We’re in the midst of another HiRISE team meeting here in Tucson. I can’t believe it’s been almost two years since the team meeting I blogged about here. There are a few new faces, but mostly familiar friends that we’ve worked with for years by now. Our two newest Targeting Specialists are meeting the science team for the first time. (They’re actually not that “new” any more – they started last June, but this is their first team meeting.) Some of the other new folks are students and post-docs who are working on interesting research projects using HiRISE data. There are also a few people from JPL here at the meeting, who we talk to on the phone and email often, but we’ve never actually met face-to-face before.

Today during the meeting we are getting updates on all the Science Themes. Our images are divided into groups according to the geologic process that we hypothesize occurred. For each of these themes, a Science Theme Lead is assigned. These “STLs” are Co-Investigators or postdocs who are experts in that area. For example, the Volcanic Processes theme contains images intended to explore phenomena related to volcanism, such as inflated lavas, water-lava interactions, volcanic pits and cones, and mysterious types of collapse features such as the one shown in the anaglyph to the left. As you can read in the caption for that image, we’re still not sure how this feature formed. There are several different possibilities. The image was originally placed in the Impact Processes theme because that was one hypothesis. However, after seeing the high resolution image and stereo data from HiRISE, formation by a meteor impact doesn’t seem as plausible. Collapse after loss of material beneath the surface, such as magma or water, is a better fit to our observations.

After the long process of creating the HiGlyph Pipeline (anaglyphs producing software), processing the images through this pipeline and having them all properly validated, we here at HiRISE are proud to present you with a whole mess of anaglyphs (362 of them, to be exact )!

And now, for all of those curious minds out there, a brief overview of the HiGlyph Pipeline:

• Anaglyphs are created in a three-step process. The first step is to take the two images of the stereo pair and map project them. This helps the pipeline determine which image will be the left image and which will be the right image in the anaglyph.

• The second step takes the two images and looks to see if there are any improvements that can be done on them before putting them together. If there are not, the images move on. Often, due to the difference in viewing angle, the two images do not have a 100% overlap. Thus, to make the image a bit neater and easier to see, we trim off the excess portion of the image (the parts that do not overlap) and then assemble them so the left image is the red and the right image is the blue/green.

• The third and final step of this image processing is simply to prepare the images you see here and to update our catalog.

Seems complicated, right? Well luckily we have wonderful programmers that create these intricate programs. All I have to do is create a list of these images and run them through this pipeline. What really makes my job interesting is the validation process!

I have had the pleasure of being able to look at all 362 of the anaglyphs we have released today. But, you might ask, aside from looking super cool in 3-D glasses , what does it take to validate these anaglyphs? Well, at the beginning of this process the student validators and I got to ask that very same question. Since HiRISE has never had software to create images like this before, we played lab rat and came up with an entirely new technique for validation.

• You may notice that when not wearing the 3-D glasses there is a bit of a horizontal shift in the anaglyph. This shift is good because it is what allows us to see the image in 3-D. But, since the map projection of this process is not always spot on, we sometimes wind up with a vertical shift too. This is bad! Since most of us do not have googly eyes, this makes the image very difficult to see. With our validation process, we have to spot this out and fix it so that you do not have to strain your eyes (well… not too much at least ) in order to see the anaglyph.

Well, with that said, I leave you to your regularly scheduled HiRISE browsing! Enjoy!

We’re going to release a bunch of anaglyphs next week! The ones I’ve seen are really cool. Personally, I have to work a little on focusing my eyes to make them look right (maybe I need new glasses!), but it’s totally worth it. The landscape pops right out of the screen, showing intricate textures in so much detail it’s almost tactile. Sometimes I want to reach out and touch my computer screen to feel the depths of valleys, individual boulders, and folds in the layering.

Here’s the teaser, including a link to where to get your own 3-D glasses. Here’s another blog entry explaining how we take the stereo images that are used to create the anaglyphs: Hi-Fi Stereo (the other kind) The new anaglyphs we’re releasing will be processed differently (I’m not sure of the details, but hopefully we’ll get someone who better understands the processing to explain it). Instead of the magenta tint of the previous analgyphs we had made by hand (like this example to the left), they will just be regular gray-scale, which I think is less distracting.

Last week was the third landing site selection workshop for MSL, the Mars Science Laboratory. The workshop has been well covered in other blogs. If you’re unfamiliar with the seven sites up for consideration, the Martian Chronicles has posted excellent summaries of each site, starting with Miyamoto Crater and working through Gale Crater.

Most of the presentations from the workshop have also been posted here. It’s rare to see one without some HiRISE images!

Here at HiRISE, we are interested in this for several reasons – not only are some of our team members involved in the site selection, but HiRISE data have been integral to the process. HiRISE images have been used to study the small-scale geology of the sites, which is very powerful when combined with CRISM and other data sets to determine composition and mineralogy. HiRISE data has also provided calculations of the slopes and rock abundances around the landing sites, both of which are critical for the safety of the lander. We’ve been doing reconnaissance (the R in MRO!) of all of these sites since we started our primary mission! Here are some of the data we’ve produced for the MSL project.

• Lots of images! (links to a search for ‘MSL’ in our catalog; you can also search for the individual site names)
• Anaglyphs (red-blue 3-d of stereo pairs – these are so fun! )
• Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), which are painstakingly built from our stereo paired images. (This site doesn’t have any MSL DEMs posted yet, but they should be coming soon!)

I know people here have their favorites among these seven sites – what’s yours?

Now that all the Phoenix landing excitement has calmed down, we can return to regular old day-to-day operations…. One of those is stereo imaging. (For day-to-day Phoenix operations, check out their website!)

On the main HiRISE site, we’ve posted a list of all the stereo pairs we’ve acquired & released. There are 467 of them! Now you can look up whether your favorite image is part of a stereo pair or not. (I don’t think the list is searchable yet, but it’s sorted by the observation ID of the first half.) There is also a PDF document on the page (click here to download directly) with more information about our stereo images. It includes instructions for using these stereo pairs to make your own red-blue anaglyphs (the ones you view with the 1950s 3-D glasses). To the right is one of those anaglyphs. This is part of a delta in Eberswalde Crater from the image PSP_001534_1560, linked on that page. (Search our catalog for ‘anaglyph’ to see even more.)

Wondering how we get stereo imaging? (more…)

We’re just finishing up four days of having the whole HiRISE team visiting us here in Tucson. It’s been a great team meeting! We had updates on operations, and heard a lot about science results from HiRISE images. Some CRISM and THEMIS team members participated, too, so we got to see what other teams are doing and talk about collaborating and using multiple data sets. People are doing really exciting things with HiRISE data!

Also, our team is really growing!

You’ll notice a lot of new faces compared to a few years ago!

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