casually mention that we really ought to click
In Pasadena CA: I frantically yell "CLICK!" (many meetings ensue to discuss risk - all the way to the east coast)
In Tucson AZ: the HiRISE team adjusts the exposure settings (via a new small sequence)
In Denver CO: the MRO team adjusts the pointing orientation and sets the camera to go "click" (a 50-something sec long click)
In Pasadena CA: We say GO!
Everywhere: Days later we discover what we where really taking a piicture of!

In addition to the great HiRISE team (did I mention I love HiRISE?), I had to thank the "can-do" MRO S/C team, and especially MRO's Jim Erickson who understood the technical importance (for fault reconstruction) and I (assume) also the potential historical importance. Also I stressed out some members of the PHX team (they were stressed as it was and I made them more worried we would be "breaking" something on the MRO side that was working).

One of the ironies is that in our presentation to upper management that stressed the fault reconstruction benefits (and balanced them against the risk of causing a loss of MRO Electra UHF open loop record data or worse) we did not talk about whether this image might have historical or "cool" importance ... we did not have to.

Thanks again all!

You all made my day!

-Rob Manning

I like the idea of making it a colour image but I agree with Emily - I'd prefer to see (far more) muted colours.

Just re-did it at 16 bits per pixel to match the TIFFs, the file is now 7.4 MB.

Could that be the heat shield? It looks rounder and sharper than most of the other "spots".

http://www.greuti.ch/mro/phoenixheatshield.jpg

Looks to me to be in the wrong direction. I'd expect it to be somewhere in the extension of the parachute-backshell line and somewhat downwards. This appears to be sideways too much and there are some other dark pixels like that in other places of the image.

Btw, GuyMac, I'm curious how you managed to produce such a nice enhanced color view of the chute, I was under the impression the source data was badly underexposed and noisy? Nice work!

I'd expect the heat shield to be below, and a little downrange (right) of the chute - that spot looks feasible to me - we're what, 20s after chute deploy, roughly 10s after heatshield jettison - it's not going to be a million miles away.

Doug

The dot being the heat shield is a strong possibility, but the proof will only come when a HiRISE picture of the crater comes minus the lander. You are at least the 3rd person to independently suspect that that is indeed the heat shield though (myself included).

I'd like to know more about the geometry of the observation and which direction relative to this image Phoenix was heading. Using the EDL HUD anim as reference, the stack was moving at a 45 degree angle downward so this image gives me the impression of Phoenix moving principally toward MRO. That's why the dark speck seems too far right to me, although I have to admit it does look conspicuous. I'm not totally convinced, a full resolution crop would probably show if this is an artefact of the sharpening process.

I'll have to cast another vote for muted colors. Ant103 -- your effort is much appreciated! But to be honest, if your first desaturated version was "one click" desaturated, I would say at least 3 or 4 clicks.

However, it sounds to me like somehow, by hook or crook, they will probably contrive some 'real' coloration for us at some point. So do as you will, we can easily enough desaturate our own

Shifting to the main topic, I agree with others: a stunning and historic image. I am waiting to see if TIME or Newsweek put it on their cover, but that is ephemera.

As one of the first posters in the thread observed, we have one of the truly iconic images of space here. Perhaps it will come to be seen as more than that, as some of the early space age images of the Earth did, this one iconic of the hope and wonder, the fragility and persistence, of humanity's dreams and aspirations as we move into the 21st century.

A deep thanks to all whose work, vision, and tense shoulders made this happen!

Agree. What I especially like is what that georgeous image (and I prefer desaturated too) seems to say about why Phoenix was able to find a boulder-free area for its landing - that nearby crater didn't kick out any big rocks, because its target area apparently didn't contain any (or many). In terms of impact science, we might have visual confirmation of William K. Hartmann's contention (2003, A Traveler's Guide to Mars, p. 272) that "A cosmic impact into such weakly consolidated old materials may produce only a kablooey blast of steam and dust but no rocks shot into space" (made in relation to energy dissipation and the ages of martian meteorites found on Earth).

-- HDP Don

I kinda like these colours...

Click to view attachment

Hope you don't mind me playing about with your gorgeous original, Ant...

There's an animation from the second briefing (min 2:50) that shows approximately the geometry of the observation (moving away to MRO path during the exposure) http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/...media/9247.html
Therefrom I'd expect too that the heat shield is a little right of the chute, which also corresponds with the final landing spots on the ground.

My goofy whack at colorization here.

Mmmm, sepia. Yummy

If you download the 25MB 4k image the lines are fixed.

My first reaction on seeing Phoenix over the crater was to recall Alan Bean's excited shouts on Apollo 12, just after the LM pitched over for final approach: "There it is! There it is! Son of a gun! Right down the middle of the road!"

Yep -- except that was Pete Conrad yelling, not Al Bean.

-the other Doug

goofy? You're too modest, Gordo. I find your version both tasteful and serene. The one to hang in my living room above the sofa.

I messed around a bit in PS with the 'match color' function, and as a sourcefile a soil-only-crop of one of the full-colour press-release images. Fun

http://www.awalkonmars.com/PSP_008579_9020...6sx2038lweb.jpg (large res)

Nico

Well it's not color, but you're right, the original is under-exposed, very low signal to noise, like our AEB images. This version is reduced from the original by a factor of 5 instead of 10. So really, it's the averaging every 25 pixels into 1 that takes care of the noise. We will release everything once we can make our RED RDR product, which we think is days away (pointing kernels for this obs should be ready now).

Tim Parker earlier noted the spot that is mentioned and suggested that it could be the heat shield since it is darker than other spots, about in the right location and looks less jagged. We are planning a Heimdall observation upcoming (it will not be oblique however).