Comet McNaught

My heart longs to see this comet. It's now more or less exclusively visible in the Southern Hemisphere - certainly not visible from chilly Minnesota.

Oh well.

Metadata Interruption; Crappy Java 3D Colors

There's been a pause in metadata updates for the last couple days while I upgrade to a new hardware at Midnight Mars Browser Central Command. I hope to be back up and running later today.

However, I may not mess with brightness and de-vignetting adjustments for awhile, as a new problem has materialized. It seems that in newer versions of Java or Java 3D, the Panorama feature is rendering in "thousands of colors" mode instead of "millions of colors". As near as I can tell at the moment, this is appears to be a problem with Java 3D; and it's really unfortunate because I don't have a lot of time to dink around with it. So if you're experiencing this problem, I'm afraid you're on your own for now; if it's any consolation, I have the exact same problem here. I am slowly working on a (really) new version that will ultimately use OpenGL instead of Java 3D, so we'll see how that goes. Suffice it to say, I think my time is better spent working on MMB2.0 rather than fixing what appear to be Java 3D issues.

Happy Holidays

Here's a view from Opportunity looking southwest over "Bottomless Bay"

The Red Planet's Watery... Present

And the big science news is the discovery of apparant water-related activity on the surface of Mars taking place within the last few years, which in geologic terms effectively means it's taking place now. This really is a startling discovery, one which was perhaps hoped for but which I'm not sure anyone seriously expected.

"The Red Planet's Watery Past"

Scientific American article by Jim Bell - an compelling summary of the current thinking about the Red Planet.

Version 1.5.2

Midnight Mars Browser version 1.5.2 fixes two Sol 1000 bugs.

A "Sol 1000" or "S1K" bug is a glitch in a program where the program author figured that three digits ought to be plenty to hold the rover sol number, because surely the rovers couldn't survive for over 999 sols (Martian days). Today is Spirit's 1010th Martian day since she arrived on the Red Planet on January 3, 2004.

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APOD

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day was projected using MMB. Other contributors doctored the image and added the color.

On the Edge

Arrival at "Cabo Verde"

This is the location where Opportunity will be spending superior conjunction (when the Sun is between Mars and the Earth).

Arrival at "Duck Bay", Victoria Crater, Mars

Version 1.5.1

Version 1.5.1 of the Midnight Mars Browser software fixes the Export Pan feature to support Hugin, as an alternative to PTGui. The pan export Navcam FOV is also adjusted slightly.

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All The Way to "Duck Bay"

More Pancams came down:

"Duck Bay" Pancams

About 25-50 meters from the edge now...

First Victoria Pancams

Victoria in View II

200x80 degree cylindrical projection from Opportunity Sol 934:

Victoria in View

We haven't arrived at the rim yet, but Victoria Crater is now, for the first time, plainly in view. I have to eat my earlier words about what we were seeing, apparantly.

The next couple weeks should be very interesting, as they say...

Version 1.5.0

Version 1.5.0 of the Midnight Mars Browser software is now posted on the download page. The major addition to this version is support for PTGui (a software package for stitching panoramas on Windows). The "Export Pan Images and PTGui Project File..." menu option (under File->Advanced), formerly the "Export Pan Images..." option, now outputs a PTGui project file as well as the images from the panorama. I use this feature and PTGui to generate most of the images posted on Marscat's Flickr page now. PTGui can stitch panoramas in equirectangular, cylindrical or rectilinear projection. Note that subframe rover images are not supported at this time and are not added to the PTGui project file (although the images themselves are still exported).

Also, the "##" vs. "__" duplicate image problem has been addressed. Images have "##" in the filename when the rover motion counter exceeds its maximum displayable value (until it is reset for the next 'site'). Unfortunately the JPL raw images site changes these "##" characters to "__" for somewhat mysterious reasons, resulting in MMB downloading duplicate images with slightly different filenames. Version 1.5.0 changes "__" files to "##" files when downloading. Also, if you rebuild image indexes, "__" files will not be indexed, so these duplicates will not appear in Slideshow (although they will not be deleted off your hard drive if they are already there).

There are also some fixes for image indexing, including an unpleasant error that could occur if you had extraneous images in the MMB image directories.

And finally, as usual, there are probably a bunch of little things that have been fixed that I haven't kept proper track of.

Download the latest version of Midnight Mars Browser

Still Emma Dean

Opportunity's visit to "Emma Dean" is stretching on a bit, for reasons that aren't entirely clear... At least the rover appears to be healthy and finally doing something. Perhaps this coming week we will see some real movement. In the meantime, here's a cylindrical projection of "Emma Dean" done using MMB and PTGui:

"Emma Dean"

Well, while we're waiting for our close-up with Victoria, here's part of "Emma Dean". False-color, obviously.

Victoria!

Victoria Crater is now plainly in sight on the horizon - indeed we are only about 100 meters from its nearest edge. The interesting thing, though, is that there is still a lot of debate about what we are seeing, at least in the rover-watching community. Consensus, for the moment, seems to have formed around the - incorrect, I would say - opinion that we are not truly seeing the inside of the far rim yet, but instead are seeing the plains beyond the crater. I would disagree, but things should become clearer when we finally pull up to the rim in the next few days... we hope. Then again, things might not become clearer. So far, Victoria has proven amazingly enigmatic even at close range.

The view above is a 200 degree by 90 degree equirectangular projection of combined Navcam and Pancam images from Opportunity Sol 929. The minor crater in the foreground is "Emma Dean".

Edit: I guess I'm coming around to the opinion that we are seeing the plains beyond Victoria, as well as part of the inside rim. That would mean that the large hill-like feature on the horizon is probably huge and far away. But wow, it sure is hard to tell, even from where we are, less than 100m from the near rim.