Mars Cave..something suspicious?

[3488]

Hi all,<br /><br />Just to say that the Martian Northern Winter / Southern Summer Solstice is on:<br />Wednesday 4th July 2007 (USA Independence Day), so the Sun will appear directly over<br />head at noon on the Tropic of Leo.<br /><br />I will try & find out when the Sun is overhead at 5.5 South again & contact JPL to see<br />if they would honour a request from me to image the 'hole' or 'cave entrance' on that date<br />with the MRO HiRISE.<br /><br />Thanks jaxtraw, that was exactly what I was trying to explain.<br /><br />Andrew Brown. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>

 

[exoscientist]

Jerramy, H9C2 on another thread said he was able to get a close-up from JPL of a Hirise image just by emailing the webmaster of the image page.<br /> Since you were able to tease out further detail than was admitted possible on the page for the "cave" image perhaps they would fulfill your request for a rotated version of the image.<br /> Click on the "Contact" link near the bottom of the page:<br /><br />HiRISE | Candidate Cavern Entrance Northeast of Arsia Mons (PSP_003647_1745).<br />http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_003647_1745<br /><br /> Also, could you just use the IAS viewer to rotate the image the exact number of degrees required and then apply the processing to the result?<br /><br /><br /> Bob Clark <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[Jerramy]

I tried the "Contact" at the HiRise site, but that was sent to "webmaster", who never responded. I then went to some effort to extract the name of someone who works on the project (which I won't repeat here for politeness sake), and he was kind enough to forward me onto some other soul (named "HiRISE-Contact"), who said this:<br />-----------------------<br />You are correct that the vertical lines you are seeing are due to instrument noise. The unprojected (i.e. not rotated) data are indeed available. You want to download the raw HiRISE data products, known as EDRs (file extension .IMG). These are available here:<br /><br />http://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/EDR/<br /><br />You can process the raw HiRISE EDRs with ISIS software (that's what we do). Anyone can download ISIS for free, here is the ISIS website:<br /><br />http://isis.astrogeology.usgs.gov/index.html<br />--------------------------<br /><br />They must get a lot of email and interest, since no-one seems to want to be very visable.<br /><br />In any case, I skipped ISIS, what with it's large download size. I found another viewer for EDR images, called NASAview. It works okay, though it doesn't let me zoom in or out. It does have a much better brightness stretch tool though than the IAS viewer.<br /><br />Unfortunately, there are many EDR images which get combined to make one jp2 image, each of which is 40 Megs (a bit much for my meager pipe). I'll just have to start in the middle, and wade through them until I get lucky.<br /><br />There are also some InfraRed and Blue-Green images as part of the set, but they don't seem to cover the cave entrance, only some boring dunes.<br /><br />As to using IAS viewer's rotation feature (which I just noticed last night), that might work somewhat to make the lines vertical. However, there will be one more corruption of data, sinc

 

[franontanaya]

This detail looks so symmetric. If the raw basaltic floor was hit by a meteorite, could a piece of it break and jump out? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[nimbus]

Didn't someone say there was a clearer picture not yet released that showed the walls sloping down to the bottom in detail? <br /><br />Here it is.. http://uplink.space.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=sciastro&Number=719462 <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[3488]

Thanks FranOntanaya.<br /><br />I think that is real. <br /><br />Quite possible. <br /><br />I will pursue what I said in my last post & request imagery when the Sun passes directly <br />over this area, during the late southern summer, just before the southern Autumnal <br />equinox on Mars.<br /><br />I also thank Jerramy for his efforts too.<br /><br />Thanks Nimbus. I hope so.<br /><br />Andrew Brown.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>

 

[Jerramy]

Okay, so here's my final effort. I got the raw EDR from HiRise (publicly available), and used NASAview to stretch the hole so that it filled the brightness space. There was a variation of about 5 brightness levels of "black" in the hole. I cut and pasted this to a bitmap, which I then did my hand-rolled processing on.<br /><br />First I de-striped the image. As I had hoped, the original raw image's stripes were purely vertical/horizontal (there were both). Amazingly enough, the vast majority of the noise in the raw image was this striping. After this step, I had an almost uniform gray circle. So, in order that I didn't lose any potential data (all math was done in double precision float), I downshifted it by the average intensity, multiplied it by the inverse of the average noise value, and then shifted it back up by half brightness before converting it back to integers.<br /><br />After doing all that, I then averaged small groups of pixels centered on each target pixel together, to get a less noisy image.<br /><br />For all that, there's still not much to see. I think I agree: we need a shot with better lighting (duh!).

