On Sol 1037 (three days ago) the Perseverance rover observerved this transit of Mars' smallest moon Deimos.
This timelapse shows the event at 10x speed.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/Simeon Schmauß
#Mars #NASA #Perseverance #Deimos #Transit #Sun #Solarocks
Deimos transit - Perseverance Sol 1037
This sequence was upscaled 2x using the Enhance function in Adobe Lightroom. The sequence lasted 137 seconds in reality and is shown at 10x speed. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/Simeon SchmaußFlickr
Simeon Schmauß
in reply to Simeon Schmauß • • •If you are wondering what that small dark speck is that moves along with the sun - that's one of many sunspots!
Using drizzle stacking on the images (and masking out Deimos), I was able to make this image that is 3x higher resolution than what Mastcam-Z can natively capture.
Image of the sun - but taken from Mars! The sun is a pale yellow color and has a few small dark spots on it's surface. The largest one is towards the bottom of the disk next to two smaller ones below.
Simeon Schmauß
in reply to Simeon Schmauß • • •To process the timelapse images I first had to make a darkframe that contained all the static noise pixels dispersed over the frame. After subtracting this noise I converted the images to .dng files so I could edit them in Lightroom.
There I applied Adobe's machine learning based "Enhance" function to upscale these timelapse images 2x. This means the very fine details are not 100% real, but I didn't notice it introducing any artefacts either.
Simeon Schmauß
in reply to Simeon Schmauß • • •This algorithm was initially developed for the Hubble Space Telescope and is often used in astronomical observations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drizzle_(image_processing)
image processing method
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Simeon Schmauß
in reply to Simeon Schmauß • • •This isn't the first time the Perseverance rover has viewed a solar transit of one of Martian moons.
Back in on Sol 397 (April, 2022) we got to see this amazing eclipse from Phobos.
https://flic.kr/p/2p8wzLC
Phobos solar eclipse - Perseverance Sol 397 [upscaled}
Flickr