Interesting MOC pictures - Place to post interesting MOC pictures

Shaun Barrett · 2004-09-22 17:36:57

I love that THEMIS image of Ophir/Candor chasms - gazed at the high res shot for several minutes.

What struck me was the total absence of any craters except for those on the old flat terrain between the chasms. The valleys themselves are crater-free.
There appear to be what my untrained eye sees as former beaches near the floor of Ophir - curvy linear features which look as though they are following the local topographic contours. There are a few of these 'raised beaches', almost parallel to one another, which I can imagine might represent different waterlines as a large body of water disappeared in stages.
The fact that this terrain is crater-free, indicates the surface is young. If the lines I've mentioned are indeed raised beaches, it's an indication that Mariner Valley may have held lakes even into recent times.

Why, oh why won't they send astronauts to Mars NOW!!!
Sometimes I get so frustrated that it's taking so looooong!!!!!!!!!!
:bars:

hubricide · 2004-09-22 20:27:57

The blue bus.. is calling us.

REB · 2004-09-23 08:59:19

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r03_r09 … html]Check out the crater at the bottom of this image.

It gives the feeling of flying over it.

REB · 2004-09-24 07:07:06

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e19_r02 … html]Weird terrain in the Hellas Basin.

Deep in Hellas the pressure and temperature sometimes get where liquid water can exist. However, in such dry air, it would evaporate quickly, but, just centimeters, below the surface, it might stay stable longer.

REB · 2004-09-24 07:19:31

The picture linked above is in an area that is the outflow basin for the Dao Vallis. Dao Vallis, and nearby Niger Valles, show all the signs of having been carved from flowing water.

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r03_r09 … 70.html]an example here

atomoid · 2004-09-24 22:20:08

that weird terrain in hellas looks like the cumulative result of muddy glop thats been, i forget what the word is, 'modified' by relentless perennial freeze thaw cycles, like what happens in permafrost making circles and sorting pebble sizes and so forth...

the http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r03_r09 … .jpg]other image shows a lot of, as Phil Christenson might say "pasted-on terrain", thats is, look at the top most crater feature and youll see a small are where there is a gully forming, then youll see that the area around it looks like basically dust-covered snow covering the ground and crater wall to a signifficant depth, thus the "pasted-on terrain" that the gullies are postulated to form beneath. Near the bottom of the image there is a crater that looks to be filled with, er, that is, "pasted-on" with a dust covered lake inside...

in fact, the swirly glop areas in both these images really look similar to glacier flow lines, as if the dust covered ice or permafrost or mud (i would guess that the soil is extremely saturated here as one would expect at such a low elevation and likely the best place to find a water table) ice could flow under the influence of gravity as it flows in to fill areas of uneven sublimation over the millions of years.

thats why we need armies of mass-produced MER derivitive clones crawling all over places like this

Shaun Barrett · 2004-09-26 18:47:24

Some images of Mars show varying shades of dust and sand which give an almost eerie impression of dark pools of liquid water.
Take a look at the bottom of http://images.spaceref.com/news/2004/20 … 0.gif]this image and check out the 'water'!
[If you place your cursor on the bottom right-hand corner of the picture, an 'expander button' will appear, allowing you to get the full magnification. Apologies to computer lits. here who see these instructions as trivial and self-evident. I like to treat others as being just as stupid as I am, just in case! ]

djellison · 2004-09-27 15:24:57

Spirits TRACKS!!!

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/200 … index.html

And a whole new batch of MOC images on the gallery -another 25,000 by my counting

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/]http:/ … c_gallery/

Doug

REB · 2004-09-28 05:59:00

They did add a bunch of new pictures yesterday. That must have been why the site was slow and kept crashing on me yesterday.

I went to look for picture for Shaun in response to his post. It is a crater that looks like it has a lake in it (probably dust).

Palomar · 2004-09-28 07:26:47

It is a crater that looks like it has a lake in it (probably dust).

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=14064]You mean something like this?

