Photogrammetry of the FIU Bridge Collapse (partial)

This is a partial photogrammetric reconstruction of the FIU bridge collapse.

Photogrammetry is the science of measuring the spatial change between two similar reference photos. In the use for this video, each real frame from the (original?) source was mapped with reference points and then motion was interpolated based on the change in the position of the dots.

Without some extra processing, photogrammetry has it's drawbacks. 

One error you may notice in the video above is several rapid shifts in the motion and possibly an apparent increase in the speed of the motion as well. This is an aberration of the motion switching between the real frames of the original video. If an object is following an arcing path in its motion, drawing two reference dots will only give you the linear path between the two unless corrections in this motion path are made. I've not made these corrections in this because it can be challenging to get a proper motion path in an event that has numerous independent moving objects that each have their own likely non-linear path. I found it best to just iterate linear paths between the frames and your own judgement can fill in the true path of the objects.

Another quite apparent aberration is the movement of objects when they cross the path of another object. The process of photogrammetry only measures the distance between two reference dots to discern motion. If that series of dots intersects another set of dots while transposing their motion, it can create some quite funky image tearing. Again, this is a correctable issue using masking techniques to separate the objects followed by recompositing everything back together. This can become quite time intensive so I have not performed these additional corrections.

 In the set of frames I grabbed from the source I used, I captured 30 frames. The video above only takes you from frame 1 to frame 17. An additional 4 frames are needed for about 98% of the collapse to have taken place. I have not yet mapped these frames and I'm a bit short on time to do this now. If there is enough interest, I'll make the time however.

I do apologize for not attributing the person who originally contributed this video. I am not aware who made it available first. The highest quality source I found on Youtube was from a user going by the name OfficialJoelF. I don't know if this is the originator for the video or not though. Thank you for whoever was the driver of this truck for providing it to the public. It is such an incredibly lucky video in so many respects and will likely be quite useful in determining the full scope of the issues this bridge experienced in its short time.

Work in Progress

Sorry for the lack of updates. I've had an ongoing project I decided to dedicate myself to and I've let several Dawn images slip by. Those will get processed in time, including the newly released Occator images.

Nonetheless, this project should interest a good number of you.

Previously, I worked on and released a synthetic animation of Wright Mons on Pluto, transitioning from the global color MVIC image to the MVIC panchromatic crescent. That image has a lot of views and has had a lot of interest. Well, that animation was really just a portion of a must larger, full animation between the global view and the entire crescent. I'm still working on it but I'm happy to share a reduced resolution image of the colorized crescent image.

This is based on the enhanced colorized global view I previously worked on. Further enhancements were made to account for the more oblique view and the higher albedo in many of the features as a result. Finally, the atmospheric glow is based on the color MVIC look-back previously released. It has been enlarged and composited onto the haze layers above the surface.

Weekly Reading List - Week of Mar 20

Week of March 20, 2016

This section is a curated list of articles, white papers, concepts, events, videos, and data releases. Some listed items may not be current but are nonetheless quite interesting.

