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'Mars Webcam' offline for low-bit-rate season   View of Mars as seen from Earth looking past the Sun on 5 December 2008. Mars is a tiny dot just to the left of the Sun's atmosphere. This image clearly illustrates the path that line-of-sight radio signals must travel - through the Sun's turbulant atmosphere - between Mars Express and the Earth. Graphic generated by Mars Express mission controllers at ESOC, the European Space Operations Centre, using Celestia. NEVER look at the Sun using a standard telescope. Mars: 370 000 000 km  This view shows our Solar System from above with the Earth and Mars in opposition about the Sun, placing Mars and the Sun in to conjunction as seen from the Earth, on 5 December 2008. This image clearly illustrates the path that line-of-sight radio signals must travel - through the Sun's turbulant atmosphere - between Mars Express and the Earth. Graphic generated by Mars Express mission controllers at ESOC, the European Space Operations Centre, using Celestia.  View of the Earth and our Moon as seen from Mars looking past the Sun on 5 December 2008. Earth is the large-ish dot just to the right of the Sun's atmosphere. This image clearly illustrates the path that line-of-sight radio signals must travel - through the Sun's turbulant atmosphere - between Mars Express and the Earth. Graphic generated by Mars Express mission controllers at ESOC, the European Space Operations Centre, using Celestia. NEVER look at the Sun using a standard telescope. More information  Video generated by Mars Express mission controllers at ESOC, the European Space Operations Centre, using Celestia.  Image submitted by Mike Malaska, Chapell Hil, NC, USA. Mike writes: "Here is an assembled mosaic of particularly hi-resolution images of the South Pole and Argyre Planitia. The images were from the June 22, 2008 MEX VMC image sequence. To create the mosaic, each of the images was passed through the VMC utility made by Bernd Leitenberger to convert into a RGB PNG. Next, each of the images was stacked and aligned in Photoshop CS3. Each of the images was clipped about 4-pixels worth to remove funky color effects around the edges. In addition, two JPEGs of the images (#3 and #6) were also used to fill in blank areas remaining after processing – these JPEG black and white images were colorized to match the color of the PNG images. Exposure adjustment layers were used to adjust the layers to the top image (image #12) of the stack. The individual images were cleaned up using the spot healing tool and the clone stamp – in all cases the overlapping region of another image was used to determine the best way to apply the spot changes. A light unsharp mask was used to bring out detail in the top image. An orange tone photo filter was added to the entire image. Then, adjustment of levels, hue/saturation/levels and contrast curves were used to get the right color and exposure balance. Finally, the image was placed on a black background, rotated, and cropped."  Image submitted by Mike Malaska, Chapel Hill, NC, USA. Mike writes: "Here is an image sequence of what I think is a cloud under changing lighting conditions at sunrise. To create this montage, I used Photoshop CS3. For each image, I used the floor of the crater near the terminator in image #5 as 'standard' and tried to adjust the exposure so that all the images in the sequence had the same level of exposure. The images were aligned, then cropped just enough to show some of the surface near the terminator. I added the date and time for the image in the sequence. All the frames have a 0.2-second delay, except the last frame (image 12) which has a 0.5-second delay before looping." The files used to create the animated GIF are:  Image submitted by Ted Stryk, Powell, TN, USA. Ted writes: "This image was generated based on file 08-212 11.01.00 VMC Img No 7_rgb. In addition, all (or at least the properly exposed portions) of  Image submitted by Ian Musgrave, Adelaide, Australia, 28 August 2008. Ian writes: "The images were converted from RAW format to BMP using ImageJ, [I] sharpened the images individaully using wavelet adjustment in Registax (a wavelet correction of 10 in the 5:1 layer, and 30 in the 6:1), [and] then finally assembled the anaglyph in The GIMP (see this link for a tutorial)." "For the animation, I used the sharpened images from above, and manually aligned them using the 'difference' layer function in the GIMP, then used the GIMP animation function on the aligned layers." Image based on: Release date: 10 February 2009 |