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According to Wikipedia the Context Camera(CTX) on board of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had already mapped 50% of Mars by Februari 2010.
Should it not have to be possible to get access to all these images in a logical way ?

Page 13 of this presentation of the Second MSL Landing Site Workshop shows a mosaic of CTX images P04_002746_1808_XI_00N002W_070226,
………. P05_003168_1825_XI_02N002W_070331 and
………. P06_003379_1827_XN_02N002W_070416

Is it possible to get these images with those identification numbers ?

Cornelis
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1 Answers1

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Yes, just go to https://viewer.mars.asu.edu/viewer/ctx and then enter the image ID in the Product ID field. However, note that the image IDs are slightly different from what you posted: you have to drop the part beyond W.

i.e. P05_003168_1825_XI_02N002W_070331 becomes P05_003168_1825_XI_02N002W

(The remaining part is the date when the image was taken, i.e. 31 March 2007)

Example search: https://viewer.mars.asu.edu/viewer/ctx#P=P05_003168_1825_XI_02N002W&T=2

The image viewer has also other options, for example it is possible to ask for all images taken within a range of Latitude/Longitude.

BlueCoder
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    You're welcome! I have a feeling we will meet one day, on Mars :)) – BlueCoder Sep 08 '18 at 19:24
  • I'm still not sure if i want to live there. The MOLA map looks all right with those blue lakes and rivers, and the green fertile clay grounds, but reality….? :) – Cornelis Sep 09 '18 at 10:19
  • Talking about resolution, can you explain why the image on page 17 of the presentation has such a high resolution and when zooming in on the CTX images they get blurred at that magnification ? – Cornelis Sep 10 '18 at 12:08
  • I have compared page 17 (either on normal or max zoom) vs the max zoom on the CTX images viewer and they look similar in detail to me, although the image in the viewer seems to have a different color (and maybe different range, some parts visible in the presentation are black there). See https://imgur.com/a/8g1G0nZ – BlueCoder Sep 10 '18 at 15:48
  • Anyway, I would guess that the image in the viewer might be optimized (eventually with some lossy compression) for online viewing. Downloading one of the Full Image Formats (i.e. Pyramidized TIFF) should yeld maximum resolution (on par or better than the presentation). Notice that the Pyramidized TIFF has a 300mb+ size.... Given how slow is to download a 300mb file vs how fast is to see and zoom in the viewer, I think some optimiziation has been done...(see first part of the comment). – BlueCoder Sep 10 '18 at 15:54
  • I actually opened the 300mb Tiff and it doesn't look that much better than the online viewer.... In particular, it has the same "shade" (black part) of the viewer, where the presentation shows some white.. – BlueCoder Sep 10 '18 at 16:15
  • Thanks for your time and effort ! I did have some problems with the zoom button, it doesn't always react. No wonder why the images get blurred, the sizes are a 1000 times less then the full image format ! So the viewer may be O.K. , but unfortunately i can't get a part of the Pyramidized TIFF to show the collapsed feature to the public , because of lack of sufficient memory ! – Cornelis Sep 10 '18 at 18:07
  • I might be able to post on Imgur an image of the crater alone (from the TIFF) tomorrow if you need it :) Imgur will automatically convert it to jpg with some loss but it should be still good (infinitely better than the non-full image downloads from the viewer for sure - I see they are very low res). – BlueCoder Sep 10 '18 at 18:49
  • See this image of the crater: https://imgur.com/a/hXs0hAI Taken from the maximum resolution layer of the Pyramidized TIFF (12133x58488). The shown part is 1149x819 pixels. Selected and exported from TIFF to PNG using GIMP and 0 compression level, then uploaded in Imgur. – BlueCoder Sep 11 '18 at 07:32
  • Thanks for the offer, but are you allowed to deliver images via Imgur to a third party ? Also i found an HiRISE image of the "crater", i will work on that. But perhaps you can use the image for an answer to the following question ? https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/30387/are-there-microclimates-with-better-weather-conditions-on-mars – Cornelis Sep 11 '18 at 07:33
  • Thanks for the new information. I have a TIFF image now of the crater that i would like to show on Space SE, but i have never used GIMP. Is it simple enough for me to transform the image to a PNG file and if so could you tell me the needed steps ? – Cornelis Sep 11 '18 at 11:22
  • Yes, it's very easy. You just need to open the TIFF and the go to File menu and choose "Export". Choose where you want to save the png file, type the name you want (e.g. crater.png) and press Export. It will ask you for some parameters (e.g. compression level) but you can just leave them as they are. Press again export and you have the .png file :) – BlueCoder Sep 11 '18 at 11:56
  • Thanks again, task completed, and good to know GIMP ! In the viewer HiRISE has also an image of the crater (https://viewer.mars.asu.edu/viewer/hirise#P=PSP_006570_1820_RED&T=2) , but then there is no full image format. However, tremendous zooming ! – Cornelis Sep 12 '18 at 08:56
  • NASA took a series of images of an eclipse of Phobos. Is it possible with GIMP to make a video with these images ? – Cornelis Dec 10 '18 at 12:15