DailyTech - NASA Releases HiRISE Mars Images

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Blog: Science NASA Releases HiRISE Mars Images
Michael Hoffman (Blog) - June 6, 2007 6:13 AM

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10 comment(s) - last by ahkey.. on Jun 9 at 10:05 AM

University of Arizona researchers added a whopping 1.7 terabytes of images to a NASA collection

Knowing that a portion of you read my ramblings and news posts about space, this blog is for you! Anyone with a computer and Internet access now has the ability to view 1,200 images -- around 1.7 terabytes -- taken by the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE), an extremely powerful camera that snaps amazing pictures of Mars.

The camera continues to work its magic aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The University of Arizona research team behind the HiRISE camera added the large amount of images to the Mars to the NASA Planetary Data System.

To visit the web site with images taken by the HiRISE camera, head over to this web site. The web site utilizes search tools that make browsing through the images easy.

With so many space programs aiming research towards Mars, I can't wait to see what we come up with in the next 20 years -- regardless of which nation gets the information.

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Selection?

By oTAL

(blog) on 6/6/2007 9:13:50 AM , Rating: 4

Hi Michael,
Great post as usual.
It's an enormous amount of data and I believe there are plenty of us who will not be able to access such amounts, due to bandwidth and/or time restrictions.
However, you will probably be seeing most if not all of those...

How about you selecting the ones you like the most and presenting them to us? Sounds like an idea?
If you ever get around to that, I believe most of us at DailyTech would trust your judgement about the beauty or worth of your chosen pictures...

Keep up the great work.

RE: Selection?

By Moishe on 6/6/2007 11:43:40 AM , Rating: 2

The article has two images attached. I would say he selected some good ones. I don't believe in spoon feeding people. The link is right there.

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RE: Selection?

By GaryJohnson on 6/7/2007 12:39:13 AM , Rating: 2

The images seem to be in a variety of formats, for example, the "Popular Landform" here: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_003234_2210

That image is shown on that page as a 147KB 600x400 JPEG, which can be clicked on to reveal an uncropped (but smaller) 49KB 512x403 JPEG.

Then there's the Browse Version (897.2KB 2048x1612 JPEG) and Browse Version with Scalebar (896.8KB 2048x1608 JPEG).

Finally, the images are availbe at a very high resolution 26267x20676 JPEG2000 format as lossy (56.4MB) and full (358.7MB). I assume this final format is where the 1.7TB figure comes from.

I'm trying to figure out how to open the JPEG2000 image at the moment. IE7 can't open it, neither can my Firefox (I don't have the newest release, maybe it can). I have Adobe CS2, and I dug the JPEG2000 plugin out of the GOODIES folder and installed it, and it tells me I don't have enough memory to open the 56.4MB file above. (Photoshop is set to be allowed to use 1039MB of RAM).

So the actual 'amount of data' is pretty small provided you avoid the JPEG2000 versions, which are inordinately large and generally difficult to work with anyhow.

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RE: Selection?

By RyanHirst on 6/7/2007 4:28:55 AM , Rating: 2

Here are a few alternatives for reading JP2000s:

Download IrfanView. It's a small, free, stable, well-designed image browser (with light editing capabilities) that reads almost everything. JP2000 support is provided via a free plugin.

There are free JP2000 add-ons for Photoshop 6 and up.

Basically, JP2000 is an incredible format that is just too damned slow. Its compression algorithms are both more efficient and more effective than the original .jpg format: lossy images have better data retention, at lower file sizes,than .jpg. 16-bit/channel color is supported. There is also the opportunity to save lossless .jp2 files. These are compressed, and the compression rates are IMPRESSIVE.

The format also uses vector routines to recognize and reproduce text. Text in images can be isolated and faithfully reproduced even at extremely low compression rates.

The only real downside is nevertheless the reason no one you know ever uses the format. Reading and writing .jp2 files takes forever. It is a very slow format. That aside, it has everything going for it.

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Color?

By Etsp on 6/7/2007 12:40:51 AM , Rating: 2

Those are beautiful pics, I actually found the full rez color one and put it as my desktop wallpaper...but that shade of blue almost seems unreal on the surface of the "red planet", and seeing as almost all of the other pics on that site are in black and white, does anyone know if they actually took color images, or if they just added some hues to make the landslide more visible?

RE: Color?

By ahkey on 6/9/2007 10:05:26 AM , Rating: 2

A conspiracy theorist would tell you that it saves them recolouring all the shots to make them look redder. I assume your explanation is the correct one, but the two coloured shots in a sea of b&w are rather odd.

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Life

By General Disturbance on 6/7/2007 9:07:32 PM , Rating: 3

This is proof that there is life on Mars.

awesome

By Moishe on 6/6/2007 7:59:06 AM , Rating: 2

I love seeing these pics. There is something really amazing about being able to look down on Mars in that level of quality. Makes me (almost) feel like a pioneer.