Image Sets  04 January, 2010 13:43

New Images From 04 January 2010 Added

10-004_13.21.42_VMC_Img_No_1.pngNew images have been posted to the image database. These images are from the VMC observation on 04 January 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)



04/01/2010 13:21-13:43 Gallery

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Image Sets  02 January, 2010 14:08

New Images From 02 January 2010 Added

10-002_13.39.10_VMC_Img_No_1.pngNew images have been posted to the image database. These images are from the VMC observation on 02 January 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)



02/01/2010 13:39-14:08 Gallery

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Image Sets  29 December, 2009 09:12

New Images From 29 December 2009 Added

09-363_09.11.59_VMC_Img_No_40.pngNew images have been posted to the image database. These images are from the VMC observation on 29 December 2009, 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)



29/12/2009 08:43-09:12 Gallery

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Image Sets  28 December, 2009 23:06

New Images From 28 December 2009 Added

09-362_22.45.07_VMC_Img_No_1.pngNew images have been posted to the image database. These images are from the VMC observation on 28 December 2009, 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)



28/12/2009 22:45-23:06 Gallery

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Image Sets  27 December, 2009 20:11

New Images From 27 December 2009 Added

09-361_19.42.19_VMC_Img_No_1.pngNew images have been posted to the image database. These images are from the VMC observation on 27 December 2009, 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)



27/12/2009 19:42-20:11 Gallery

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   Slideshow
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 Sixty-four Views of Mars from Mars Express VMC || The Mars Webcam (more officially known as the Mars Express Visual Monitoring Camera or VMC) has been capturing global views of Mars for the public since October 2007. These 64 images were taken between July 2 and November 15, 2008 and July 1 and August 15, 2009. This image is available as an 11-by-17-inch poster from The Planetary Society Store. Credit: Data courtesy of ESA / processing by Emily Lakdawalla. Rick Hollar Today we went through one of those cosmological time alignments that happen once in a century... engineers just love these numbers!! ESA Mars Express, Venus Express and Rosetta spacecraft operations team members at ESA/ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany, on, of course, 7 August 2009. Bill Dunford, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, writes: