New ESA Website - Mars 'Webcam' Celestia Tie-In

[ormstont]

Ok, thanks for all your comments, I now have something that will be the base of what we will use. I've attached it to this post. It's a celx script that will take the user to the location Mars Express was at when it captured the webcam image and allow the user to step through all the images taken in that observation. One celx will be automatically produced for each observation so that users of the image can get a look at the Celestia version of the image compared to what actually came from Mars Express. I would very much value any comments on this little script, although time is very short, we want to launch the website on Friday.

For the other comments, I have thought about using SPICE orbits, and we'll say on the website that for the most accurate positioning of Mars Express SPICE is the way to go. However, the SPICE files are indeed pretty large and require a real enthusiast to want to get to grips with them. An xyz file should provide adequate sampling of the orbit of our three interplanetary spacecraft for most applications - I'll look into the possibility of also launching something like that, but it would have to be as our working time allows (or in our spare time).

[Edit: seems like I can't upload a file to the board here, so please PM me your e-mail and I can send it on]

[selden]

For some reason phpbb doesn't like attaching Celestia scripts.
However, attaching Zip files works fine. You might want to consider ziping the script and attaching that.

[ormstont]

Perfect, thanks Selden, that seemed to work. Unfortunately I can't post the images here at this time (we're keeping them a surprise for when the site launches on Friday) but this celx covers one observation where we flew over the planet capturing images every minute or so for 10 minutes. Any comments on this would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance!

[John Van Vliet]

i think your best bet for getting an accurate orbit would be to use the spice kernel's for the spacecraft they are currently in isis i do believe

[ormstont]

For all of those interested in the VMC Mars Webcam project we have now launched the website with our full image catalogue. Of course there are also the celx scripts available for the observations to show the location where the images were taken. We've also made sure to put links to Celestia on the side for people to download and hopefully have fun with these new images and discover Celestia at the same time.

I'd definitely like to invite anyone who wants to work further on the images or the celx scripts to join in, there are details on how to do this on the website. We want VMC to be a Mars camera anyone can get involved in!

[selden]

There's a typo on the web page http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/VMC/SEMANKXIPIF_0.html
In one place, Celestia is misspelled "Celsetia".

[chris]

I'd definitely like to invite anyone who wants to work further on the images or the celx scripts to join in, there are details on how to do this on the website. We want VMC to be a Mars camera anyone can get involved in!

Great to see the site live along with the mention of Celestia. Is the link to your celx script on the site? I couldn't seem to find it.

--Chris

[selden]

They're on the page
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/VMC/index.html

as the links titled "Access Celestia script here"

[ormstont]

Good spot on that typo...really really sorry for that - guess it missed the spellcheck! Luckily the Celestia link on the right of the site (which is on every page) is correctly spelled. Will ask about getting that one on the help page corrected first thing on Monday.

Selden's right - every single observation has a link to its own celx file which takes you to the position above the planet and turns on locations so people can start identifying features in the images. Hopefully this is just the start of our cooperation with Celestia!

[selden]

I didn't search very hard, but I didn't find any pages describing to a novice what relationship those scripts have to Celestia. Unfortunately, Celestia's documentation of script usage is rather scattered. I fear someone not already familiar with Celestia would feel rather frustrated

[chris]

The Mars webcam site is getting some kudos over at unmannedspaceflight.com:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/inde ... topic=5415

There's some confusion about how to use the Celestia scripts though. I'll try and clear that up . . .

--Chris

[ElChristou]

The Mars webcam site is getting some kudos over at unmannedspaceflight.com:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/inde ... topic=5415

There's some confusion about how to use the Celestia scripts though. I'll try and clear that up . . .

--Chris

Yep, it was my though looking at the ESA site; it's nice to put a cel url, but it would be better to explain what is this stuff, what is Celestia, etc... For Mr EndUser it's far from being crystal clear...

[John Van Vliet]

--- edit ---

[ormstont]

Ok...changed the misspelled Celestia on the Help page of the website...sorry about that!! Also added a note there that v1.5 or higher is required to be able to use the scripts (is it the setting of RenderFlags in a table that forces this...just for curiousity?).

Hopefully this will make it clearer to people how to use the celx scripts as it really does enhance the VMC experience to use Celestia. The site so far has been received really well and has had a lot of publicity across the internet. I hope that it's also introducing some new users to Celestia at the same time - would love it to be a beneficial cooperation in both directions!