How Spirit Takes Pictures

Some Clown writes "MSNBC has a great article on the details of the camera system on the Mars Rover titled How Sprit makes great photos. Apparently the high resolution images are all done with a 1-megapixel camera. All the money is in the CCD and Lens. The hardcore digital photographers in the crowd will probably find the article to be only a teaser on the technical specs, but the rest of us in the unwashed masses should find it interesting."

Comments

Unwashed Masses...?

[funny-jack]

The hardcore digital photographers in the crowd will probably find the article to be only a teaser on the technical specs, but the rest of us in the unwashed masses should find it interesting.

What does having a six-digit Slashdot UID have to do with digital photography knowledge?

Original

[Gherald]

Why not link directly to the original article?

Interesting, but..

[xankar]

High quality images are good for PR, but what I really want to know is how it extracts information from the environment, how this information is being used, and whether or not we found anything we didn't expect to find.

Re:Interesting, but..

[jmh_az]

It extracts data by looking at the return levels at the various wavelenghts of the filters, among other things. With image processing software like IRAF you can get an amazing amount of information out of an image. Also, conventional comsumer CCD cameras use one CCD device with a RGB patterned color filter literally painted onto the face of the CCD to get red, green and blue. High-end cameras use three CCD's with seperate filters in front of each imaging device and splitter prisms to direct the light. Since things like weight and complexity are issues when building spacecraft, they accomplish the same thing as the high-end cameras here on earth by using one CCD and a filter wheel. This approach also allows them to do other things, such as take images through polarizers, or have magnification if they need it, and all in one camera package. And, last but not least, these cameras are tested and calibrated to within an inch of their lives before they ever leave the ground, so the researchers know exactly what the dark current (electronic noise), flat field (pixal responsiveness across the entire CCD) and defect characteristics for the CCD are. This information is then used to subtract out a lot of the noise and imperfections, leaving as much of the original data for analysis as possible. That analysis is the stuff of research papers like this one.

Hope that was useful.

Pictures

[schnits0r]

I dunno, That would suck if all Spirit's pictures had a finger in the bottom corner of them like all mine do.

Re:Pictures

[nucal]

Actually, it would be fantastic if all Spirit's pictures had a finger in the bottom corner!

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Mod Me God]

It is interesting, but I suppose it is explained because this sort of tech has to be (physically) tested a couple+ years in advance (and 2 years is in the final test/construction phase already, initial planning was years before), so strapping the latest untested camera in to a planned and tested system would potentially introduce a weak point in the system. Yeah, pretty nifty, kinda shows the potential 'old' hardware has when used to its full potential.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[froody]

It's important to note that in a color digicam each "pixel" only senses 1 color. The NASA cam is a black and white, and to make color they take 3 shots with different filters. This makes it equivalent to a consumer 3MP camera.
They also have a nice lens and a large sensor which helps as well.

Tim

Re:Humans to the moon...

[Mod Me God]

Internet Fridges to pluto (2010)?

All those IPv6 address have to be used for somthing!

Re:$400,000,000?

[ad0gg]

Expensive compare to what? B-1 Bomber is 1.2 billion a piece, F22 is $122 million. Communication sattelites can range from $100 million and up. And the R&D costs can spread accross multiple units, rovers only had two units to spread across.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[RigMonkey]

"Perhaps I'll dust my old 1MP camera off and see if I can do anything similar."

You're going to send your old Sony Mavica to Mars?!?!?!?!?!

This is why my 2.7mp digital SLR is still great.

[sejanus]

A lot of people see the prints from my digital SLR, a gracefully aging Nikon D1h and are astonished to learn it's from digital. Most then refuse to believe it's only a 2.7mp camera.

Near all my pictures at www.gavincato.com in the photography section are with the Nikon D1h.

The Nikon D1h has only a 2.7mp sensor, but the output is fantastic. The pixels are large, and the noise is pretty low. It's pretty much noiseless until you hit 800 ISO, and even at 1600 ISO it's significantly better than 1600 speed film.

NASA is very correct in saying the lens & sensor are important, for example most of my lenses are ludicrously expensive (often more than the camera body) and the majority of them are fixed length lenses and thus have incredible optics.

I've previously owned a Nikon D100 which had 6mp, but I found to my surprise that I preferred the output & prints from the D1h. I originally bought the D1h to complement the D100 (the D1h is a crazy fast camera designed for sports), not replace it, but after a while I ended up selling the D100.

The guys in the Canon camp have said the same thing, they much prefer the output of the 4mp Canon 1D vs the 6mp Canon 10D.

Re:It's All About The Optics

[Anonymous Coward]

You can also do cunning tricks with moving the camera fractions of a pixel to generate 'super-resolution' images - I'm almost afraid to think what the images from Spirit could be like with this technique.

They've talked about using it to take pictures of the hills a few kilometres away - even if the rover doesn't reach them, they should still get some very impressive images of them.

Re:$400,000,000?

[morcheeba]

$400 million? Does that include the cost of getting it there?

No, it doesn't. NASA engineers saved up some frequent flyer miles accrued on the space shuttle and the space station, and got a free trip to mars. Next, they'll be saving up for a round-trip and I've heard that they are soliciting milage donations from the public.

Put another way, $400 million is about a dollar for each american. Have you gotten your dollar's worth of entertainment yet? (Or $2.30 if the price is $810 mil)

To compare, bush's little iraq war is going to cost 100-200 Billion dollars and over 500 coallition lives so far. Do you expect to get your $1400 worth of oil/entertainment from that?

Color Russian "Photos" from before WW I

[zipwow]

His name was Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, and they're awesome. You have to remind yourself of the time period when you see them, or you'll instinctively think they're more modern:

http://www.ummagurau.com/art/russia/