 

[robnissen]

You are right. There is still is not much to see there. But at least, now we know. Your hard-work is very much appreciated. <br /><br />I do have one question, however, although I may be showing my ignorance. Are the diaganol stripes real data, or is that an artifact from the image processing?

 

[MeteorWayne]

You can still see hints of that dent/rock combo.<br /><br />I guess we'll find out when the lighting is better. If it turns out to be real, we saw it here first, thanx to you. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[Jerramy]

I noticed the diagonal stripes too. I have to assume that they aren't real, but rather an artifact of image processing.<br /><br />I still can see some striping in my destriped image, so I might have to do local destriping intead of global (ie, find averages and offsets in some area around a target pixel, instead of across the whole image). I kinda doubt it will really show much more though.<br /><br />Anyway, it was a fun excersise.<br /><br />-Jerramy

 

[conradk1]

O.K. So after looking at Jerramys processed image for a number of hours, something towards the bottom right part of the cave caught my attention so I attempted to do some further processing. After 52 hours of triple precision floating point crunching I was floored by what I saw. This should put the debate to rest once and for all <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />(Jerramy, for real though, thank for all the work you did on this.)<br /><br />

 

[aetherius]

I see some odd patterns at about 4 o'clock. Can't wait to see your image.

 

[jaxtraw]

I still see that as a coherent circular structure, which I'm tempted to interpret as crater rim.

 

[aetherius]

There's a car in the driveway but no roads?<br /><br />How about those elevated greens?<br /><br />Nice work.

 

[Boris_Badenov]

That's not a car, it's a golf cart. A golf cart doesn't need roads. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#993300"><span class="body"><font size="2" color="#3366ff"><div align="center">. </div><div align="center">Never roll in the mud with a pig. You'll both get dirty & the pig likes it.</div></font></span></font> </div>

 

[JonClarke]

Neither does a modified deLoren! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Whether we become a multi-planet species with unlimited horizons, or are forever confined to Earth will be decided in the twenty-first century amid the vast plains, rugged canyons and lofty mountains of Mars</em>  Arthur Clarke</p> </div>

 

[Jerramy]

That's hillarious conradk1! Looks like you went to a bit of work yourself!

 

[brellis]

I wonder if they can get the NY Times delivered there <img src="/images/icons/tongue.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font size="2" color="#ff0000"><em><strong>I'm a recovering optimist - things could be better.</strong></em></font> </p> </div>

 

[aetherius]

If the entire hole is 100 meters in diameter than the house is roughly 3 meters by 4 meters. The golf cart must be less than 1 meter long. Both measurements are consistant with the long held belief that Martians are 'little' green men.

 

[franontanaya]

New View with better lighting:<br /><br />http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_004847_1745 <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[3488]

Thank you very much FranOntanaya.<br /><br />Looks like a rock wall, going straight down.<br /><br />Dunno what to make of it.<br /><br />A lava tube????????<br /><br />The image above validates, what I had said, that as the next martian equinox (southern Autumn)<br />approaches, the Sun will shine directly in.<br /><br />At the moment, the Sun is still too far south, but the illumination, to reveal the interior of this<br />hole will continue to improve.<br /><br />Hopefully before too long, the MRO HiRISE should reveal the floor.<br /><br />Andrew Brown. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>

 

[usn_skwerl]

as of right now, the lighting's determined its at LEAST 255 ft deep. not too shabby.<br /><br /> anyone got a decent sized garden hose? we could have it filled by the time we get there. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[franontanaya]

It seems like there is a rib or layer low right, I'm wondering if that couldn't be the real lava tube wall -or ceiling-, and the material between that and the upper bright layer some later depositions.<br /><br />Anyway, most artifacts in the dark area of the previous image now seem to be just noise. <br /><br />Edit: Oh, and why the material under the surface may look so dark? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[jaxtraw]

Are those dark grey bands "beneath" the "straight wall" real or artifactual? Not the straight line towards the left- the curved bands towards the right.

 

[franontanaya]

At least we know there's solid ground under one side.<br /><br />A rover with a wired camera and lamp to descend in there, that would be nice. Lots of surface and layers to look at closely. As long as the landing stage doesn't do a hole-in-one... <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>