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

View Images

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)

There are a few PSP image releases for everyone today.

• Spirit
• Viking 1 Lander
• Viking 2 Lander

Also, a couple of special products:

• Victoria Crater in 3-D
• Opportunity movie

Enjoy!

The raw HiRISE image data needs to be cleaned up, and the HiCal pipeline is where this work is done. Now that the raw image data has been converted to a *.cub file format, ISIS tools can be used. These include hiclean, hipical, and hidestripe.

Hiclean does just what is says. Noise introduced into the image data by spacecraft electronics is corrected. Noise can show up as vertical and horizontal lines in the raw image and other periodic manifestations.

Hipical is a newer tool that performs calibration on the image data. For example, flatfield and gain corrections are performed by hipical. Hipical will be upgraded as we learn more about our instrument in its environment around Mars.

Hidestripe corrects a known striping pattern in HiRISE images.

We use other tools to collect even more statistical data about the newly calibrated image data. The HiCal pipeline will continue to be upgraded as our software matures. New statistics will be collected while corrections are added or improved.

After cleanup has been completed and a new *.hical.cub channel product created, HiCal creates a variety of jpeg browse and thumbnail images. The cleaned up channels are large, and for quick previews, these smaller jpegs come in handy.

Finally, HiCal lets the next pipeline – HiStitch – know that cleaned up channels are ready to be stitched together into CCD products.

Below is an example of raw data, prior to going through the HiCal pipeline. This image sample was taken from TRA_000873_1780; “Victoria Crater” at Meridiani Planum.

Below is the same image sample after going through the HiCal pipeline (notice that the bright vertical line in the center and the faint vertical lines throughout the image have been correctly removed by HiCal):

HiRISE images pass through several layers of calibration. The purpose of calibration is to make the image appear more realistic, more like how the surface really is. It makes science more possible, in general terms (Not limited to HiRISE) to determine the composition of surface materials, easier discoveries of surface features, and as a whole makes the images more useful. Irregularities arise from the camera system, from the optics, from any number of things. These features are mostly corrected out if calibration is done correctly. There has been some question as to what an image looks like before calibration, and after, and I’d like to give you an example, using our picture from Victoria Crater.

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Some of you out there may be asking: what happens to a HiRISE image between the time that it is taken and the time that it is released to the public? Well, I’d like to give a summary here.

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Perhaps the most amazing event last week was that we were able to help the Cornell/JPL team plan a rover drive. The Victoria Crater image was coming in, though with data transmission gaps that meant manual processing was needed. At the same time, the load on our partially-upgraded internal network and servers was approaching a crisis-level condition. The image—if we got it—was expected to be released less than 18 hours later, at a joint Rover/HiRISE press briefing, which didn’t allow much time for analysis and color processing.

Finally, it was at this moment that Steve Squyres (Principal Investigator, Mars Exploration Rovers) called our Chris Okubo and asked for whatever we had in helping plan a rover drive “right now.” Chris O. is normally the most laid back person on the team, which kind of masks the fact that he is a very sharp, hard-working geologist, and somehow also found the time to plan more HiRISE observations than anyone else, by a substantial margin. Chris was at this moment as close to agitated as I’ve ever seen him.

But with some quick work by the Downlink Operations crew (Tahirih in particular), the rover drivers were able to get what they needed, and transmit instructions that would place Opportunity closer to the edge of Victoria Crater.

It seemed to be the dramatic climax to an incredible week.

The color image of Victoria Crater, our first color image from science orbit, is stunning, check it out if you haven’t already!

Shown below is HiRISE’s eagle-eyed view of Opportunity from 168 miles above.

Jason Perry and I have been looking a bit at the HiRISE image of Victoria Crater, trying to figure out where Opportunity got stuck in April of last year. We found a map at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpegMod/PIA07922_modest.jpg and compared it with the HiRISE image, and finally found it. I’ve attached a screenshot showing the location. It is interesting to see that the area where the rover was stuck is considerably lighter than most of the area around it, possibly from dust the rover kicked up.