Veins

• by Llbuckingham

  Are the veins raised or depressed areas?

  Posted January 12, 2013 8:10 PM

• by mschwamb scientist, translator

  They are depressions. They are carved into the surface of Mars by carbon dioxide gas trapped under the thawing carbon dioxide ice sheet on the south pole of Mars. You can learn more about what these features are here and here.
  Cheers,
  ~Meg

  Posted January 13, 2013 5:25 AM

• by JellyMonster

  I have said this before but I am convinced that all, or at least some of the photographs from the Mars mission, are upside down. Rotate through 180 degrees to see what these images should look like. Pits become rocks or boulders, veins become channels, volcanoes (there aren't any) become craters and so on. I find it hard to believe something like this has been overlooked by so many people, especially scientists!

  Posted January 13, 2013 11:02 AM

• by mschwamb scientist, translator in response to JellyMonster's comment.

  We know where the Sun is in each of these images. We know these are channels from shadow measurements.
  Cheers,
  ~Meg

  Posted January 13, 2013 11:10 AM

• by JellyMonster in response to mschwamb's comment.

  Thanks for your reply Meg but I think you are missing my point. I am sure you are right in what you are saying, but another way is to rotate the photograph through 180 degrees. Okay, so the compass points might be wrong but the lighting will be correct. Please try it, you'll be amazed! You will literally see the pictures in a different light. Veins that should be channels will magically transform once the image is rotated. Let me know how you get on, Dave.

  Posted January 13, 2013 1:07 PM

• by JellyMonster

  Here are a few examples if you don't believe me (scroll down to Mars mission)... http://the-orangery.weebly.com/

  Posted January 14, 2013 9:41 PM

• by michaelaye scientist

  It is a known fact (though not understood why that happens) that the brain understands 3D topography better when the images are rotated in a way that the sun comes from the upper left. Which is exactly what you are doing, because most of our data in this system has the sun from the lower right.

  Posted January 14, 2013 10:41 PM

• by JellyMonster

  Thanks for your reply.

  So, from what you are saying, the images are the wrong way, from a viewing perspective only. This is exactly my point, as what we (the users) might see as a strange looking volcano, will turn out to be a cavity, or maybe, our mysterious gas cloud is really a crater. This doesn't matter too much for scientists as they tend to rely on mathematics and such like. But for the rest of us, we like to see an image as it really is, instead of having to convert sticky out things, such as veins and ridges into depressions, such a channels.

  Please take a look at my other post 'Seeing is believing?' as it seems to be causing quite a stir. Please don't think I am a trouble maker, I just want to give everyone an opportunity to visualise what scientists say we should be seeing, without having to train our brain or rotate the images ourself.

  Posted January 15, 2013 2:14 PM

• by mschwamb scientist, translator in response to JellyMonster's comment.

  Well it depends on the lighting angle I believe. So you're see the image exactly as how it was taken we didn't do anything to it really other than combine filters. Our brains are interpreting them as ridges based on the lighting and reflection but shadow measurements have shown that these are channels are roughly 1-2m deep. I think looking at the spider channels shown on the blog, look more like depressions.

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted January 15, 2013 5:09 PM

• by JellyMonster

  We seem to be talking a different language. According to another scientist, It is a known fact, that the brain understands 3D information better, when the light comes from the upper left. In nearly all cases, rotating the images through 180 degrees would have accomplished this.

  Re blog pic - I see depressions once the image has been rotated (assuming we are looking at the same one). I don't think it is a particularly good example though.

  Posted January 15, 2013 5:54 PM

• by Paul_Johnson

  Jelly, I agree. Totally works for my brain when flipping them over. Don't understand it, it just works!

  Posted January 15, 2013 5:59 PM

• by JellyMonster

  I can sometimes force my brain to negate an already rotated image but not the other way round. What we need, is a mouse click-able button on the screen, to rotate incoming images. At least people would then have a choice of viewing.

  Posted January 15, 2013 6:22 PM

• by Paul_Johnson

  Hey Jelly, I just span my missus through 180, she looks a lot thinner now........wait, no, she's back up........

  Posted January 15, 2013 6:28 PM

• by Michael_B in response to JellyMonster's comment.

  Oh so you can rotate them. I will have to give it a go

  Posted January 15, 2013 7:38 PM

• by Paul_Johnson

  I couldn't! I had to save them to my desktop and spin them from there!

  Posted January 15, 2013 7:41 PM

• by JellyMonster

  I press the 'Prt Scrn' button on my keyboard and then paste it into Paintshop Pro. Anyway I'm glad it is catching on.

  Posted January 15, 2013 9:33 PM

• by michaelaye scientist in response to JellyMonster's comment.