*Does look like water in there. Not a crater, but...

Such fine sand rippling effect.

Does anyone know how many pics per week, on average, MOC snaps? Will try to find a FAQ page in the meantime.

--Cindy

GJG · 2004-09-28 10:21:57

Cindy,

As part of your MOC research, would be nice to know the exposure time required to build up images like this. It seems unlikely short enough to capture sharp ripples on water and even less likely that there are standing water waves just waiting to be photographed.

Greg

REB · 2004-09-28 12:07:00

It is a crater that looks like it has a lake in it (probably dust).
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=14064]You mean something like this?
*Does look like water in there. Not a crater, but...
Such fine sand rippling effect.
Does anyone know how many pics per week, on average, MOC snaps? Will try to find a FAQ page in the meantime.
--Cindy

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/m07_m12 … 5.html]And this one.

This is not the crater I was referring to, but it is simular.

djellison · 2004-09-28 12:42:27

MOC images dont really have an 'exposure' per se.

It's not a digital camera as you or I would know it.

Where as a typical camera sensor is an array of say, 2000 x 1600 ish pixels - the MOC camera is just a line of 2048 pixels.

"Huh"

Exactly - take a picture with that and you'd get a 2048 x 1 pixel image.

BUT - as the spacecraft orbits the planet - the view of that 2048 x 1 pixel moves. So - take one picture every, say, 0.7 milliseconds - and stack them on top of each other - and you get the second dimension of the image So in essence - you can have a 2048 x anynumber-until-the-moc-buffer-is-full

The techinque is known as 'push broom' - as the camera moving over the surface is a bit like a broom moving along a floor.

You can see the line integration time in the image info for each MOC image - and typically - it's 0.7msec (0.0007 seconds) - so - in one second we'd have 1428 lines recorded. At about 1.5 metres per line - thats something like 2.1km per second. So as you can see - a moc image is take VERY quickly

'What the hell's a ROTO?"

Roll only targetted observation. But rolling the spacecraft left or right of the usual face down attitude - you can take pictures off to one side.

"What the hell's CPROTO"

I believe thats compensated pitch and roll targetted obs. or something like that - where no only do they roll to one side or the other but they pitch the spacecraft to make the apparant speed of the pushbroom along the surface seem slower - so - instead of recording 2.1km in a second - you might record only 700 metres - giving you much higher resolution in the direction of travel

So - as you can see - a Moc image doesnt really have an 'exposure' - but each individual line has an integration time - usually about 0.7 msec.

And here endeth doug's very bad guide to the MOC

Doug

Palomar · 2004-09-28 13:12:58

And here endeth doug's very bad guide to the MOC
Doug

*Anything but!

http://isis.astrogeology.usgs.gov/Isis2 … g.cgi]This is the best I could find on the net (Google)...

--Cindy

atomoid · 2004-09-29 04:19:19

Doug, the "bad guide" doeth much good!
thanks, but you know how answers just raise questions..!

Seems similar to a desktop computer scanner... however, this has me wondering about the lens system... and lo and behold http://www.msss.com/camera_info/moc.html]heres a breathtaking shot of still another example of Shaun's "dark pools of liquid water" on the MOC camera page no doubt, the one that i browsed to in trying to answer this very question... and indeed, not to get too off topic but we certainly need to send a rover to Schiaparelli country, if not for the science then certainly for the vistas we'd get! but anyway now, back to the scan-cam, i cant find whether the lens is spheroid or columnar, i'd supspect that a linear CCD pickup would require a linear rod-like lens system but all i see is a normal round camera nozzle on MOC, so im hoping to find an MOC exploded-view diagram but so far no luck.

