Nefertiti's Family

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by neilderosa</i>
<br />But Rich is not ready to draw that inference, preferring to be more cautious, and simply saying that there seems to be something wrong with R07 and R12, and that whatever went wrong, most likely happened during image acquisition.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Neil, I just want to make one more point on this subject.

I can remember being in many meetings where someone from marketing wanted a feature put into the software, but had no idea of what was involved, or how to describe what he wanted. He knew what the customer wanted, but that was about it.

But every once in awhile, the marketing guy really nails it, and get's the main point clearly communicated to engineering.

I think this is one of those things that should be very easy to communicate. In other words, if I was sitting there in person with the guy who is actually going to take the picture, or program the acquisition data into the computer, I would know exactly what I wanted to tell him.

"Take me a good picture of the PI area. Capeesh?"



rd

But nothing is wrong with R07 and R12. The contrast inside the dark areas becomes visible when you adjust the brightness factor. The reason those areas appear overly dark online is because the default brightness for those strips is set to provide overall balance for the entirety of eash strip, which contain some *very* bright areas.

Another way of undersanding this is that when you adjust the brightness higher so you can see the detail in the (originally) dark areas, the brighter areas lose their contrast. Unless you adjust the brightness separatly for different parts of the strip, there will always be areas of the strip with loss of contrast (either too bright or too dark).

Emanuel

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by emanuel</i>
<br />The reason those areas appear overly dark online is because the default brightness for those strips is set to provide overall balance for the entirety of eash strip, which contain some *very* bright areas.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Yes, we know all that. That's the "reason" why we don't get the broad range of greys needed to see the scene clearly. But we don't care about all that.

Just picture being back in the meeting room between marketing and engineering, discussing this subject. The marketing guy has an important client that wants to see the scene around the Profile Girl clearly.

He says simply, "I want a good picture of the Profile Girl scene, the one you gave us previously stinks."

So the engineering manager calls on you Emanuel to explain why the image came out the way it did. You take center stage, and you give him the schpiel you just posted for us. Makes perfect sense.

But the marketing guy doesn't care. You see, he's got this important client who wants to see the scene clearly. He doesn't give a rat's patooty about your reasons.

He replies, "look, just do what you gotta do to get me a clear picture of the Profile Girl scene. Narrow the swath if you have to. Spare me the rigamarole."

I've seen this exact drama play out hundreds of times. I realize we're not talking about "clients" here and "marketing" and "engineering" per se, but as far as getting the job done, the same thing holds true for this.

rd

But we *do* get the broad range of greys, after you download the strip, put it in photoshop, and adjust the brightness. As for why Nefertiti isn't so visibile after that, well, there could be many reasons, such as lighting angle, or clouds, or a layer of dust is now covering the original image, or even that the original image was simply a temporary arrangement of the dust that is now gone forever after a new dust storm changed the pattern.

Emanuel

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by emanuel</i>
<br />As for why Nefertiti isn't so visibile after that, well, there could be many reasons, such as lighting angle, or clouds, or a layer of dust is now covering the original image, or even that the original image was simply a temporary arrangement of the dust that is now gone forever after a new dust storm changed the pattern.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I'd love to see you in the boardroom, trying to explain to Donald Trump how R07 and R12 are really good images, we just can't see the thing we want to see. He'd tear you to pieces. Heck, Carolyn would tear you to pieces.

I think the word "rigamarole" would be used frequently.



rd

R07 was taken with less resolution and less contrast than typical MGS images. So apparently were many or perhaps even most of the "public request" images. If the contrast and resolution are not present in the original, they cannot be added back by image processing.

I'm afraid the reason for this quality reduction is obvious: High-resolution data transmissions tie up the Deep Space Tracking Network and use valuable time needed to get data back from all the other spacecraft now active. The view of the program scientists is that the serious imagery has already been taken, and it's now time to let the school kids play with the camera a bit for public relations purposes. It might not occur to you gentlemen trying to do good science that you are regarded as less important, time-wise and budget-wise, than school children. -|Tom|-