Here are 66 false-color images from the 1400 orbit range.

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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)

Mars is currently blanketed by a large dust storm. We first starting seeing it in late June. The MARCI instrument returns global daily mosaics of the planet, which we use like a weather report. These showed several dusty areas, and we had some hopes they would remain merely “regional.” However, in the following days, the storm activity increased, and winds blew the dust around the planet. Most of our images started coming back clouded over with dust. Some are just hazy, and some are completely obscured. Our Principal Investigator, Alfred McEwen, recently pointed out that this dust storm currently active in the Saharan desert on Earth looks very familiar!

At this point, the storm is considered a “hemispherical event,” meaning it’s mainly affecting “only” half of the planet (the southern hemisphere, in this case). We have our fingers crossed that this will not expand and become a global event like the 2001 dust storm.

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I thought I’d offer a few more words as to what is done with images at HiROC. Validation has been mentioned in the blog, and I’d like to explain a bit more about that. I’ve been involved in writing the primary validation tool, HiVali, and I will be the primary student validator for the next month. (The regular student validators are from out of state, and are going home for the Christmas holidays. I’m from around here, and offered my services to look at pretty pictures from Mars all day;-))

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