Mars Curiosity Cameras - Your Smartphone Has Far Better Resolution!!

Originally posted by Kurokage
How many times do people with even slight intelligence have to explain to the sheeple on here. Go and look up the tech used instead of looking foolish saying "my smart phone is better!".

Meh -- the sheeple don't want to understand boring science and technology. They would rather blindly believe the cool conspiracy theories they read about on the interwebs.

Blindly believing in conspiracies is more fun than trying to do actual research and critical thinking, or than using their brain to understand why things are the way they are. They would rather be told what to believe.

All the OP needed to do was research the information on Curiosity's cameras to see why it is what it is -- and even see why a 2MP image at a narrow angle-of-view (such as the rover's camera) could be comparable in resolution to an 8MP image at a wider angle-of-view (such as an iPhone).

reply to post by Xertious


They will never understand that megapixels don't matter a whole hell of a lot.
The DX sensors in my 2 D2X's will blow the cr*p out of a current consumer grade 20mp dslr and my nikons are 8 years old with over a million shutter actuation's! Then again I hardly shoot over 4mp unless its for a magazine or wedding portraits that will be blown up.

I normally do not get "personal" in my posts. I usually just lurk...but...

Dude. Your smart phone is crap. The 'amazing' 10mp camera in it is crap. It breaks easily. It has limited functionality. Its size is tiny. The lens is non existent practically.

Look at the Nikon D3-x. 24.5 mega pixels. If "Mega Pixels" were all that mattered... it should be about 2.5x the cost of your iDevice camera. Right? It is $8,000. The "top lens" is the 600mm f/4 AF-S NIKKOR for $10,299. Mind you a lens is used "for a purpose" and not "this is the best lens I never use any other lens!" You swap out lenses for whatever you need done.

So, to make this clear. Top of the line Nikon camera is 24.5 MP for $8K. The most expensive lens (intended for sports & wild life long-shots.) is $10k. All it will do is take 2.5x more MP than your what, $300 iPod? Except at, you know, extreme ranges in crystal clear shots...in the hands of a good photographer. An idiot could take the camera and make shots worse than a late 90s digital camera.

Now...expensive and amazing! Surely $20,000 spent on a camera means it is awesome and durable! Why don't we just send this to Mars?

If I take my amazing sports lens worth 10 grand, and drop it a foot or two onto my counter top. Guess what? It will potentially break or de-align the lens work. That foot or two is infinitely less damage than de-orbiting like the rover did.

The camera had to be specialty designed for this mission. Just sending 'any thing up' would not work.

Take your iPhone. Put it into -200 or colder temps. Then take it outside and throw it into the sand. See if it still works. Oh and a 11G sudden burst of energy (throw it against a brick wall a few times.) Then? Use it in very low light settings (Mars is further from the sun remember?)

Tell me how well your phone works after this I know I wouldn't put my tens of thousands of dollars of gear through this. I know if I go shoot in the coldest parts of Antartica for BBC someday, my gear would struggle to survive. Batteries don't hold charges. Metal warps. Lenses de-align. Your iPhone would not function... especially for YEARS with ZERO maintenance.

reply to post by PhoenixOD


Exactly, 2MP is all they need.
Unlike smartphones that pump out higher MP just so idiots like OP think they have a better camera than a competitor.
Unless you have a phone that has come out recently (like my sgs3) then your phone probably can't even handle 8MP notice shutter lag when your phone is struggling to process an image. You should be able to take a picture and move on, then take another one without having to wait for the last one. (My sgs3 I can just press the shutter button and keep taking pictures, same with my dsrl)

This has been dealt with a billion times in the other Curiosity thread. Every few pages some ignoramus exclaims "My smartphone has better resolution than the rover!!" thinking they are the first to discover this 'monumental' issue.

www.msss.com...

One Mastcam camera head has a 100 mm focal length, f/10 lens. This provides the capability to obtain images with a scale of 7.4 centimeters per pixel at 1 km distance, and about 150 microns per pixel at 2 meters distance. The camera’s square field of view covers 5.1° over 1200 by 1200 pixels on the instrument’s 1600 by 1200 CCD.

The other Mastcam camera head has a 34 mm focal length, f/8 lens. The camera’s 15° square field of view covers 1200 by 1200 pixels on a 1600 by 1200 CCD detector. The camera can obtain 450 microns per pixel images at 2 meters distance and 22 centimeters per pixel at 1 kilometer distance.

The information is readily available to anyone with a keyboard and access to Google.

Pretty pictures are nice, but do nothing for science.

reply to post by earthdude


Apart from giving a visual representation of what the planet is like. Does that mean astronomy isn't science, all those just pretty picture of black holes and giving us understandings of how the universe works.

This article explains it all: www.theverge.com...

1) Curiosity can only transmit about 31.25MB per day, or less than a gigabyte per month, and that quota has to cover readings from a bunch of other instruments on board.


