I was helping to prepare a presentation for a local high school, and I thought it would be cool to show them a picture of their school as HiRISE would see it. My first thought was the satellite layer in Google Maps. So I zoomed way in and took a screenshot. I wasn’t able to find a reference for the pixel scale of the satellite imagery (if anyone knows of one, please leave it in a comment!), so finally I just figured it out myself by using the Distance Measurement Tool. Turns out, if you zoom in as far as possible, the satellite images have almost exactly the same resolution as HiRISE! (This is true in Tucson, anyway; the coverage varies over different locations.) I thought this was a great way to visualize just how awesome HiRISE images are – just imagine looking at Mars like you can look at your home town on Google maps! …I guess that makes the rovers like Mars StreetView.

This is my neighborhood as HiRISE would see it: (Look at all those pools! Tucson is not nearly as dry as Mars )

Mars Global Surveyor’s Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) has for the past several years sent back a wealth of images of Mars. Until Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrived with the HiRISE camera, the MOC images were the highest resolution images of Mars from orbit. Here is a comparison of the same region on Mars taken from HiRISE Observation TRA_000823_1720 (left) and MOC image ID E2100030 (right). Technological progress allows us to continue sending more and more powerful cameras to gaze down on Mars. The MOC and HiRISE data sets have and will revolutionize our understanding of geological processes on Mars.

My new temporary daily routine here at HiRISE Operations:

1. Validate the image data that have arrived since last time I checked. Are the raw image files we receive gap-free and are the file sizes as expected? Did the Uplink team command the HiRISE camera properly? So far, they have a perfect record!
2. Keep checking to see if new data is arriving for processing.
3. Are our automated processes running properly?
4. Is the data being stored correctly and can the team access the images in the appropriate places?
5. Finally! Actually look at the new images. In between “oohs” and “ahhs” check to see that the images look good. Did our automated software handle the data correctly? Do I need to do any manual reprocessing of image data?
6. Report my findings to the team via email.
7. Get up and see what the scientists and other team members are up to.
8. Eat some Cheetos.
9. Repeat as necessary.
10. A million other tasks.
    

By the end of the day I am covered in Cheeto dust (joking) and amazed by some new vista of Mars (seriously).

What is it we find so amazing? I can only speak for myself, but in observation TRA_000823_1720, the boulders lying about casting shadows indicate just how “Hi” resolution the HiRISE camera can go. In the second observation – TRA_000825_2665 – the stack of water ice and dust layers and the patches of water frost make for a distinctive landscape. At this resolution, there is a marked difference between the north polar region on Mars and the pictures I have seen of the Earth’s own polar regions.

To me, this is the great joy of planetary science: seeing new vistas that are at once familiar and unfamiliar, and never, ever routine.

Saturday’s front-page of the Arizona Daily Star featured a good article about HiRISE with a humorous photo of Chris S. shoulder surfing as Anjani P. worked.

This is of course a typical scene as these images are coming down. Someone will be “driving”, so to speak: browsing, “surfing”, zooming, panning, contrast stretching and more, using the amazing image processing tools that our partners at the USGS in Flagstaff have developed. And someone else (or two, or three, or a dozen) will be standing over their shoulders, watching and collaborating. Or in Chris’s case, probably making jokingly snide comments.

But it makes for a world of difference between what you, out there, the public, experience and what we experience. Bridging that gap is a challenge for our public outreach team as the mission continues. We’ve got the benefit of having the brightest minds in planetary geology offering live commentary and analysis using the finest tools and top-of-the-line workstations. The experience of seeing the image is very dynamic; jumping between resolutions, zooming in to dunes and boulders and rocky outcrops, “stretching” the image to pull out detail hidden in dark shadow or blended in on bright surfaces.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that while our excitement is evident from the posts here, communicating exactly why we’re excited is much more difficult. Unless you could be here shoulder surfing….

Three things I am most looking forward to today:

• high resolution images of Mars from the HiRISE camera;
• chocolate cake; and
• all the visiting team members, press, and other guests participating in the excitement.

The images that start arriving today should be 10 times higher resolution than the test images we took in March. The chocolate cake we get on special occasions is better than any other desert except cheesecake. Finally, it is great to see face to face our remote team members, and it is nice to have our building fill up with visitors.

Now it is time for a bagel, the fourth thing I was looking forward to today.