Also, about the CPROTO method for increasing the image data in the scan direction, it seems apparent that the normal integration time per line "exposure" is very carefully timed to create square pixels while not overlapping or omitting terrain, so for example with the 700 meters vs. 2.1 km pushbroom aquisition, you end up with a 3:1 aspect ratio per pixel, not that thats bad, you merely process the image by squishing it for display on square-pixeled monitors, so really, when we look at the MOC images across the small 2048 pixel dimension that cant benefit of the CPROTO method, theres much less data there than one might assume given that were accustomed to seeing images aquired in square pixels, i tend to think that (at least at the pixel limit) this might distort the appearance of tiny features somewhat. although the problem is small, after all, you could always 'throw out' 2/3 of those pixels and end up with a 'normalized' image 'true-square' image to compare perceptions with... or maybe im just offtrack in my own perceptual thinking...

- Side note: the MRO apparently has 2048x128 CCDs according to http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/HiRISE/ins … onents]the HiRISE site im guessing its a similar scan method, with somewhat similar 'exposure', er um, "integration" methods.

REB · 2004-09-29 06:30:36

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/m13_m18 … .html]Nice lava flow.

I wonder if there are any lava tubes? A strong lava tube would be a great place to start a base. Cap the ends and you have a closed in living space.

djellison · 2004-09-29 07:04:27

Doug, the "bad guide" doeth much good!
thanks, but you know how answers just raise questions..!
Seems similar to a desktop computer scanner... however, this has me wondering about the lens system... and lo and behold http://www.msss.com/camera_info/moc.html]heres a breathtaking shot of still another example of Shaun's "dark pools of liquid water" on the MOC camera page no doubt, the one that i browsed to in trying to answer this very question... and indeed, not to get too off topic but we certainly need to send a rover to Schiaparelli country, if not for the science then certainly for the vistas we'd get! but anyway now, back to the scan-cam, i cant find whether the lens is spheroid or columnar, i'd supspect that a linear CCD pickup would require a linear rod-like lens system but all i see is a normal round camera nozzle on MOC, so im hoping to find an MOC exploded-view diagram but so far no luck.
Also, about the CPROTO method for increasing the image data in the scan direction, it seems apparent that the normal integration time per line "exposure" is very carefully timed to create square pixels while not overlapping or omitting terrain, so for example with the 700 meters vs. 2.1 km pushbroom aquisition, you end up with a 3:1 aspect ratio per pixel, not that thats bad, you merely process the image by squishing it for display on square-pixeled monitors, so really, when we look at the MOC images across the small 2048 pixel dimension that cant benefit of the CPROTO method, theres much less data there than one might assume given that were accustomed to seeing images aquired in square pixels, i tend to think that (at least at the pixel limit) this might distort the appearance of tiny features somewhat. although the problem is small, after all, you could always 'throw out' 2/3 of those pixels and end up with a 'normalized' image 'true-square' image to compare perceptions with... or maybe im just offtrack in my own perceptual thinking...
- Side note: the MRO apparently has 2048x128 CCDs according to http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/HiRISE/ins … onents]the HiRISE site im guessing its a similar scan method, with somewhat similar 'exposure', er um, "integration" methods.

Yeah - MRO is the same - just much MUCH 'more' Huge swath width and more sensitive CCD's allowing for a more rapid integraion each time step.

I'm not sure of the optics of it myself either - why they have what appears to be a normal scope when it's only a linear detector.

I guess if it 'work' - then why try and invent some strange linear optics system. the bigger the lens, the more sensitive it can be, and the higher zoom you can get

CProto ends up giving you pixels that are more like this

[ ]

that this

[ ]
| |
[ ]

You can sort of see it in some images if you zoom in.

Doug

REB · 2004-09-29 09:16:30

The new MOC pictures are great!

I have been checking out the Nilosyrtis region

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15 … Cantaloupe terrain that looks similar to Triton.

Darn! They missed it again see the bowl shape feaqtures in

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15 … 8.html]the large picture at the right of the page, and near the lower center. I have been wanting them to get close ups of these possible cirque

There also appears to be one in the close up.

REB · 2004-09-29 10:46:13

Some meandering gullies and winding dust devil tracks in Galle Crater http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15 … 47.html]In this new MOC picture

Palomar · 2004-09-29 14:46:16

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.htm … 083]Buried Crater

*Is twice the size of the famous Meteor Crater in Arizona. Is estimated to be 2 km in diameter.

