General , Public Submissions  04 February, 2010 10:30

Tharsis composition by Hannes Griebel

A pair of excellent compositions created through a mashup of VMC images and data taken from other sources by our own Hannes Griebel, Mars Express operations and mission planning engineer (click on 'Full story' to access hi-resolution versions of both). The composites show the Tharsis region on Mars, and include data from VMC, Google Earth and MOLA.

  

Hi-res image here: http://webservices.esa.int/blog/resource/6/11315

 

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Image Sets  03 February, 2010 17:39

New Images From 03 February 2010 Added

10-034_17.27.41_VMC_Img_No_1.pngNew images have been posted to the image database. These images are from the VMC observation on 03 February 2010, for more details on this observation hit the \"Full Story\" link below. To access the images click the link below. Also you can access the Celestia file to see where the images were captured and access the raw data in the zip file (for more details see Help us with the VMC)



03/02/2010 17:27-17:57 Gallery

Celestia Script

Raw Files Archive

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Image Sets  02 February, 2010 16:02

VMC first: the shadow of Phobos!

Small version of Phobos Transit animation
For the first-time ever, VMC has imaged what we believe to be the shadow of Mars' moon Phobos crossing the surface of Mars. The shadow cast by Phobos as it passes between the Sun and Mars was photographed by VMC on 30 January, just as Mars Express approaches an intensive scientific observation campaign of Phobos (click here for more details).
 
These events (called Phobos Transits) are similar to a solar eclipse on Earth but happen much more frequently. The shadow cast by the tiny moon has been seen by several spacecraft before, including by HRSC on Mars Express (see here), but such a long sequence of images showing the shadow crossing the planet is very rare.
 
The animation on the right shows the path of the moon's shadow across the surface but as always with VMC we want your input! We'd like to publish a special post on this observation and we want to publish your thoughts and work on this: Can you create a better animation? Can you bring out new details in the images? How fast is the shadow moving? How big is the shadow? Can you confirm it is actually Phobos? Get in touch and let us know, for more general details see 'Help us with VMC', we look forward to your submissions! --Thomas
 
Update: Check out this post by Emily Lakdawalla on the Planetary Society Blog: she's already put together a fantastic animation of the shadow moving across the surface of the planet! 
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Image Sets  02 February, 2010 14:21

New Images From 02 February 2010 Added

10-033_13.52.39_VMC_Img_No_1.pngNew images have been posted to the image database. These images are from the VMC observation on 02 February 2010, for more details on this observation hit the \"Full Story\" link below. To access the images click the link below. Also you can access the Celestia file to see where the images were captured and access the raw data in the zip file (for more details see Help us with the VMC)



02/02/2010 13:52-14:21 Gallery

Celestia Script

Raw Files Archive

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   Slideshow
An an image compiled from the 11 July 2009 MEX VMC image set created by M. Malaska, USA. 5 VMC observations obtained early February 2010 show that clouds that form in the morning disappear in the afternoon. The attached image composite shows the five individual observations at different Martian day times. Image submitted by Ian Musgrave, Adelaide, Australia, 28 August 2008. Ian writes: Public submission by Martin Ahr: I have created an animation from a VMC image series that was made on November 5, 2009. It shows what I believe to be clouds onto which the sun starts shining as the rotation of Mars brings them towards the sunlit side. There are clouds which appear to move also in a direction transverse to the direction of rotation of Mars, and some seem to disappear as the sun starts shining on them. For each frame of the animation, I combined three images from one of the exposure bracketing series into one HDR image. I tried to also use the fourth image having the shortest exposure time. However, the HDR program I used could not combine this image with the other three images, probably because the difference in brightness between the image and the other three images is very large. Since the sunlit side of Mars is overexposed in all three images used, it remains overexposed. However, the dynamic range of the HDR image is sufficient to cover the entire brightness range of the clouds. I then took the logarithm of the brightness values of the pixels in each HDR image to obtain images that can be displayed on a monitor while still showing the full dynamic range of the HDR images. Thereafter, I shifted the images such that Mars it at substantially the same position in each image, combined the images into an animation and rotated the animation such that the sunlight shines from the right. I tried several orientations, and, in my opinion, this one looks most natural. Unfortunately, Mars is moving out of the camera's field of view at the end of the series. Since the clouds are not shown any more in images No. 30 and later, I omitted these images. In the remaining images, I made the cut off portions transparent (which can be seen in the animation at the upper right part of Mars). GIF images can comprise only 256 different colors. Therefore, I converted the images to grayscale. This does not make much difference, since the color saturation in the original images is so low that colors are almost invisible. I used three computer programs for the processing: Fitswork for reading the raw data, extracting color information from Bayer patterns, shifting images and calculating logarithms of brightness values; FDRTools Basic for creating HDR images; and Gimp for combining the images into an animation, minor adjustment of the brightness of individual images and rotating the animation. This is a list of the VMC images used for the animation: Frame 1: 09-309_19.02.06_VMC_Img_No_3.raw,09-309_19.02.59_VMC_Img_No_4.raw,09-309_19.03.53_VMC_Img_No_5.raw; Frame 2: 09-309_19.05.39_VMC_Img_No_7.raw,09-309_19.06.33_VMC_Img_No_8.raw,09-309_19.07.26_VMC_Img_No_9.raw; Frame 3: 09-309_19.09.13_VMC_Img_No_11.raw,09-309_19.10.06_VMC_Img_No_12.raw,09-309_19.10.59_VMC_Img_No_13.raw; Frame 4: 09-309_19.12.46_VMC_Img_No_15.raw,09-309_19.13.39_VMC_Img_No_16.raw,09-309_19.14.33_VMC_Img_No_17.raw; Frame 5: 09-309_19.16.19_VMC_Img_No_19.raw,09-309_19.17.13_VMC_Img_No_20.raw,09-309_19.18.06_VMC_Img_No_21.raw; Frame 6: 09-309_19.19.53_VMC_Img_No_23.raw,09-309_19.20.46_VMC_Img_No_24.raw,09-309_19.21.39_VMC_Img_No_25.raw; Frame 7: 09-309_19.23.26_VMC_Img_No_27.raw,09-309_19.24.19_VMC_Img_No_28.raw,09-309_19.25.13_VMC_Img_No_29.raw. Image Credit: Martin Ahr, ESA Mosaic credit ESA/R. Mahkin