Articles & Sites of Interest

• ESA: ExoMars Operations timeline
• DoE: How SuperTruck is Making Heavy Duty Vehicles More Efficient
• Planetary Society: Continuing the Hunt for Exoplanets
• Universal Science: Hubble breaks cosmic distance record
• Centauri Dreams: A Transiting Jupiter Analog
• Scientific American: No Man's Land - Where on Mars Should Astronauts Go?
• BBC: The Cold War space missions that never 
• spaceREF: LISA Pathfinder Begins Its Science Mission 
• Planetary Society: "Planet Nine" update - Possible resonances beyond the Kuiper belt?
• spaceREF: OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in thermal vacuum testing
• JPL: NASA Targets May 2018 Launch of Mars InSight Mission
• NASA: NASA Prepares to Fly – First RS-25 Flight Engine Test Set for March
• spaceREF: Sharpest View Ever of Dusty Disc Around Aging Star
• PSI: Planetary Science Institute Funded for Expanded Education Public Outreach Effort
• Centauri Dreams: Into the ‘Transit Zone’
• NASA: NASA's K2 mission - The Kepler Space Telescope's Second Chance to Shine
• gbtimes: China's space station - 2 arms, 'wings', and a 'Chinese Hubble'
• spaceREF: Mysterious infrared light from space resolved perfectly   
• Pale Red Dot: Directly Imaging Exoplanets
• NASA: What’s Eating at Pluto? 
• NASA: Pluto’s ‘Snakeskin’ Terrain - Cradle of the Solar System? 
• NASA: NASA Selects Proposals to Build Better Solar Technologies for Deep Space Missions 
• spaceREF: SDU researchers present a new model for what dark matter might be  
• ScienceNews: Support grows for a return to ice giants Uranus and Neptune 
• Planetary Society: ExoMars launch successful! What to expect for the Trace Gas Orbiter and Schiaparelli missions 
• CICLOPS: Rev234: Mar 21 - Apr 18 '16 
• Planetary Society: Looking Forward to the 2016 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 

Concepts & White Papers

• Solar Polar Orbit Telescope (SPORT)
• OSA: Designs for a large-aperture telescope to map the CMB 10× faster
• arxiv: Quantum Telescopes: feasibility and constrains
• NTRS: Forward Skirt Structural Testing on the Space Launch System (SLS) Program
• NTRS: The Cosmic Microwave Background - Detection and Interpretation of the First Light
• arxiv: Jumping Jupiter can explain Mercury's orbit
• arxiv: Large size and slow rotation of the trans-Neptunian object (225088) 2007 OR10 discovered from Herschel and K2 observations 
• arxiv: Corralling a distant planet with extreme resonant Kuiper belt objects 
• arxiv: The Frequency of Giant impacts on Earth-like Worlds
• arxiv: Telling twins apart: Exo-Earths and Venuses with transit spectroscopy
• NTRS: Potential for Additive Manufacture in Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP)
• NTRS: Friction Stir Welding and NASA
• arxiv: Mineralogy and Geology of asteroid (4) Vesta from Dawn Framing Camera
• arxiv: The mineral clouds on HD 209458b and HD189733b
• Science: The small satellites of Pluto as observed by New Horizons
• Science: The atmosphere of Pluto as observed by New Horizons
• Science: Surface compositions across Pluto and Charon
• Science: The geology of Pluto and Charon through the eyes of New Horizons
• Science: Pluto’s interaction with its space environment: Solar wind, energetic particles, and dust
• RAS: Daily variability of Ceres’ albedo detected by means of radial velocities changes of the reflected sunlight - (Sci-Hub)
• arxiv: Possible ground fog detection from SLI imagery of Titan

Events & Involvement

• Mar 14: ESA / ExoMars 2016 launching from Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Proton rocket @ 04:30 EDT
• Mar 15: House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science Subcommittee on NASA FY2017 budget @ 10:30 EDT
• Mar 15: NASA Advisory Council Astrophysics Subcommittee @ 08:00 EDT
• Mar 16: NASA Advisory Council Astrophysics Subcommittee @ 08:00 EDT
• Mar 17: House Science, Space Design & Technology, Space Subcommittee hearing on NASA FY2017 budget @ 10:00 EDT
• Mar 21: LPSC - News Horizons - Peering into Pluto @ 01:00 PM EDT
• Mar 21: LPSC - New Horizons - The Exploration of the Pluto System and the Kuiper Belt Beyond @ 2:30 PM EDT
• Mar 21: LPSC - NASA Headquarter Briefing on Planetary Sciences @ 6:30 PM EDT

