New images have been posted to the image database. These images are from the VMC observation on 16 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)

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Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society has posted a fabulous invitation to her live 'image processing' tutorial today, 16 December, at 19:30 CET (18:30 UT). The livecast will be hosted on the PS website, and if you miss it, the archive copy will be available for later downloading. Emily wrote: 

Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I've been fiddling with images from the Mars Webcam, more officially known as the Mars Express Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC), for the last couple of weeks. This camera is both awful and awesome. The images are not the greatest, but a little bit of processing can really pull out some lovely views of Mars of a sort that is impossible to obtain from any other source. They're better than the best amateur Earth-based Mars photos, and they show Mars in phases that are simply not visible from Earth.

I want to continue my classes on image processing but the busy season between Thanksgiving and Christmas has prevented me from sitting down to plan the next big topic, a primer on space cameras. But I don't want to lose momentum, so I think that tomorrow I'm going to do a quickie class on how to play with Mars Express VMC images. The VMC is unlike any other camera that's out there in space, so it makes sense to treat it separately. And, more than any other else, this camera is yours -- that is, the pictures aren't for any science team, they're for the public. So I'll show you what I've learned and how you can process the images on your own.

A reminder to everyone (backyard astronomers, Mars fans, students, teachers, photographers and digital artists) anywhere: Emily's class will be an ideal opportunity to learn how to process VMC images. Once you've done some work with the raw VMC output, send us your results with a note on what you did, the techniques you used and - most importantly - your interpretation of the results. What can you see on the surface? In the atmosphere? What about geography? We look forward to publishing your submissions right here in ESA's Mars Webcam site.

Finally, here is Emily's latest excellent result (see image above): A very cool poster entitled "Sixty-four Views of Mars from Mars Express VMC"

Description: 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. (Access the high-res version in the PS site here.) -- Daniel

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New images have been posted to the image database. These images are from the VMC observation on 15 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)

 Full story »

New images have been posted to the image database. These images are from the VMC observation on 15 December 2009. 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)



 Full story »