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Post by Marsrocks on Jan 21, 2010 16:38:05 GMT -5
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Post by Marsrocks on Jan 21, 2010 16:41:51 GMT -5
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Post by Marsrocks on Jan 23, 2010 14:26:20 GMT -5
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Post by Marsrocks on Jan 23, 2010 14:42:08 GMT -5
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Post by Marsrocks on Feb 3, 2010 13:57:43 GMT -5
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Post by Marsrocks on Feb 3, 2010 13:58:10 GMT -5
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Post by Marsrocks on Feb 3, 2010 14:06:19 GMT -5
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Post by Marsrocks on Feb 3, 2010 14:08:08 GMT -5
A sudden drop-off behind that little hilltop could be causing this effect with only small changes in the elevation and angle of the camera:
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Post by Marsrocks on Feb 3, 2010 14:31:42 GMT -5
Well, I thought that may answer the question - a hilltop with a steep drop-off, but now I'm baffled. I decided to do a study of the similarity of the two objects - In this animation we see the object on the left - and then the object on the right. How could two objects be more similar? Look at this:
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Post by Marsrocks on Feb 3, 2010 14:32:36 GMT -5
Now, same study as above, but at a faster frame rate:
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Post by Marsrocks on Feb 3, 2010 15:16:12 GMT -5
Tracking objects - it appears that only an object in the extreme foreground - closer to us - could move that distance as a result of a change in the camera position. Not only that, but this object is moving in the wrong direction to have moved as a result of a change in camera angle as a foreground object.
Of course, it appears to be more of a background object - very close to the objects at the top of the hill.
So its movement should not have been more pronounced than the objects we see at the top of the hill.
And none of those objects really move that much as a result in the camera angle change.
Bizarre. We either have identical objects popping up behind the hill when the camera angle changes - or the thing moved.
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Post by Marsrocks on Feb 3, 2010 15:24:15 GMT -5
Object similarity study again- ultra bright:
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Post by Marsrocks on Feb 3, 2010 15:25:10 GMT -5
Object similarity study again - ultra bright - color - faster:
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Post by Marsrocks on Feb 3, 2010 15:42:13 GMT -5
As a part of my study of this as a possible movement, I looked into the rover's motion detection system.
We know it can detect motion because we see the dust devil and cloud movement series that it sends back.
JPL has programmed the rovers with software that checks for motion. In order for this to work, the cameras take pictures of the same scene at a given frequency. The software uses an algorithm to determine if there are significant differences between the two immediately previous pictures. If there are significant differences, then the camera takes a series of pictures at given time intervals, and those pictures are stored in memory.
When it is time to download images, the rover only sends back a small downsample of the first picture in the motion series.
The rover team studies this downsampled image, and if the rover personnel see a dust devil (or clouds), they order the rover to send all of the images in the series back to them through satellite transmission. If there is no dust devil, (or no cloud in the sky), they do not download the image series, and they have the rover delete the pictures in its memory. Presumably the decision not to download the full series when there is no dust devil or cloud is to save satellite bandwidth for more important tasks, as there is a chance that the motion detected was simply a false positive and would be a waste of time to send back.
This means that the only acceptable motion on Mars under study includes the motion of dust devils or clouds.
So, if this object we are currently studying ever moved and set off the motion dection software during the many days that the rover took pictures in this area, we may never know. Those pictures would have never been downloaded, and would have been deleted from memory unless it moved during a dust devil storm or while clouds were moving.
I did check the downsampled motion series possibilities during these sols currently available, and I saw no significant movement on the ground.
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Post by Marsrocks on Feb 3, 2010 15:45:13 GMT -5
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