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DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE AND SCIENCE VENUS WINDS PROJECT

MINUTES OF MEETING Date/Time/Location: 25 February 2016 6:00 PM Studio 106

ATTENDING Art Ashley Christian Cristy Dave Wolf Drew Dylan Elizabeth Emilie John Kevin Mark Marta Michael D. Michael L. Rachel Terran Yvonne Guests: The meeting opened at 6:00 PM in Studio 106. Those attending are listed above.

OLD BUSINESS

Discussions regarding changes in meeting schedule – Mark, Art At the last meeting, we discussed difficulties with image display in ADM meeting rooms where high-resolution display is not available as it is in the Exploration Studios 102 and 106. Because competition for Exploration Studios is less on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, our initial discussion was with Museum staff (Dave Blumenstock and Jared Vazquez) Thursday afternoon. Art represented the Project and reported on the negotiation of the meeting. The Minutes for that meeting will be distributed separately. In summary, the agenda item of greatest importance was the need to have meeting places that feature modern, high-end projection equipment. Currently, those are Studios 102 and 106 in the Morgridge Wing. These studios are quite popular, especially late in the week, but they are more readily available earlier in the week, namely Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. It has been proposed that the Venus Winds Project meet on one of those days. At this point, the day with the least competition is Tuesday, followed by Monday and then Wednesday. We plan to poll the volunteer roster for preferences in the very near future.

NEW BUSINESS

New procedures for downloading raw data and uploading intermediate results – Mark Mark has created a new directory structure on the main data server, data.boulder.swri.edu, with folders containing the raw image files by observing date, and separate folders for uploading your intermediate results. Each of the folders for intermediate results contains subfolders with individual names. This is where you can upload your assignments using sftp. Files can be transferred between your computer and the data server using sftp commands in a terminal window on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines, for those who know the commands. Alternatively, an SSH client program can be used to drag and drop folders between your computer and the data server. For Windows machines, the free program SSH  Secure  Shell can be obtained at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52682795/sshwin-­‐3.1.0.exe .

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Once logged into the data server, the program looks like:

The left hand window shows the directories and files on your computer, while the right hand window shows the directories of the data server. Opening the ‘Raw Images’ folder on the right (by double clicking it), you see folders for each observing date:

Again, double-click on one of the folders on the right and you will see all the images for that night. All the raw images will be stored in these folders as individual files. To transfer them (or the whole folder) to your computer, you just drag files from the right to the appropriate folder on you computer on the left. If you have created some centered images, double-click on the ‘Centered images’ folder, and will see

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Then double-click the folder with your name on it. Files can be transferred from your computer to your folder on the data server by dragging them from left to right.

There are still some problems with setting up the credentials for logging into the data server, so Mark will talk with the SwRI IT folks to get this sorted out next week. In the meantime, you can still see and download raw image files by using your browser to go to the data server. You can do this by going to our project web page at  

http://spaceodyssey.dmns.org/venus-­‐winds-­‐project.aspx  

Click on ‘Research/Datasets’ and then on ‘Link  to  Image  Files’ in the yellow box on the left. Or you can go straight to the data server at http://data.boulder.swri.edu/bullock/Venus_images/

A box will pop up asking for your User Name and Password. These are ‘mark’ and ‘venus’. You will see the same directories in your browser as you see on the right hand side of the first figure above. You will are able to download these files, but not upload anything, using this method. Demonstration of using DS9 and MicroObservatory – Mark SAOImage  DS9 is a great little tool for opening and viewing FITS files, adjusting contrast and brightness, drawing contours on the image, and saving to other formats. But for any processing beyond that, it requires writing text commands or scripts. The interface is shown below.

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Mark also demonstrated software called MicroObservatory. It can open FITS files and shift images to center them. It can also perform mathematical operations on images. So two centered images can be added to produce more contrast. Also, images of Venus taken at 2.2 microns can be subtracted from the cloud images. Since the Venus atmosphere is completely opaque at these wavelengths, this essentially just subtracts the scattered sunlight from the cloud images, improving the clarity of the cloud features near the terminator. While this software has a lot of features that we could use, it is very old and unstable. A better solution would be to find the kind of software that is often bundled with astrophotography CCD cameras, and has many of the same features as MicroObservatory. Mark suggested that volunteers look around for this kind of software, and he will do the same. He’ll demonstrate any software that looks promising, at the next meeting.

POSTPONED Centering images demos - Ashley, Michael Logan, Yvonne

These analysts will discuss their own image centering techniques using Photoshop and GIMP.

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Akatsuki Updates - Kevin There has been very little additional information about the Akatsuki mission, other than that the spacecraft instruments, power, and propulsion systems all remain in excellent condition. Data and images continue to be received by the ground stations, but the data reduction pipeline is not yet producing processed images. So we have not seen any more images than the handful that were released in early December. Kevin will update us on the Akatsuki mission at a later meeting, when there is something new to report.

The next meeting will be on 9 March 2016 at 6 PM. ADM1 Submitted by Arthur C. Tarr, Venus Winds Project Coordinator