Mars Reconaissance Orbiter: Primary mission imaging begins!

Got a Broadband connection, and a big hard drive?

If you wish to see some extreme closeups of Mars, the best ever taken so far.
Just vistit the HiRise Camera site here: MRO

Click on the Transistion phase link, for smaller, earlier pics.
But if you click on the Primary Science link..You will be treated to
the latest images (updated once a week). 3 Formats, a smal jpeg, a larger jpeg.
and a FULL size JP2 image..The Jp2 images (jpeg2000) require a browser plugin to view, there is a link to the plugin on each image page.
The plugin allows you to pan, zoom, and print the images.


Be patient, some of these images are close to 700MB in size..so even with broadband, it takes some time. TO me, it's worth the wait..these are nothing short of REMARKABLE!

Details down to the smallest of boulders..tiny sand dunes. Some very unusual terrain. It's like a low altitude flyover.

Let us know if you visit the site, and view some of the images. I'm curious as to what others think.

I know it takes a while to download these. LOL

But has anyone taken the time, and taken a look?
The resolution is so good, you could see pigeon poop on a park bench, really!

Disclaimer: Mars, probably has no parks, pigeons , or poop. At least not these days.

LOL I just posted this link in another thread a few moments ago. Still it's pretty amazing stuff.

MODERATORS please remove my thread as we don't need duplicates.

[edit on 2-12-2006 by Terapin]

Thats cool, thanks.(you can have the next one, LOL)
Lets talk about it..

SO what do you think of the big images?..
I took me 30 minutes or so, to pan and zoom just a single image.
And that was just a cursory glance, for things that stood out.

Have you tried downloading the jp2's?

They are VERY cool. My main concern, and part of the topic in my thread is that there will still be many who will "find" cities, pyramids and snakes in those images no matter how clear the detail is. Those who are determined to support their odd views will just jump on these amazing photos of another world and use them to babble about more nonsence

Have you guys seen the "Victoria Crater" at Meridiani Planum It's crazy looking, i swear the crater looks inverted I just cant see it as an indentation.

The images are amazing. I've looked at many, if not most of them and the detail is incredible. I hope the images from this thing resolves a lot of the anomalies people claim to see on Mars.

Originally posted by JackJuice
Have you guys seen the "Victoria Crater" at Meridiani Planum It's crazy looking, i swear the crater looks inverted I just cant see it as an indentation.

It looks indented to me. I also like that image, because you can see the Opportunity rover parked near the edge of it.

[edit on 2-12-2006 by jra]

Originally posted by JackJuice
Have you guys seen the "Victoria Crater" at Meridiani Planum It's crazy looking, i swear the crater looks inverted I just cant see it as an indentation.

Yeah, I have that problem too sometimes. Without thinking about the direction of the light source, the craters look like domes. Sometimes I can zoom WAY out and reset my perception. It's an interesting illusion.

jra,

I hope we get some closeups of those interesting "anomalies" soon.
Where the "worm" turns into a dune..

a little martian poetry..LOL

Originally posted by jra

It looks indented to me. I also like that image, because you can see the Opportunity rover parked near the edge of it.

[edit on 2-12-2006 by jra]

Thanks for the heads up about the rover, what side is it on? I have yet to find it

Yeah the indentation to me is like an optical illusion my eyes just cant make it out. I know by the shadows that its indented but for some reason my eyes fool me into thinking its extruded

Originally posted by JackJuice
Thanks for the heads up about the rover, what side is it on? I have yet to find it

It's on the North West side. It's labeled on this image (just move the mouse over to show labels) hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu...

Originally posted by spacedoubt
I hope we get some closeups of those interesting "anomalies" soon.
Where the "worm" turns into a dune..

Yeah I've always thought the glass tube/worm things were a bit silly. I just see them as being dunes in trenches.

Pretty nice pics, thanks. I'm just wondering what the freak are they trying to hide in this one:

hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu...

I'm downloading the other image of the whole Opportunity landing area now.
677Megabytes..whew!
hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu...

It'll be a while. I'm curious to the detail of the aerobraking shell, and the other parts of the craft that are spread across the landing site.

I'm so glad we've got another craft there, now that Mars GLobal Surveyor is more than likely dead.

Originally posted by tcgeek
Pretty nice pics, thanks. I'm just wondering what the freak are they trying to hide in this one:

hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu...

Are you talking about the data dropout?
The rectangle area?
I would guess..nothing.

Have you seen anything interesting in the visible parts of the image?
Thats the first one I downloaded..

They arn't hiding anything. Occasionaly data gets corrupted in transmission and shows up as black pixels. We will get another shot of this area later on in the mission.

Originally posted by tcgeek
Pretty nice pics, thanks. I'm just wondering what the freak are they trying to hide in this one:

I knew some one was going to ask this when I first saw that image. Well firstly why do you assume it's hiding something and not just missing data? That rectangle is roughly 14.25m x 4.50m. (25cm per pixel) That's not very big really.

I am still in the process of downloading the images from the transition phase.

I am glad I bought a DVD recorder in August.

Originally posted by spacedoubt
Yeah, I have that problem too sometimes. Without thinking about the direction of the light source, the craters look like domes. Sometimes I can zoom WAY out and reset my perception. It's an interesting illusion.

It happened to me too, try opening the image in an image editor and rotate the image 180 degrees. It works with me.

Originally posted by Terapin
My main concern, and part of the topic in my thread is that there will still be many who will "find" cities, pyramids and snakes in those images no matter how clear the detail is.

Well, with this kind of detail now they can find cars, cows, Martonians getting some sun beside their swimming pools, etc.

Originally posted by spacedoubt
I know it takes a while to download these. LOL

But has anyone taken the time, and taken a look?
The resolution is so good, you could see pigeon poop on a park bench, really!

Disclaimer: Mars, probably has no parks, pigeons , or poop. At least not these days.

Actually no the resolving power is only a meter so you could make out a park bench but not the poop on it ... damn good though

On some photos they say that a pixel=30cm, so its less than a meter.

I think its more or less the same as the best photos from Google Earth.

Originally posted by jra
The images are amazing. I've looked at many, if not most of them and the detail is incredible. I hope the images from this thing resolves a lot of the anomalies people claim to see on Mars.

I am pretty sure it will so fasten your seat belt.

Originally posted by Terapin
They are VERY cool. My main concern, and part of the topic in my thread is that there will still be many who will "find" cities, pyramids and snakes in those images no matter how clear the detail is.

The clearer the detail the easier it will be to see what's really behind all the tampering and deliberate attempts at obfuscation...

Those who are determined to support their odd views will just jump on these amazing photos of another world and use them to babble about more nonsence

So how will they make up their fantasy cities when the resolution becomes ever better? Why were the resolution of the previous imaging systems so terrible to start with?

The only people who should be getting worried is those who are hiding the truth from us as they know what we will find , and probably do, when they slip up or reveal too much too soon.

Stellar

Originally posted by StellarX
Why were the resolution of the previous imaging systems so terrible to start with?

Well like with all technology, as time progresses, our technology improves.