Saturday, March 25, 2006

More HiRISE

Wow, I just saw the latest batch of photos from the HiRISE camera. They are beautiful, absolutly amazing, I can't wait to get my hands on them to look some more. For 2 hours I was looking at these detailed pictures (And we barely got through the second of 4), and they are perhaps better than the first. We were expected them to be uninteresting. The reason being something called a Jitter test, which basically is we are testing to see how the camera performs with the other instruments on the camera operating. Many of them move, causing the spacecraft to shake slightly, and we are working to correct them. But, the problem was not largely visible, and we're going to take these processes out, if possible. Stay tuned for these amazing pictures!

Friday, March 24, 2006

HiRISE pictures

So, last night was a big night for me. The first HiRISE pictures came streaming in. It was amazing. I sat in the control room, it was the first experience I had as a member of HiROC of note, and what a noteworthy time it was. I unfortunately had a test the next day, so I couldn't spend the time to wait for the pictures to come in (The pictures came in at about 2 in the morning, my test was at 8). But it really is amazing their quality. The team couldn't be happier!