The IAS Viewer is our preferred tool for looking at HiRISE images in full resolution. It provides excellent support for the JP2 file format and the interactive streaming protocol for JP2 which is called JPIP. It is written in Java and installs automatically in a secure “sandbox” on your computer when you visit a link to it. These links are in a section labeled “JP2 Quicklook (IAS Viewer)” on the HiRISE web site; every observation will have that on the right-hand side of the page.

We use the IAS Viewer ourselves in most cases. A prerequisite is having Java installed already on your computer; I’m pretty sure that both Microsoft Vista and Apple’s OS X do that by default, and most older versions of those operating systems do too. You can check by going to java.com and clicking on the “Do I Have Java?” link.

I have tested the IAS Viewer on a 2001-era computer (an iMac DV) with a low-speed wireless connection. Surprisingly, it worked about as good as on our work machines (dual or quad-core Macs with gigs of memory and ultra-fast Ethernet connections to nearby servers). With much older PC’s or via dial-up it may not be usable, I expect. But the bottom line is, you do not need to have the latest and greatest in computing technology to fill your screen with a steady source of high-res HiRISE pixels.

Early in the mission, our partners at NASA Ames put together a site using a Flash applet called Zoomify. They still maintain this site; however, it takes time and effort for them to keep up with our releases. Zoomify uses “tile pyramids”, or multiple copies of image data at each zoom resolution. So not only must the data be transferred, it must then be rendered into many tiles, occupying slightly more space than the original data. For that reason, they convert to JPEG, which eliminates some of the highest resolution information. Still, it may be faster because the lower resolutions are pre-rendered and the highest resolution has been decreased. Flash, like the IAS Viewer, is supported on Windows, Mac, and (x86 flavors of) Linux.

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Well, it’s been a while since we’ve been posting a lot, so I thought I’d just give you guys some kind of an idea as to what we’re doing these days.

The uplink team is constantly looking where to point the camera next. There is a program which is in beta testing now called HiWeb which allows scientists and other people to input suggestions. The Uplink team reviews the suggestions in the database, assigns a priority to each of these suggestions, and then finds when we can point the camera at the part. They also make sure a certain percentage of the upcoming pictures are assigned to look for a Phoenix landing spot, as this is a high priority item at the moment. They are still learning exactly how to best command the camera, and are constantly sharpening their skills.

The downlink team is making sure operations run smoothly at HiROC. They are verifying that the processing has taken place, make sure that the images have been calibrated correctly, that there are no image processing artifacts on the images we are about to release. If there is any artifacts created from processing the image, the source of the problem is identified and fixed, and then the image is reprocessed. While previously we have sent images to the public that had some small processing artifacts during the post-MOI and Transition imaging, we currently are waiting until the images have been completely validated. The downlink team is also taking a quick look at each image that comes down, and making sure there isn’t something unexpected, for example, haze at Mars, lots of saturated pixels, etc. If any such problems are found, they notify the uplink team, to ensure that we don’t have continuing problems. These problems are very rare, but on occasion happen, due to the changing nature of Mars. (more…)

Here we are over two weeks into PSP, and we haven’t even finished releasing our TRA images!

Actually, today we got 31 TRA images out the door, just about completing that set. In addition, the previous 32 grayscale images have been reprocessed with our improved geometry—no more jagged edges on the reprojected “Red Mosaics”.

Furthermore, the full-res images are now available as lossless JPEG-2000 (JP2) files. At HiROC we are using the ExpressView application from a company called LizardTech… a subsidiary of some Japanese company (that has no affiliation to us FWIW).

ExpressView is available for Mac and Windows. Their download page describes it only as a browser plug-in, but the installer contains an application as well.

ExpressView provides progressive rendering (though you still have to have the entire file first—we are considering moving to a streaming model using the JPIP protocol but there are even fewer clients available). It should also reduce the amount of memory (RAM) needed to view our largest images.

There are a few options available to Linux users, but nothing we have tried is as fast or as feature-rich. In any case, let us know what works or doesn’t work for you.

All of these images are available at the usual location.

A system for streamlining the process of editing captions, highlighting cut-out areas and pushing out web pages is in the works. We will get caught up.

In the meantime, look for the first set of PSP releases by this time next week.

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving.

While most of our uplink and downlink procedures have been developed and tested fairly heavily over the last year and a half, we still have parts of our ground data system that are in heavy development. The distribution of our imaging products to the Planetary Data System’s Image Atlas, our scientific colleagues, and you, the public at large is still very much a work in progress. Through the month of October I have been developing the next part of our PDS data node culminating in a test where I practiced the release of 2 days worth of imaging products from our Post Mars Orbital Insertion imaging campaign back in March. For the purposes of this test I released 196 raw products and our first sample JPEG2000 product.

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