Here are 64 observations from the 1600 block of PSP street. Additionally, I have updated my three previous posts with images I missed the first time around.
PSP_001656_2175 is perhaps the most striking of the group, with prominent slope streaks. Slope streaks are also visible in PSP_001644_1715.
My personal favorites are the dune images: PSP_001608_2560 and PSP_001660_2570.
Two images have the “glow” problem: PSP_001662_1195 and PSP_001697_2570.
Here are 40 RGB color images from the 1500 – 1600 orbit range of MRO.
There are, as always, many magnificent images here. Some of the noteworthy observations are:
PSP_001521_2025 and PSP_001501_2280: On the HiRISE web site you can see diagrams made by Tim Parker show the locations of various parts (lander, backshell, heatshield or parachute) for Viking Lander 1 and Viking Lander 2. It’s possible they aren’t in the color strip (I haven’t found them)!
PSP_001508_1245 and PSP_001510_2195: These two exhibit a “glow” pattern of saturated pixels due to high TDI (Time Delay Integration) settings on the blue-green CCDs. (All of the exposure settings are chosen for each observation based on a photometric model of the scene).
PSP_001538_2035: This is a rim-to-rim section across a crater called Tooting that is about 30 kilometers in diameter. It’s also interesting to note how the altitude of the rims, when combined with the large off-nadir roll angle (23 degrees), leads to an oddly bowed geometric projection. But it is correct; as the terrain rose, fell, and rose again from HiRISE’s angled point of view, the center of the ground track deviated slightly east or west from a true great-circle line.
PSP_001558_1325 and PSP_001593_2635: These dune fields are striking, forming incredible patterns.
PSP_001582_2245: Looking like a super-sized area of dried mud, the polygonal cracks in this image are amazing.
Updated (2008-Apr-10)
It seems the landslides in PSP_007338_2640 have caught a lot of attention!
There has been a lot of online and print news coverage: CNN, Time, Fox News, Astronomy, Space.com, New Scientist, National Geographic, and our local Arizona Daily Star, among many others. The New York Times made a really nice slide show that includes the avalanche, the Earth-Moon image, as well as other great images from our big PDS release. Blogs are talking about it (Cumbrian Sky and the Bad Astronomy Blog, to name just two). People over at unmannedspaceflight.com are discussing the avalanches a lot, too. (I’m sure there are tons I’ve missed – apologies – if you feel left out, post it in a comment below!)
A co-worker heard NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me featured a question about the avalanches on Saturday. It was even the Astronomy Picture of the Day yesterday! 
I’ve talked personally to a lot of people about it, too. It’s amazing how it’s caught everyone’s interest. I think most people who see it for the first time have the same “Holy crap!” reaction that we all had when we first saw it here at HiROC. Then they start trying to figure out what’s going on, what caused it, what it means, how we can take more data and look at past images to narrow down different hypotheses… which is exactly the process that scientists go through!
The best part of the story, I think, is how the landslide was serendipitously captured in an image, and then accidentally noticed! HiRISE has sent back such an incredible volume of highly detailed data, no one person has time to study it all in full resolution. We’ve released 17 Terabytes, thousands of images, and it’s very likely that more surprises like this are waiting to be discovered in them. So go look at more HiRISE images; let us know what you find! We can’t wait to see how Mars can surprise us further.
Thanks for being as excited about HiRISE and Mars as we are!
Here are 66 false-color images from the 1400 orbit range.
PSP_001406_2680 looks like the higher relief was saturated (too bright for the camera settings), possibly due to CO2 frost cover.
PSP_001432_2015 is really cool; it’s on the edge of Olympus Mons, on the steep scarp leading to the much more gradual rise of the shield volcano. The rippled rolling dunes in PSP_001432_2610 are in striking contrast to the rocky floors between them. Check out the amazing slot canyons fractures along the left side in PSP_001440_2175.
The atmospheric haze in PSP_001444_2610 is incredible, though it does screw up the color registration on the bottom half of the image. This is 30 degrees East of the aforementioned dune location, but the same type of terrain. On some of these images, there will be CTX (Context camera) images. With similar haze conditions, over on UnmannedSpaceflight.com, Nirgal shows a colorized CTX image from MRO orbit 3624 for which there is a HiRISE view.
There are so many other great images in this set. The Holden Crater image deserves special mention. This area is on the candidate list for MSL, as mentioned in a previous post. A stereo print was made of this region at about the same resolution you see here; it was amazingly sharp, like looking into a scale model or diorama.
Again, feel free to post your favorites here in the comments.
Updated (2008-Apr-10)
HiRISE caught an avalanche in action! http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_007338_2640
It was so exciting to find this image! The image was intended to be part of a series of seasonal monitoring observations of a dune field. We’re watching to see how the winter carbon dioxide frost disappears as spring comes to the northern polar areas (which is pretty cool in itself! See PSP_007043_2650, for example.) PSP_007338_2640 happened to be the first image we took after powering back on after a safing event. So we were examining the image to make sure the camera was still working OK (it is – as you can see from this beautiful image & the many others we’ve taken since!). If it hadn’t been for that, we might not have noticed this for weeks! (In case you haven’t noticed, we have a LOT of images to look at! 
)
My first reaction was just, “What is that?” So I asked some of the scientists around HiROC, and they got excited, too. Everyone was talking about it all day, putting together ad-hoc color products (the full color processing takes a while to get through our processing pipelines) and looking at other images nearby for similar events. Because this was part of a series of images in the same spot, we had a “before” image as well (PSP_007140_2640). It’s a little hard to compare the two images because the bright carbon dioxide frost is changing as well, and we took the two images from different angles. But you can see in the second image that there are some spots up above on the cliff that are missing their bright frost covering. Perhaps that’s where the rock (or ice) fall started? The springtime sun is warming these icy layers, which could cause sublimation (solid ice changing to gas). Certainly there is a lot of dust being raised to form this big cloud, too, whether the dust was mixed in with the ice blocks, or just kicked up off the lower, dustier layers. As we continue monitoring this site and other polar areas, we’re sure to learn a lot more about the processes captured in this image.
ETA: Emily Lakdawalla made a great animation of the before/after shots, posted on the Planetary Society blog. So cool!
On Friday, HiRISE released over 1200 color observations. This was our first large release of the color products (not counting the 140+ images of MSL candidate sites released back in October). I was asked recently if our images look fairly similar to one another, or if they are all completely different. Well, you can now judge that for yourselves, but I feel the answer clearly tends toward the latter. The variety of terrain types on Mars is wider than you might have expected, and everywhere you look you’ll find something spectacular.
But I’d like to showcase one image in particular. Within this single image, there is a remarkable progression of landforms, in a view running down a small portion in the interior of Valles Marineris, the “Grand Canyon of Mars.” Here are a selected set of sub-images from the RGB color product; each thumbnail links to a larger view. All of the original products are available at our website.
At the top of the image is a flat, cratered plain, very much what one thinks of as typically Martian. The edge is abrupt, leading immediately to a steep descent crossing multiple layers of bedrock. The accumulating aprons of debris are channeled down between rocky ridges.
A number of boulder tracks are visible, remnants of mighty tumbles. You can follow one of these tracks for something like a kilometer down into the middle portion of the image. Here is a small part of this track.
Farther down, a network of scalloped terrain has formed in what must be a transition zone from the upper, steeper section and the lower, flatter step. What’s interesting to me about this section is, as shown in the image below, the scalloped edges form a stunning pattern of bifurcation.
(I originally posted this on another blog on Wednesday, April 11. It is also appropriate here.)
Once upon a time Richard Hoagland was my role model and Carl Sagan was not. While Sagan was a media hog, Hoagland fought the good fight against the government conspiracy that hid evidence of alien intelligences and the artifacts left throughout the solar system by an ancient alien civilization.
There was, after all, the “Face”.
During college, I overdosed on Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell. I left pseudoscience behind. I saw Hoagland for the charlatan he really was (and is), and I came to appreciate Sagan for his reason, his passion, and his inspiring desire to educate.
Now, years later I work for HiRISE, participating in an experiment to photograph the surface of Mars using a high resolution camera. We had to take yet another image of the Cydonia region on Mars, because of the history, because of the public interest, because of the desire to leave silliness behind and instead embrace the wonder of reality.
Today the image was released (see the various image options, including the highest resolution JPEG2000 version), along with other gorgeous views of the Martian surface.
This then is the real face of Mars, a boulder-strewn mesa carved not by imaginary entities but by the slow yet steady erosion caused by winds, impacts, physical failure of rocks, and perhaps temperature variations.
I think that while I believed in the “Face” I could not have had the dream job I do today. I would not know the joy I know today, the joy that comes from seeing Mars not as I use to want it to be, but Mars as it really is. This is the real Mars, far more exciting and full of wonder and mystery than Hoagland’s fantasy version.
If a dedication means anything at all, then I dedicate this post to Carl Sagan, a person I did not appreciate while he was alive, but who has taught me so much through the legacy of his words. I now look at Mars with “skeptical thinking and an aptitude for wonder,” the two skills he highlighted in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
Just as a follow up to the previous posts, here’s a picture of our Department Head, modified to appear to be taken from HiRISE, put on the HiWall for an April Fool’s Joke. This image has been shrunk, but otherwise is the same as the image that appeared on the HiWall.
There are a few PSP image releases for everyone today.
Also, a couple of special products:
Enjoy!
PSP Image 1440-1255 shows a network of gully-like channels on the sides of dunes inside Russell Crater. On the sunward side, the channels are long and continuous, terminating at the base of the dunes. On the more shadowed side, strange stipples interrupt the otherwise silky smooth dune faces, as if the channel forming process never quite gets going.
Aside from the scientific significance of this image—which hopefully can tell us how these features formed and how recently—it is one sexybeautiful image, and my personal favorite so far!
This image and twelve others were released today; the first set of Primary Science Phase images from HiRISE.