Can't help wondering if the sand is lightly packed inside it. I'm recalling depressions in the ground back home in the Midwest being only *lightly* covered with snow (and your foot going crashing down unexpectedly even if the snow around is hard packed). There's a difference between snow and sand of course, but I wonder if the principle is the same. :hm:

"On Mars, craters over 100 km in diameter have been buried..." Geez!

--Cindy

John Creighton · 2004-09-29 14:58:30

I think there would need to be pockets of air or watter for you to sink into for there to be a problem.

atomoid · 2004-09-29 18:55:10

Can't help wondering if the sand is lightly packed inside it. I'm recalling depressions in the ground back home in the Midwest being only *lightly* covered with snow (and your foot going crashing down unexpectedly even if the snow around is hard packed). There's a difference between snow and sand of course, but I wonder if the principle is the same.

and i remember hearing about how they thought the lunar lander and the astronauts would sink into the moon'd dust like quicksand. but that didnt happen, even though there is very little gravity to pack the lunar dust. i also remember reading Clarke's 'A Fall of Moondust' about a lunar tour ship that sinks below the lunar surface after a subsurface bubble pops and swallows it up...

but i still dont know why the moon dust soil is packed as well as it is in the low gravity, you'd expect the grains to be precariously perched atop each other due to friction and irregular grain size much like a house of cards just waiting for some weight to crush it down. its probably much looser packed than earth soil but the fact that the astronauts didnt sink could be due to just the low gravity making them so lightweight coudl it? maybe it has to do more with the immense amount of time available for grain packing due to moonquakes and impact vibrations settling the grains into packed state... ?

Palomar · 2004-09-29 19:38:48

Can't help wondering if the sand is lightly packed inside it. I'm recalling depressions in the ground back home in the Midwest being only *lightly* covered with snow (and your foot going crashing down unexpectedly even if the snow around is hard packed). There's a difference between snow and sand of course, but I wonder if the principle is the same.
and i remember hearing about how they thought the lunar lander and the astronauts would sink into the moon'd dust like quicksand. but that didnt happen, even though there is very little gravity to pack the lunar dust.

*Yep; I remember. However, I see this differently. A crater is a depression. Snow can seem (on the surface) to entirely fill a depression. Am simply wondering if sand behaves similarly in this regard. I didn't know until I moved to the desert Southwest, for instance, that -- during a sandstorm -- sand drifts along and kicks up just like snow in a ground blizzard. It's weird, and that surprised me when I first moved here and saw an actual sandstorm. I've told my husband it's like a warm tan ground blizzard. :laugh:

I once ran on a snowbank, as a kid. Hard-packed snow. Suddenly my leg crashed into a deep hole, all the way to my hip. Painful. I'd crashed into our burning barrel. The snow had blown over it, maybe only 2 inches in depth -- yet the snowbanks all around were 4 feet high at least.

::shrugs::

Maybe my husband and I should go walking around White Sands this weekend; maybe we can test the idea -- hope to find a surprise natural depression not densely packed but looking no different from the remainder of the area...until a foot goes through.

I'm not suggesting astronauts or equipment -would- take a spill into that crater or sink into it; am simply wondering how densely it may or may not be packed.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-10-01 05:42:23

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=14086]Wave Clouds off Korolev

*Whoa. One of the most interesting MOC pics yet, IMO.

--Cindy

::EDIT:: Reminds me of pics I've seen of wavy clouds here on Earth due to gravity waves.

Palomar · 2004-10-04 11:39:44

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.htm … 17]Boulder Rings

*Terrain around the boulder rings looks a bit like "cantaloupe terrain" -- like scads of pockmarks. Usually I'm content with non-color Mars pics, but would like to see this in color as well. Seems festooned with dozens of tiny tattoo dots.

--Cindy

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Re: Interesting MOC pictures - Place to post interesting MOC pictures

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