An interesting article on undergraduate labor. http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=22456

I may have missed it somewhere else, but I've never heard whether MRO concluded it's HiRes imaging campaign of the entire Phoenix landing site. Did it finish? If not, is The Storm having any effect on it's imaging at this latitude?

I know the days have to be getting short at the site by this time of (martian) year. So if they're not done yet ...

Phil reporting in from an internet cafe in Tofino, BC:

No, I don't think there is very much coverage yet. New pics will be taken after the sun gets higher again, not too long before landing.

Phil

BAD QUOTING - STOP IT

That will feed our eager minds untill May...
Advanced discovery planning, we're into it...

FYI, Phil, There is a bakery there that has the best Pizza I've ever tasted, that and it's the hotbed of Sasquatch sightings.

Seems like there ought to be an updated landing ellipse out there somewhere by now, but I can't find it. Wouldn't it be frustrating if Phoenix lands on a slab of basalt?

Try this:

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09946

The lower image on that page shows ellipses. The actual ellipse depends on lauynch date, so we know that now - it's the one oriented from SE to NW, lower right to upper left.

Phil

Thanks, that is helpful. Looks like if it hits towards the southern portion of the ellipse there may even be some interesting topography on the horizon

"Looks like if it hits towards the southern portion of the ellipse there may even be some interesting topography on the horizon "

Yes. I said that to Peter Smith, but he pointed out that the relief is very low. They would have to be quite close to it to see very much, but in fact we might get a bit of relief. Certainly if we play our old trick on this forum of vertical exaggeration of horizon topography.

Phil

I'll be bitterly disappointed if there's any interesting topography. I've been looking forward to a landscape of surreal, mind-altering featurelessness.

Well - if the Martian Arctic doesn't deliver - you can just refer back to the Purgatory pan from Meridiani

Doug

I'm lazy I know...can someone indicate the HiRise images covering the area Phil indicated as Phoenix' ellipse?

EDITED: I decided to work a little...
Found out this.

EDITED: I'm tired of working so hard...
Even better...All the images taken by HiRise within the area indicated by Phil

A bit more info:

http://themis.asu.edu/discoveries-phoenix

Phil

I've been trying to bridge the gap between the large scale (THEMIS) and the super closeups (HiRISE) of the Phoenix landing site. CTX has decent, albeit incomplete, coverage of the ellipse. Here's a mosaic of 9 CTX images showing the northwest half of the landing ellipse (based on PIA09946). Unfortunately, the coverage of the south-east half was plagued by cloud cover. The image placement is based on matching features, and not proper full map-projection (caveat viewer).



Full res

That is very nice... I look forward to seeing the rest of the ellipse added in when it becomes possible.

Phil

Indeed Phil! :-)
There are some quite scary places there for a lander...guess we'll have to cross our fingers on the 25th...I wouldn't like to see Phoenix tumbling down a mound...
2 hours, 36 min, 00 sec to 50 days from landing!

EDITED: 50 days, 23 hours to Mars!!!

HiRISE images allow some extension of this map to the southeast. There is more to add as well. This is just to show the available images and is very compressed. Something better will follow later.

Phil

Click to view attachment

This is an expanded HiRISE mosaic of the southeastern part of the ellipse, at greatly reduced resolution of course.

Phil

Click to view attachment

slinted and Stooke, the center of the landing ellipse has been shifted 13 kilometers (8 miles) southeastward...how significant will that be on your work?

It's moving more into my area. I'll post a higher resolution image of the central part of the ellipse soon.

Phil

Yes, 13km further southeast puts the center of the ellipse right along the edge of the CTX coverage. I can't wait to see what you can put together Phil, since HiRISE is definitely going to be the best way to see it. Is it safe to assume anything about what 'southeast' means in this context? Since the old ellipse was northwest -> southeast, I'm wondering if this TCM just pushed the landing spot 13km further down the center-line of the old ellipse.

I've been working on improving the CTX mosaic nonetheless. This new one was done in ISIS, and improves on both the resolution and tone-matching compared to the one I previously posted. The scale on the full resolution version is 10 m/pixel.


Full Res (3.3 meg)

The ellipse shown above is NOT the full 3-sigma ellipse, but rather the smaller 1-sigma ellipse (32 km x 6.5 km). I based the ellipse on a KMZ file made by Ross Beyer that contained the coordinates of the old, post-launch pre-TCM ellipses (available here) and shifted it 13km down-range (which may be a bad assumption).

Here's a composite of slinted's new map and my latest HiRISE mosaic. Mine is uncontrolled - just matching features, and it's only very roughly fitted to the CTX map, just showing what we have for coverage. The 1 sigma ellipse is completely within the HiRISE coverage, as you might expect.

I think the ellipse is moved mostly along the axis. There isn't much room to push it sideways - not the 3 sigma ellipse, anyway.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

And this is the central part of the ellipse - not nearly as bland as the low res images appear! - this is still far from the full HiRISE resolution, and very heavily compressed to get it to postable size.

Phil

Awesome, Phil. How about selecting a few representative patches of this view and giving it to us at absolute maximum resolution! I want to count the dandelions.

Great stuff Phil! Which HiRISE image shows the area from your closeup?

Great GREAT stuff!
I'm with Shaka here...We want more!