2) The specs for the project had been settled on eight years ago.

reply to post by OrionHunterX


The colour photos look like what I was expecting, not as red as the old photos, not as blue as the colour-corrected ones, but something in between.

As someone that has witnessed it knows, whenever there is some dust in the air, everything looks orange, so an orange tint on the photos was what I was expecting and what we can see, specially if you look at the white areas of Curiosity.

PS: I don't have a mobile phone, either smart or like those people that think that the cost of this mission was just for the cameras.

Originally posted by Xertious
reply to post by earthdude

 

Apart from giving a visual representation of what the planet is like. Does that mean astronomy isn't science, all those just pretty picture of black holes and giving us understandings of how the universe works.

True, but they have a microscope for that.

I love it how a bunch of crank-followers think they know better than the whole scientific and engineering community. "My camera phone is better than their rovers, and they send them to the wrong places, whaa-whaa-whaa"

By the way, looking a the hi-rez images from MRO is far better than scrutinizing old pixellated images from the past. We all know what the "face on Mars" turned out to be.

When Nasa's Curiosity rover landed on the surface of Mars on monday morning, it almost immediately began transferring back to Earth the first images of the Martian surface. But for its reported $2.5 billion price tag, the images have a little less clarity than you might expect. Curiosity's cameras have a maximum resolution of two megapixels. For perspective's sake, modern smartphones typically are 8MP or more. The result will be images that are sharper than those of Martian rovers past, yet lack the clarity that would be expected from a snap you take in your local pub.

We had this debate multiple times, and i am tired to repeat what has been said many times already, just short, that the argument "8MP is better than 2MP" is pure and utter nonsense.

The above quoted bit also seems to be unscientific and not care a lot about the fact, let alone missing knowledge about image processing and other stuff.

For starters, NASA has a constant hazy atmosphere from dust which makes images have less contrast/clarity. It's like taking pictures here when its somewhat foggy.

Not only does this mean there is less contrast, details etc...it also gives ALL images a reddish hue from the atmosphere. It is my understanding that NASA is processing images to attempt to compensate for this..eg. how an image would look without that haze from the atmosphere, which will also add more contrast/details. They were talking about this in the last tele conference, by the way.

You call this "fudging colors", what in reality is to your benefit, assuming that the second picture does indeed show more details and is "more clear" which you will hopefully agree with, unless you are blind.

Originally posted by SpearMint
My smartphone can't fly to Mars.

smartphones are from mars

does your smart phone have a chem cam ?

get a clue !

Originally posted by Xertious
As any real photographer will tell you the mp value has very little importance when taking picture.

I might not be a 'real photographer'... but, I worked in the printing field for 3 years, was a photolab supervisor for 2 years, sold cameras for 1 year, and ran printing at a photo studio for another year.... crazy part is, I lost all my jobs because the companies or store locations shut down lol! I swear it's not my fault! I also taught classes on digital photography...

2mp does matter... granted, anything above 4 is next to useless, considering the application of these images.

In my opinion... any real photographer doesn't even know what mp means lol!

I will agree with the notion that people who purchase 10+ mp, should not be purchasing the idea that the mp value will bring more 'clarity' and will make their pictures better. Odds are, those little 8x10's or even smaller poster sizes will never reflect any difference when compared to images taken from a 4mp camera.

How tough would it have been to replace the 8MB memory with a larger capacity?
Jeesus what are these bozos thnkng?

Originally posted by stirling
How tough would it have been to replace the 8MB memory with a larger capacity?
Jeesus what are these bozos thnkng?

What 8MB memory do you mean?

The computers have 2GB of flash memory, and each of the main science cameras have 8GB of flash internal memory. That's more than enough memory, considering the rover will eventually download that data it gathers, and could over-write anything already downloaded back to earth.

I'm sure if the rover was built today, it would have more flash memory, but considering it was designed in 2004, it has plenty of flash memory for the era it was built. Designing and testing a flash memory that could survive the rigors of the spaceflight and operating on mars would take a few years, so simply "putting in more memory" is not that easy.

Can Nasa fly a smart phone to mars? Not only then can higher resolution photos can be taken but as well ET can phone home, and during off peak times...

YOU KNOW WHAT THIS ACTUALLY PROVES???

What this proves is actually how cheaply they made this hollywood prop. So they tell some tech guys to go into there warehouse somewhere and use old parts to build this thing. They didn't actually spend a dime on it. They use old cameras and old everything.

Then they drive it out to Area 51 to a remote location to show off the official mars landing. No it's not on mars, get real! This piece of junk is out in area 51 somewhere not even moving. Just siting there with a cheap old web cam on it.

Like unreal. The rest of the billions when into someones offshore account and they didn't invest a single dime into this hollywood prop.

Originally posted by r2d246
YOU KNOW WHAT THIS ACTUALLY PROVES???

Yes, I do. It proves...

Sorry, my mistake:

YES, I DO. IT PROVES YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT ;-)