MARS being emerges from sand, extends mast organ

[ralphsilverman]

URL of NASA JPL thumbnail page ...<br /><br />http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity_p107.html

 

[ralphsilverman]

Somehow ... attachment got lost ... trying again ...

 

[dgm1]

Do you live alone? Shouldn't some one be checking in on you from time to time? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[5stone10]

Yeah - it's giving us the finger !!

 

[Leovinus]

That would have been a nice photo of the Martian surface if fragments of the heat shield hadn't cluttered up the scene. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[odysseus145]

Nope. That's debris from Oppy's heat shield.<br /><br />http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/planetx/soho.html<br /><br />"What happens when a bucket fills up to the brim with water? It overflows. The same thing happens in CCDs. A pixel can only hold so many electrons before it overflows. Because of the way the pixels are made, the overflow goes into the adjoining pixels horizontally, so the overflowing pixel leaks electrons into the pixels to its left and right (or above and below it). If enough light is hitting the one pixel, it can overflow the adjacent pixels, which flow into the next ones, and so on. When you look at the resulting image, a bright object appears to have a bright horizontal line going through it. This is called "blooming". A bright star may bloom over several vertical pixels, so you get many rows of blooming." <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[telfrow]

This would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <strong><font color="#3366ff">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yeild.</font> - <font color="#3366ff"><em>Tennyson</em></font></strong> </div>

 

[telfrow]

Here's an example of "blooming," with the rover at the heat sheild site.<br /><br />http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6767581/ <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <strong><font color="#3366ff">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yeild.</font> - <font color="#3366ff"><em>Tennyson</em></font></strong> </div>

 

[beartooth]

Looks more like a vehicle being taken out on a desert track.

 

[pocket_rocket]

Isn't it illegal to extend ones "mast organ" in public?

 

[ralphsilverman]

Technical debunking citation is very interesting and thanks for taking time to provide it ... but how is it that "bloom" imaging artifact casts a shadow?

 

[ralphsilverman]

looks like it really is not my day ... review of "shadow" hypothesis in two pictures does not reveal significant difference, so "bloom" hypothesis remains reasonable ...

 

[spacechump]

Just to reinforce telfrow's example...<br /><br />This is no shadow because the "bloom" is actually a part of the camara that has been oversaturated due to reflection from the head shield debris.<br /><br />This color picutre is a perfect example...actually its just a closeup of the image you have up top. Nope...no aliens working here...<br />

 

[CalliArcale]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>looks like it really is not my day ... review of "shadow" hypothesis in two pictures does not reveal significant difference, so "bloom" hypothesis remains reasonable ...<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Don't feel too bad. Everybody comes up with hypotheses that don't stand up. It's part of the normal process of looking at the world, studying it, questioning what you see, and trying to work out what's out there. This object has been identified as part of Opportunity's heat shield; it's visible in multiple pictures. (It's not the whole heat shield, obviously. It's just a fragment.) But you didn't neccesarily know that. If you were a total pathetic space geek like me, poring over dozens of these pictures just for the hell of it, you might have recognized it. But if you have a life outside of JPL websites, you probably wouldn't. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br />(And yes, I really did recognize that pic the moment I saw it. I know which raw image it's taken from.)<br /><br />The "bloom" phenomenon is not unique to Opportunity, by the way. It's a deficiency in all CCD imagers, and a consequence of their design. Unfortunately, all imaging devices have limitations, and this is probably one of the most significant from CCDs. You can compare it to overexposing 35mm film with your regular still camera. Have you noticed how an overexposed object will seem to glow on the final print? It wasn't glowing; it's just that the film emulsion bled a bit, giving the overexposed object a blurred, ethereal appearance. (If you're better at photography than me, this can be very pretty. My brother does it on purpose to make pretty pictures.) CCDs are digital, so you don't get a gentle blur. And they're electronic, so instead of photochemicals leaking into other parts of the emulsion, you get electrons spilling into other pixels on the grid. Generally, this will happen along one axis only -- either up and down <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[ralphsilverman]

Re: many interesting posts regarding "bloom" defect in nasa ccd imaging arrays ... How is it that nasa technology is inferior to nikon 5 meg pixel camera (in which such a defect is unimaginable) or even of common camera feature of miniature "cell" phone? (where such would be unacceptable.) Would one of the imaging authorities here please describe this factor?<br />Thank you all for interesting prior posts ... Ralph<br />