[meteorite-list] Billion-Pixel View of Mars Comes From Curiosity Rover

From: Jodie Reynolds <spacerocks_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 08:40:05 -0700
Message-ID: <1455038292.20130620084005_at_spaceballoon.org>

Hello Jeff,

Registration artifact.

When one goes about putting these together, one would generally work
in at least a 24bit if not a 32bit space with a transparent
background.

I sick a whole bunch of processing power on the problem with a neural
network looking for features that match-up. Once those millions of
points are selected (through many hours of training and then
automated iteration), my image processing software then has to warp,
bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate the individual frames, stitching
them together into an image that looks attractive on a flat 2D screen.

When that's done, it needs to then have the bit depth reduced for
end user consumption. That involves getting rid of the transparent
background and filling that space "underneath" with some color.

I have a few tricks that NASA/JPL folks may not employ. One of them
is filling the background with pure Red (255,0,0), then another with
pure Green (0,0,255), then another with pure Blue (0,255,0). Those
then go through another pre-processing step of overlaying those and
checking for each color pure color. Any area that flags for two of
the three is suspect. Small areas that don't precisely
line-up like that get flagged for manual revision. That step allows
me to pull them into an image editor and quickly pixel-hack them
together in a convincing way (although not scientifically valuable).

I suspect they skip that step entirely and just fill the background
with white and post it.

Even with the current state-of-the-art, any time you have motion you
have registration issues that can't be gracefully resolved. Mine
show those artifacts around the rover itself, especially in the
shadows.

Creating panoramas from so many frames of a sphere and then
unwrapping the sphere into 2D isn't an exact science. Plenty of room
for discovery there.

--- Jodie


Thursday, June 20, 2013, 2:15:39 AM, you wrote:

> Anyone else see this? It's something white sitting between two rocks around
> mid-pic.

> https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152932582005103&set=a.498242950102
> .395373.156382705102

> Cheers,

> Jeff


> -----Original Message-----
> From: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
> [mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] On Behalf Of Ron Baalke
> Sent: Thursday, 20 June 2013 4:40 AM
> To: Meteorite Mailing List
> Subject: [meteorite-list] Billion-Pixel View of Mars Comes From Curiosity
> Rover


> http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-205

> Billion-Pixel View of Mars Comes From Curiosity Rover
> Jet Propulsion Laboratory
> June 19, 2013

> PASADENA, Calif. -- A billion-pixel view from the surface of Mars, from
> NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, offers armchair explorers a way to examine
> one part of the Red Planet in great detail.

> The first NASA-produced view from the surface of Mars larger than one
> billion pixels stitches together nearly 900 exposures taken by cameras
> onboard Curiosity and shows details of the landscape along the rover's
> route.

> The 1.3-billion-pixel image is available for perusal with pan and zoom
> tools at: http://mars.nasa.gov/bp1/ .

> The full-circle scene surrounds the site where Curiosity collected its
> first scoops of dusty sand at a windblown patch called "Rocknest," and
> extends to Mount Sharp on the horizon.

> "It gives a sense of place and really shows off the cameras'
> capabilities," said Bob Deen of the Multi-Mission Image Processing
> Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "You
> can see the context and also zoom in to see very fine details."

> Deen assembled the product using 850 frames from the telephoto camera of
> Curiosity's Mast Camera instrument, supplemented with 21 frames from the
> Mastcam's wider-angle camera and 25 black-and-white frames -- mostly of
> the rover itself -- from the Navigation Camera. The images were taken on
> several different Mars days between Oct. 5 and Nov. 16, 2012. Raw
> single-frame images received from Curiosity are promptly posted on a
> public website at: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/ . Mars
> fans worldwide have used those images to assemble mosaic views,
> including at least one gigapixel scene.

> The new mosaic from NASA shows illumination effects from variations in
> the time of day for pieces of the mosaic. It also shows variations in
> the clarity of the atmosphere due to variable dustiness during the month
> while the images were acquired.

> NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project is using Curiosity and the
> rover's 10 science instruments to investigate the environmental history
> within Gale Crater, a location where the project has found that
> conditions were long ago favorable for microbial life.

> Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates Curiosity's
> Mastcam. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
> Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
> Washington and built the Navigation Camera and the rover.

> More information about the mission is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/msl
> and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .

> You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:
> http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and
> http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

> For more information about the Multi-Mission Image Processing
> Laboratory, see: http://www-mipl.jpl.nasa.gov/mipex.html .

> Guy Webster 818-354-6278
> Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
> guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov

> 2013-205

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-- 
Best regards,
 Jodie                            mailto:spacerocks at spaceballoon.org

Received on Thu 20 Jun 2013 11:40:05 AM PDT