Another thing...some of you might know that I'll have at spacEurope today, the presence of Peter Smith for a live Q'n'A, but the man only confirmed the day not the hour...
I have proposed 1800UTC to 2000UTC, after that I may not have the chance to be present so, if I'm not there, Stu will assume the wheel, I asked this to Stu but I'll ask you the same, if some of you guys are thinking about dropping by, please, make PS feel like he's at home...

EDITED: Confirmed, Peter Smith will be there at 1800UTC, hope you guys can show up, it will be only for an hour but time enough to get some answers...

The image I showed is PSP_006996_2480_RED. I don't have time to do any full-res crops, but maybe someone else can play with it.

Phil

Wow! Are they relaxed impact craters or collapsed Martian pingos?


p

I'll have a go...

Here's a close-up of one of those intriguing "rings"...

Click to view attachment

And some full-resolution crops just taken at random from the HiRISE image...

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

... and a couple more...

Click to view attachment


Click to view attachment

Paging Tony Robinson... looks like a archeological geophysical survey showing medieval field boundaries. Or cells in a leaf?

My brain's interpreting the light coloured branching pattern material as topologically higher, is that purely a trick of the eye?

I was thinking the bright "branches" are kind of troughs, with a floor of light material. I have been interpreting the dark "spots" as mounds or dunes with defrosting tops... any input from anyone else on this..?

Would it be possible to add some measure of scale onto these pictures?

It's a bit difficult to visualise the size of the 'objects' we are looking at.

Cheers!

The pictures I posted are at the maximum HiRISE resolution possible... I'm sure that the scale info you need is available on the HiRISE site somewhere, or maybe someone else can tell you. Sorry I can't help more, I'm tied up with the Peter Smith live Q&A over on Rui's spacEurope blog at the mo...

My eyes are being tricked similarly to imipak's. Is the light generally coming from the top of the images? I seem to see 'boulders' with 'shadows' below. What is the minimum size of boulders we can resolve? Basketballs? Beachballs?
Fascinating stuff, but I really wish I knew what I was seeing.
Patterns of light 'frost' and dark 'dust'?? Are there any tundra experts able to help??
Does standing on your head help? Ouch. No.
Do these patterns change seasonally?

Based on the images of the MERs I think we are looking at Armchairs and Volkswagons (if I may coin a few new units of measure).

Hmmm. I can't believe the shadow of the camera mast was the width of an armchair, Dan'l, ... a basketball maybe...but I would have guessed a softball... or one of those midget footballs... at most two squash balls...

This is a very quick and crude attempt to put some sort of scale to the landing site images... if I'm way out here, and making a mistake somewhere then my apologies, but I wanted to have a try! I've kept the same scale throughout this process so, in theory, this should be "right", but if it isn't then I'm happy to be told so - and for someone else to have a go!

Ok, here's a HiRISE 1:1 view of Spitrit (circled) at Homeplate...

Click to view attachment

... and if you magnify Spirit x4 by clicking the "+" magnifying option you get this...

Click to view attachment

Now, here's a 1:1 view of a section of the HiRISE Phoenix image covering part of the landing elipse, which should be to the same scale as that Homeplate image...

Click to view attachment

... and zooming in on a part of that at x4 this is what we see...

Click to view attachment

So... judge for yourself... how big will Phoenix be on HiRISE images? Well, it's certainly quite a bit bigger than SPirit, so it should be easy to see I reckon... and it looks like that light-coloured "mound" in the centre of the circle in the x4 Phoenix lz image is roughly 3x as big as Spirit, perhaps a little larger...

Like I said, might be wrong here, but it's the best I can do with ten minutes to go before I have to be out the door and on my way to work.

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=81794



My sims are unarguably too sharp - but they do represent the right sort of size object. For those easily confused - they're only sending one...not six to land in a circle (I had to say that about the mock version of the MPF presidential pan that has about a dozen sojourners on it once )

D

Later in that same thread you posted an altered version reflecting the programed East-West landing orientation:

Thanks Doug, I did remember you posting that, but someone asked about the scale of the features on the HiRISE images, so I was only using those crops to try and show how big local landscape and terrain features were, not how big Phoenix itself would be.

Just for fun, here's a version of that USGS base map (PIA09946), with only the "early in the window" ellipse drawn, and shifted (I think) about 13 km to the southeast. I left a sketch of the original ellipse in there, drawn with a finer line. Do I have this about right?

--Emily

Click to view attachment

Looking good, Emily!

Phil

More of me trying to get myself oriented...is this right?

--Emily

Click to view attachment

According to the output of the NASA Web :
The Phonix landing site is shown on the following image: Click to view attachment It is about close to Emily's one.

I think you need to move a little bit to the East Emily.

This is probably a silly question, but I've not been able to find an answer elsewhere on the web. Does the Phoenix target area have a better name than "northern polar region"? What's the equivalent of 'Gusev Crater' or 'Meridiani Planum' for Phoenix?

I believe that the name of the entire north polar plains region is Vastias Borealis.

The very broad plain around the north pole is called Vastitas Borealis (Northern Plain, or Northern Waste). This specific area has a group of low hills forming the sides of "Green Valley". They are called Scandia Colles (Scandia Hills). The actual site, "Green Valley" is an informal name. Here's a map:

http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/images/mc1_mola.pdf

The site's at the left edge, about 10 o'clock.

Phil

Huum Scandia...it pleases me...