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

From: Pete Pete <rsvp321_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2008 03:41:31 -0500
Message-ID: <BAY141-W421194C82B94E198BA1D08F8FA0_at_phx.gbl>

 
Billions and billions of craters!
 
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/anaglyph/singula.php?ID=PSP_001586_1565
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/anaglyph/singula.php?ID=PSP_001586_1565
 
 
 
 

> Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2008 18:32:54 -0500
> From: grf2 at verizon.net
> To: baalke at zagami.jpl.nasa.gov; meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] HiRISE Camera Captures High-Resolution 3D Images of Mars
>
> These images are truly spectacular. My $11 3D glasses just proved their
> worth.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ron Baalke"
> To: "Meteorite Mailing List"
> 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 Tue 09 Dec 2008 03:41:31 AM PST