Mro--First Looks

I think what I posted showed how the new HiRISE images <b>should </b>answer all questions, assuming they are legit, and there's no tampering going on, and they take some shots of the areas we want to see.

A couple of months ago, I guessed that we needed 10 times better resolution. I can say now, that wasn't a bad guess. At 16cm/p (that's 6 1/2 inches) we should be able to recognize anything familiar, and see it for what it is, sort of like walking on a path on the Yosemite Valley Floor, and looking at the cliff walls.

Then, we can zoom in if we want (analogous to looking through the binoculars), and see something the size of a human head, clearly, like looking at Bob Dylan at a concert where you are too far back to get a good look with the naked eye, but not so far back that binocs won't do you some good. Whereas, the 1.63m/p images from the MOC would be sort of like being a half a mile away from Dylan, too far to even see him with binoculars.

This is exciting. I hope Trinket is wrong, and we get pictures of what we want to see.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I was commenting on the quality of the particular, not the theory. -- Neil<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote"> You lost me there. What I posted was real, not theorectical.
rd

Let me add this to the story. Here's what the 2 houses would have looked like on the best MOC image. Can you see them?:



rd

Some more perspective. HiRISE spots Rover "Opportunity" at Victoria Crater:

hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000873_1780/



Note the shadow from the camera mast:





rd

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
I was commenting on the quality of the particular, not the theory. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

You lost me there. What I posted was real, not theoretical.
rd<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Don't know why I should have "lost" anyone. Specifically, here's some of what I what I said, once again

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">So far, I suspect the new "science experiment" still has bugs in it (I'm saying nothing about tampering--just bugs). For one thing, at higher magnification you can see two sections of the image patched together, which is fine, but one section is blurry and the other is clearer. Only one of those sections could have 25 cm/p, if that.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

It's like the Star Trek episode where one guy is white on one side and black on the other; the other guy is the opposite. The images are clear on one side and blurry on the other.

Examples.





Hayever, I agree that the project has great promise and has already taken some good stuff.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by neilderosa</i>
<br />Don't know why I should have "lost" anyone. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote"> That's easy, it's because there was nothing theoretical about what I posted. It was a direct, to scale, comparison of equal size areas on the ground, which clearly showed the vast superiority of the new images. I'm pretty sure most readers got it, but I'll simplify it for you. In the best known MOC images, two houses would have to fit inside this little white box near the bridge in the crack, and any attempt to blow them up bigger would only result in blurriness and empty magnification:



I added an arrow to show what the relative size of Rover Opportunity would be. That little black speck.

As far as the blurry part goes, I looked at every image in that list, and downloaded them all, and there were no blurry parts. I suspect that one part of those images got interrupted during download.

rd

I think I may have grossly <b>under </b>estimated the resolution. To fully appreciate this, you have to download the Full Scale jpg at the bottom of each image page. This one was 59MB, so it was so big that opens at 3% in Paint Shop, but it has all the pixels. It's so big that it must be cropped just to work with because it ties up too many resources.

The one I used above was the "Browse" version, that is much smaller (sub-sampled), and can't be blown up nearly as far. 100% on the Browse image equals approx. 9% on the cropping of the Full Scale image (which I used to take this small cropping).

This is a small 100% scale piece of the Full Scale image TRA_000869_1605:



Note the little zigzag pattern of the pixels at the top. Each one is 1 pixel in the Y (zig) direction, and 9 pixels in the X (zag) direction. That means that little X zag is 234cm long, or approximately 92 inches, of which we can resolve 1/3 of it, according to HiRISE people, or 78cm, which is a little over 30 1/2 inches.

That means that the little rocks we're seeing in the upper third of the image are roughly the size of a small table. So, not only will we be able to see houses clearly, but we might be able to see kids toys, etc.

Assuming there are these massive artworks on Mars, we will surely be seeing brush strokes, and then the fun begins. Will we have to "back off" all the way back to the MOC days in order to see the Art? Will we be able to know for sure? It's hard to say. One thing is certain, though. We will definitely be able to see it from close up.

rd