Curious about Curiosity - Page 14

In case someone has missed this:

http://www.360cities.net/image/curiosity-rover-martian-solar-day-2

Horton, reply #260
I also searched around and found no FTP site. Quite useful if we know about the image bank used directly by NASA. I think the "raw" image bank available is not the main image bank.

Hort; I really need to tell the MRB family this.

After only 2 days of being released, the book is at #27 of best sellers in the Amazon's "mars" category.

Now that might realistically mean, say, 20 books sold only, since Mars is not a popular category as books go, but it is heartening to me nevertheless and may actually eventually allow me to recoup the money I spent on publishing it and buying an asus tablet to see what the epub version would look like.

Any other information on the book I will post on "the Marslife ebook" thread.

Winston

Selected full-size landing images:

Click on the "newer" link to follow the landing. Be sure to look for the dust kicked up by the sky-crane rockets. ( I was surprised by the pattern. )

I am working on the "accidental" 3D that was created by the landing.

Here is the first:

I wonder what the fine parallel lines that are at about 45 degrees to the dune lines are?

re 264: Would be cool if these lines would be related to something like this:

At first glance I was somehow reminded of ripples from (baltic sea-) sand banks - playing grounds of my youth

Here is the MARDI raw version to compare:

First "false color" right Mastcam of sundial:

I am getting very annoyed that no filter information is publically available from NASA/JPL/Malin

Is this the first NASA image with blue sky?

Pse, see also:
http://marsmobile.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4428

sol 10 Chemcam views of the Chemcam Calibration Target:

I wonder if the "splotch" around the center screws is Martian?

If so, this splotch could be water ice melted by the rocket engines from the descent stage... the same as seen on the legs on Phoenix lander...

Location of the Chemcam calibration target:

Oops. I had to rotate the reply 269 image to agree with the navcam view. The picture I found of the target was down-side-up and microscopes usually invert the image so I figured I had to turn the Chemcam images to agree with the picture.

These kinds of errors is what crashes code - and spacecraft and civilizations. Why can't we all agree which way is up?

Hi Guys,
Just wondering what the 3 dots are in the attached image? Just above the horizon in the sky...dust specs?

Does anyone know the origin of the round symbols that are seen all over the Curiosity Rover? The are circular and have something that looks like an X in the middle.

I have redone reply 269 with the addition of two new images and a sort'a panorama of the images and added this animation:

to look at the screw hole stuff.

We shall see just how much better the "raw" and public images ( strictly NASA PR ) become in the next few months as the operations people get better at using their tools...

I sure hope that what I think might be happening in this mission is not happening -- and that I am totally delusional.

BUT if the "raw" images remain at this amateurish level then, well, then I will only dig harder to pull out any scraps of information accidentally released.

compare and contrast the "official" version:

with my best effort using the "raw" images in reply 269.

BTW, two of the images in the official montage are not yet posted as "raw" data.

Or this one of "The Promised land":

NFW you can reproduce this using the "raw" data.

NFW.

What horrible, foul tasting data.

I have no mouth and I must scream.

Maybe exploratorium will host raw's from MSL?
Nothing found yet.

http://www.exploratorium.edu/mars/curiosity.php

The colors in the official image look more "real" than the ones we saw from the MER rovers.

And the sky is consistently bluer. Of course, that might be because we are at a lower elevation, so there is a greater amount of atmosphere to scatter the blue rays.

Ah.

After reading the caption associated with the reply 275 image my best guess is that the marks near the central "screw holes" ( no screws? ) are the result of test firings of the laser.

The caption clearly states that the titanium square in the lower right corner has multiple pits resulting from testing the laser in flight - so it is not unreasonable to conclude that the dark markings not present in the target before launch are also laser test firings during cruise - or perhaps on Mars as part of the surface checkout.

Dave, the round symbols are photographic targets or fiduciary markers. It's a like a bullseye to aid in measurement. You may be familiar with these on crash dummies, etc. There does seem to be a lot of them.

I love this shot - the mountains look positively Himalayan. Intriguingly, and whatever the cause, there are significant traces of green in tbis landscape.