[meteorite-list] HiRISE Camera Captures High-Resolution 3D Images of Mars

From: Jerry Flaherty <grf2_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:32:54 -0500
Message-ID: <46A8EB4786E246CFABC9F122F077829D_at_ASUS>

These images are truly spectacular. My $11 3D glasses just proved their
worth.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Baalke" <baalke at zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>
To: "Meteorite Mailing List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 4:53 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] HiRISE Camera Captures High-Resolution 3D Images
of Mars


>
>
> FROM: Lori Stiles (520-626-4402; lstiles at u.arizona.edu)
>
> HiRISE Camera Captures High-Resolution 3D Images of Mars
> December 8, 2008
>
> The High Resolution Science Imaging Experiment, or HiRISE, team based at
> The
> University of Arizona today released 362 three-dimensional images of Mars
> taken
> by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
>
> Other Mars-orbiting cameras have taken 3D views of Mars, but the HiRISE
> camera
> - the most powerful camera ever to orbit another planet - can resolve
> features as small as one meter, or 40 inches, across.
>
> "It's really remarkable to see Martian rocks and features on the scale of
> a
> person in 3D," said Alfred McEwen of UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory,
> HiRISE principal investigator. "The level of detail is just much, much
> greater
> than anything previously seen from orbit."
>
> The 3D images, or anaglyphs, can be viewed on the HiRISE Web site
> (http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/anaglyph) with inexpensive color filter
> glasses
> commonly used for viewing 3D images and movies. The HiRISE Web site links
> to
> information on where to purchase and how to make 3D red-cyan filter
> glasses.
> Without 3D glasses, the Mars images appear out of register.
>
> (In Tucson, UA's Flandrau Science Center, 1601 E. University Blvd., and
> Starizona, 5757 N. Oracle Road, sell red-cyan filter glasses for $2 each.)
>
> Seen in HiRISE 3D, Mars becomes a collection of deep panoramic views that
> leap
> out from the computer screen.
>
> "You'd swear you could touch the terrain," HiRISE operations manager Eric
> Eliason said.
>
> Striking stereo views include:
>
> * Sixty-meter tall, or 200-foot-tall fractured mounds, probably composed
> of
> solidified lava, on the southern edge of Elysium Planitia. The fractured
> surface suggests that lava pushed the surface into domes, uplifting some
> sides
> along the same fracture higher than others.
> * Spectacular layers exposed on the floor about 2-and-a-half miles, or 4
> kilometers, below the rim of Candor Chasma, which is a large canyon in the
> Valles Marineris system. The canyon may once have been filled to its rim
> by
> sedimentary layers of sand and dust-sized particles, but these have since
> eroded, leaving patterns of elongated hills and layered terrain that has
> been
> turned and folded in many angles and directions.
> * Groups of gullies at different elevations along the wall of an unnamed
> crater
> in Terra Cimmeria. The anaglyph image provides three-dimensional
> perspective on
> the depth of the gullies and the amount of material deposited below the
> gullies.
> Geological evidence suggests that the gullies may have formed by
> subsurface
> water, rather than by snow or ice melting on the surface.
>
> Other dramatic anaglyphs show a huge jumbled mass of rock that includes
> megabreccia at a central peak in Ritchey crater, ejecta-formed channels
> and
> mudflows at Hale crater, tightly folded rock layers lining the floor of
> Tithonium Chasm, "spiders" created by carbon dioxide venting through south
> polar layered deposits, and Martian glacier flows.
>
> Eliason and the team at HiROC, the High Resolution Imaging Operations
> Center on
> the UA campus, began processing stereo images in October. They automated
> some
> of the software used in processing HiRISE images so two images of a stereo
> pair
> could be fed into the software "pipeline" and correlated automatically.
>
> "The real advance here is making this process semi-automated so we can
> really
> crank through all these huge images," McEwen said. Producing anaglyphs
> from
> stereo pairs is otherwise a tedious, time-consuming effort.
>
> The HiRISE camera has so far taken 950 stereo image pairs. The camera
> features a
> half-meter, or 20-inch, diameter primary mirror and a focal plane
> mechanism that
> can acquire up to a 3.6 megapixel image in about 11 seconds.
>
> The anaglyphs are among 1,642 observations containing 3.6 terabytes of
> data and
> 148,000 image products that HiRISE released today to the Planetary Data
> System,
> or the PDS, the NASA mission data archive.
>
> Since HiRISE began the science phase of its mission in November 2006, the
> HiRISE
> team has released a total 867,430 image products, or 30.2 terabytes of
> data.
> That is by far the greatest volume of data a space experiment has
> delivered to
> the PDS, and well more than twice the data volume some HiRISE team members
> expected to get during the primary science phase.
>
> The HIRISE camera was designed to take images at high-convergence angles
> so
> researchers can calculate the thickness of surface features to within
> about 10
> inches, or 25 centimeters. High-convergence angles used to get
> quantitative
> measurements aren't always best for making anaglyphs, McEwen said.
>
> In addition, if the two stereo images on two different orbits were taken
> far
> enough apart in time, the illumination or air opacity may have changed, or
> frost or dust devils may have appeared in one of the images, so paired
> images
> don't always match that well, he added.
>
> "Nevertheless, many of these stereo anaglyphs are very interesting and
> useful to
> us in understanding the topography," McEwen said.
>
> "There's a lot of science to be done by just looking at these directly and
> understanding what's up and what's down," he added. "Anaglyphs can
> definitely
> change how we interpret things, and help us focus on how to proceed when
> it
> comes to prioritizing some science tasks."
>
> Binocular vision gives humans wearing 3D color glasses the ability to see
> anaglyphs in three dimensions the same way they see in three dimensions
> through
> a View-Master viewer or a Victorian-era stereoscope. The same scene is
> viewed in
> two pictures taken from slightly different angles. Each eye has its own
> slightly
> different view, which the brain fuses together into a single picture with
> depth.
>
> With the colored glasses, the red filter for the left eye sees only red in
> the
> picture, the cyan filter for the right eye sees only blue-green in the
> picture,
> and the brain correlates the images. The glasses work for viewing stereo
> pictures in print or on TV, movie and computer screens.
>
> The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is managed by the Jet Propulsion
> Laboratory,
> Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
> Lockheed
> Martin Space Systems of Denver built the spacecraft. The UA operates the
> HiRISE
> camera, built by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo.
>
> SCIENCE CONTACTS:
> Alfred McEwen (520-621-4573; mcewen at pirl.lpl.arizona.edu)
> Eric Eliason (520-626-0764; eeliason at pirl.lpl.arizona.edu)
>
> WEB LINKS:
> HiRISE: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu
> MRO: http://www.nasa.gov/mro
>
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Received on Mon 08 Dec 2008 06:32:54 PM PST