Today’s update from Spacecraft Operations Engineer Simon Wood on the MEX team at ESOC on progress of the VMC Schools Campaign.
Sorting the ~2000 VMC Schools Campaign images is going well. We’ve got an initial collation of the images for each school / group done now. The sets are being double checked for accuracy.
Mars limb seen in VMC image 15-147_09.53.42_VMC_Img_No_8, acquired 27 May. Credit: ESA/Mars/Express/VMC – ESA – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
There’s a bit of disappointing news: there are a couple of requested imaging targets that didn’t work out very well, either because of the dust or the lighting conditions, or because the image just simply doesn’t show the target too well. For these, we will dig through the VMC archive and provide some better quality VMC images from past observations that do show the requested target adequately.
Editor’s note: We expect to start mailing images within a couple working days. 🙂
Discussion: 3 comments
Onafhankelijk welk beelden er uiteindelijk uit komen. Wat belangrijk is dat deze gemaakt werden. met de hulp van jullie team can ESA en dat wij als amateurs de kans krijgen om deze naar best vermogen te mogen bewerken.. P.S. Dit beeld werd op dag 147 genomen dus na de 26ste mei en om correct te zijn om 09u53min42sec . Ik dacht dat de campagne stopte op de 26ste omwille van observaties van de zonnecorona die gepland waren.
Nonetheless, whatever images come out this adventure. It is much more important to know that you as a group of passionate people from ESA believe that even a small camera like the VMC can inspire us to use those pictures. For us as amateurs it more than inspiring.. We would love to analyze them at our best . P.S We though the campaign would stop after the 26th after the 3 series programmed. The image shown, itself is very interesting, it was taken on the 27the at 09:53:42 UTC. It gives a nice view of the atmosphere. Although it is not the real storm season on Mars. It is autumn in the Southern hemisphere and spring in the Northern. It would be quiet easy to calculate the height of the clouds. The only thing what is surprising is that the center of Mars is not the center of the image. See the alternate B of the scheduled flight.
https://blogs.esa.int/mex/2015/06/01/update-1-june/
well spotted that mars is not centred
after we uploaded the commands for the observation campaign last week,
i noticed that there were a few periods where when the spacecraft was earth pointing and transmitting data, Mars would pass through the field of view of the camera.
we managed to get a command sequence on board at the last moment to capture 2 of these opportunities. the picture you see in the post is the result of one of these 2 extra observations.
OOTW Space Program is really looking forward to this Thank you so much for editing and making sure we get awesome pics to use