Larry Cochrane wrote:

> Sorry for my skeptical mind...Are these photos available on a government
> (nasa, jpl or usgs) site? Now a days its so easy to doctor images....
>
> -Larry
>

Hi Larry,

The Mars Global surveyor pictures are subcontracted under
the auspices of NASA/JPL/USGS, by Malin Space Science
Systems.  See:

http://www.msss.com/newhome.html

Perhaps the best place to start "peeking" or exploring is at:

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/narrowangles.html

This presents a flat "mars" global image and one can pick a
section, and then pick a "turquoise colored" dot or swath.

At the moment, one of the most unusal photos is at:

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/images/M0306104.html

There one will see the MOC narrow-angle image
M03-06104 on the left, and MOC red wide-angle context
image M0306105, which shows the broad area, and high
lights the area shown on the left image.  Under the MOC
narrow-angle image M03-06104 are photo "blow up"
options, under "lossey JPEG, GIF, IMG, IMQ.  This area
also shows longitude, latitude etc, further down on  the page.
I prefer the JPEG images myself but I guess it doesn't really
matter for simple viewing.  I've tried to save GIF, and photo
chop, but I got too many color errors, so I used JPEG on
my web site.

Judging from the MOC red wide-angle context image M03-06105
it would appear (via simple color texture), that alot of the
area, has the rough same texture, this implys speculation that
the same kind of view is rather common.  Lacking more
follow-up images (yet), of course it can't be verified immediately.

The Mars Global Surveyor camera doesn't seem to be
steerable from the satellite from what I've heard from others.
The percentage of narrow-angle photos is very small
compared to the land area, and so, areas of high interest
may take many years to completely cover, or even add on
to areas of higher interest.

They have some 27,500 photos on the site at the moment,
truly a massive giant byte collection.  Even the one line per shot
index takes up some ~ 13 meg, for the moment.

Its really just a fun deal to see the images, if one has some
spare time to explore whats there.  More speculations says
that there is likely alot more images with some startling visual
impact.  However, I think for one person, they could go on
virtually forever and not see everything, then too, they add
more every day....ha.

Take care,

Meredith Lamb






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