First High-Res Color Photos from Mars 540
mzs writes "The first color thumbnail from Spirit was available yesterday from a larger image. Today some full-size color images are available. If you are in the USA you may be interested in catching the NOVA program on your local PBS station tonight." Acrobatman notes the existence of a nifty utility:"Mars24, a Mac OS X and Java application and applet which displays a Mars 'sunclock', a graphical representation of Mars. This free utility shows the current sun- and nightsides of Mars, along with a numerical readout of the time in 24-hour format and landmarks such as the landing positions of the rovers."
I wouldn't mind going there myself. (Score:5, Interesting)
Damon,
Why is the sky red? (Score:0, Interesting)
The sky on mars is blue, it is not red.
For instance, look at a picture of mars, around the edges you'll notice that its blue, where you're looking through the atmosphere. The molecules in its atmosphere scatter light they same way earth's does. Its blue damnit! Show me the correct colours!
Hmmmm.... Patterns.... (Score:5, Interesting)
In the center of the triangle are two triangular rocks.
Isn't that interesting?
Dark Patches near the Rover? (Score:5, Interesting)
fossils (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, up and to the right you'll see a smooth area, this is possibly from a hit millions of years ago, anyway, it's 'special' because it contains very finely ground rock, and if you look around the majority of the photo this does not exist, so it is believed this hole from a asteroid hit or whatnot has acted as a barrier and protected finer particules which NASA hope to scoop up and analyse.
Working with the images (Score:2, Interesting)
Since this is what we have to go on, I thought I'd have some fun with the images.
Note how this big image curves at the bottom? This confirms that the panoramic camera takes multiple photos, and they're stiched together to make a composite (suspicions from the earlier thumbnail confirmed). Also note that the bad tiles also curve, which would be consistant with a bad tile. You can see what I think are airbag marks in the lower-right hand corner.
I have one that I've equalized [modernwiccan.com], to get an idea of how things would look with a more earth-like atmosphere.
I took the same image, and enhanced the brightness and contrast [modernwiccan.com].
If you're a conspiracy theorist, you're looking for land like this. Good luck! Doesn't look like any desert I've seen before.
~D
Re:What are they censoring? (Score:3, Interesting)
The first bounce produces an estimated 40 g's, IIRC. Not exactly something the average Wester Digital can handle.
Re:Low res? (Score:1, Interesting)
>wall hard enough to generate 40gs of deceleration,
>and see how many megapixiels it has left.
Actually me and a few friends did this. We got a half dozen or so of those punching baloons and a small Veo 1.3 megapixiel camera. We placed the camera in a plastic container with styrofoam and attached the baloons to the container to encompass it. We then attached a six foot bungie cord with a hammer to help overcome wind resistance. We then droped the whole thing off of a four story building (about 40 feet or so) onto a sidewalk. The camera still works.
I also droped the camera in the parking lot by accident and it still works, though with a chunk missing out of the corner.
Re:red? (Score:3, Interesting)
What really stands out is that while all the soil and the sky are a dim, rusty red, the rocks in the pictures are grey-black.
That gives us a good start on considering the differences between the ubiquitous dust and the actual rocks. We'll obviously get a lot more information when the rover begins sampling.
The photo with colors and gradations revealed... (Score:5, Interesting)
And the original for comparison (just resized) : here! [stabilize.net]
high quality version here (Score:2, Interesting)
i was watching CNN or Headline News and the NASA person they were interviewing said the compression ratio for this picture was 24:1, which is done by the rover before transmission. apparently, the ratio is adjustable and they are gearing up to take even better shots with less compression soon.
Re:mass of exhaust (Score:3, Interesting)
(insert Jeopardy music here)
If you said "more" you'd be absolutely correct. If they were less efficient, then a slow burning chemical engine would last longer than an ION drive. If they were equally efficient, then what is the point of the fancy ION engine?
The reason the current engines work like they do is that there isn't enough energy available in the system to constantly power tons of propellant. In a nuclear engine, the power is there in the form of heat. All you need to do is find a way to convert that into propulsion. Given that 1 Watt = 0.00134102209 horsepower, we find that a small 10 MW reactor puts out ~13,410 horsepower. That's not too shabby. Increase the power (say like you'd get in a meltdown situation) and you can watch those horsepower figures skyrocket.
BTW, it seems I fibbed a little. Apparently NERVA does exhaust some radiation, so it *may* not be usable in launch situations. I'm still not convinced that it's a problem, but I'll have to do a little more reading to find out how much it puts out and if there is any fallout.