  Nothing was overlooked, we show the images as they were taken, simple as that. That is much cleaner and a more defined situation than to rotate images depending on their relative sun position. That would be way more confusing, when looking at places from the whole planet.

  Posted January 16, 2013 12:58 PM

• by wassock moderator in response to michaelaye's comment.

  As I understand it the satellite is on a pole to pole orbit and when travelling south to north the images are corespondingly orientated, abd when the satellite goes north to south the images have South at the top. The South at the top type images are mostly what we are seeing at the moiment. But it still means you are presenting pictures some of which are one way up and some the other, with no point of reference for any of them! surely that is more confusing (at least to us mortals) than having all the images the same way "up". As the whole point of this exercise is to get lots of pattern recognition data it seems a bit perverse to present most of the images in a format, as discussed elsewhere, that our brains are hardwired to misinterpret?

  Posted January 16, 2013 1:52 PM

• by JellyMonster in response to michaelaye's comment.

  For viewing purposes, it is confusing and frustrating to look at all these images, when they are given to us the wrong way round. We either have to rotate them ourselves in an image editing program or stand on our heads! At least give us an option of what way round we wish to view them. I'm sure the techie guys could sort something out.

  Posted January 16, 2013 3:07 PM

• by Paul_Johnson

  Jelly!

  You're right my good man, it doesn't matter which way these pics come to us for the sake of the project, we just mark the fans and blotches-but for our own viewing pleasure and citizen scientist understanding, pleeeeaaase let us be able to flip them over to see them properly......! I don't care about orientation, if it looks like a chimney and its a hole...then we are all confused and upset...! If it looks like a ridge and its a depression, well that's just depressing! I hope that some progress can be made on this, it would make a lot of people happy, and bettter informed!

  Posted January 16, 2013 3:17 PM

• by mschwamb scientist, translator

  Just wanted to jump in here and echo what Michael said. Adding a rotate button would actually hurt our statistics because we'd have to account for the fact that some people used the rotate button and others didn't. Having a uniform sample of images helps us more when we combine the multiple classifications together. More than one person looks at each image. We will combine the results together to identify where the fans are. This is because combining the result of many non-experts can equal or even best an expert opinion. This is known as the Wisdom of the Crowd effect. So adding the ability to rotate the image changes the experience from volunteer to volunteer. I'm sure when we use map projected images we'll show the sun angle and orient differently when we focus on the spider terrain, but since we're focusing on the fans and blotches right now the image orientation in respect to the Sun is not important.

  Also it depends on the person, rotating the image for me didn't make the channels look like depressions in any orientation. So for the science we need right now, we're not going to add a rotate button. I can understand the frustration. Perhaps we can add a rotate button on Talk or also link to map projected images on Talk.

  Cheers,

  ~Meg

  Posted January 16, 2013 3:44 PM

• by JellyMonster in response to mschwamb's comment.

  but since we're focusing on the fans and blotches right now the image orientation in respect to the Sun is not important.

  So if this is true, why couldn't the images have been inverted from the start?

  However, I understand changing it now, would mess up the whole investigation. But another way, might be to 'grey out' (or disable) the drawing implements, when the 'invert' or 'toggle' button is checked. We could call it a 'view only' button?

  Posted January 16, 2013 5:23 PM

• by mschwamb scientist, translator in response to JellyMonster's comment.

  Still some people would use it and some wouldn't. So it would be the same issue. Since the orientation doesn't matter for the fans, it's better to not have that be a factor. Most people only come and do a few classifications and wouldn't use the utility, so it's better to keep the same of classifications and experience as uniform as possible. We have to the build the site taking that fact into consideration. Also not every image is rotated 180 so it's not as simple as you're stating. We made a decision not to adjust for the fan and blotch mapping part of the project, perhaps we'll discuss that further but for the moment the orientation isn't going to change. I'm sure we'll reevaluate that before we do the spider terrain characterization, and I'm sure for that we will remanipulate the images map project them and orient them with the same sun angle.

  As I said in previous posts I'm sure we'll look into adding the scale bar and other suggestions people have requested, but we're not going to reorient the images. Maybe we can add a link to Talk pages to the full HIRES image where you can see mapped projected images.

  I can understand that this may be frustrating but we've spent alot of time thinking about how best to get the most science from the project and how to orient and display the images to maximize that. I hope you'll stick with us, and help us explore Mars.

  ~Meg

  Posted January 16, 2013 5:54 PM

• by JellyMonster in response to mschwamb's comment.

  Thank you for your reply.

  Still some people would use it and some wouldn't.

  I think it would be more like 90/10 in favour of inversion but then we will probably never know.

  Anyway, I hope the investigation is going well... and yes I will stick around. Dave S.

  Posted January 16, 2013 9:17 PM