Videos

• Griffith Observatory: Sky Report - March 2016
• Ian Regan: Neptune — Voyager 2 Approaches (ROUGH DRAFT)
• Planetary Radio Live: All these worlds… Planet 9 and our expanding solar system  
• NEAF: New Horizons - Mission to Pluto and What Planethood Really Means
• JHU-APL: The "Hopkins Beast" Mobile Automaton
• JHU-APL: "Ferdinand" the Mobile Automaton
• JHU-APL: Transit - The World's First Satellite Navigation System
• TMT Overview  
• NASA-Stenis: First SLS Flight Engine Test 
• Concorde Chases An Eclipse - 1973 
• DELIVERY FROM EARTH  
• Approaching Neptune

Data

• Cassini: 2016/03/06 - 2016/03/19

Spacecraft Updates

• Mar 8: LISA Pathfinder begins science operations phase
• Mar 8: OSIRIS-REx enters thermal vacuum testing phase
• Mar 9: InSight being repaired by JPL for launch in 2018
• Mar 20: Juno - 803,398,000 km from Sol, 59,635,000 km from Jupiter @ 25,501-km/h - 106 days until JOI
• Mar 20: New Horizons - 5,232,284,000 km from Sol, 312,928,000 km from Pluto, 1,266,620,000 km to KBO-JimGreene @ 51,966-km/h - 1016 days until flyby
• Mar 20: Voyager 1 - 20,101,040,000 km from Sol @ 61,230-km/h
• Mar 20: Voyager 2 - 16,557,785,000 km from Sol @ 55,416-km/h
• Mar 21: Cassini start of Revolution 234
• Mar 22: Cassini Rev234 - ISS / UVIS observation of Saturn's atmosphere
• Mar 23: Cassini Rev234 - ISS observation of Titan in half phase, in search of cloud and haze layer changes from approximately 1.99 million kilometers
• Mar 23: Cassini Rev234 - CIRS observation of Saturn's atmosphere 
• Mar 24: Cassini Rev234 - ISS observation tracking clouds on Saturn 
• Mar 25: Cassini Rev234 - ISS / UVIS observation of Saturn's atmosphere
• Mar 26: Cassini Rev234 - ISS observation tracking clouds on Saturn 

 

LAMO 46

LAMO image 46 has been released to the JPL Photojournal.

LAMO 46 features an unnamed crater north of Jaja and Dantu craters and near the Cerean north pole. A small patch of bright material is present on the lower rim portion of the crater at left. Several slumped regions exist near the bottom of the imaged region. Several other peculiar linear features are also present, just above the crater at left and some very faint parallel marks to upper right of the same crater. Overall, the imaged region appears to be quite heavily cratered and does not exhibit a strong color signature beyond the average terrain for this latitude.

The imaged region is centered at approximately 65.6 degrees northern latitude, 134.9 degrees east longitude.

LAMO 46 - PIA20401

Imaging Map (2016-03-15)

Synthetic Animation of Occator crater in Survey Orbit

Occator crater in Survey Orbit 

This is is a synthetic animation using photogrammetry between SO3 and SO11, captured during the Survey Orbit phase of the Dawn mission at Ceres. 

Featured in the morph is Occator crater, notable for its exceptional uniqueness on Ceres, for having material that is dramatically more reflective than the average albedo of Ceres. Fresh salts are likely the cause for the apparent brightness of these spots. No conclusion has been determined as to the type of salts or the origin of the salts at this time. 

More animations from Dawn

 

LAMO 45

LAMO image 45 has been released to the JPL Photojournal.

LAMO 45 features the eastern edge of an unnamed crater, situated at the degraded, far southwestern, rim of major crater Yalode. The rim barely visible, as a faint line that runs from the top left of center, to nearly the lower right corner. The crater in the top left of the imaged region, appears very fresh, with a quite smooth ejecta blanket that has been blown out, across the surrounding terrain. Numerous large boulders are also scattered around the region, also a result of the recent impact. The imaged region appears to reflect strongly in the green spectrum in the available enhanced color reflectance map. This is likely due to the low resolution of the map mixing the very old terrain of Yalode crater, which reflects strongly as yellow, with the fresh ejected material from the imaged crater, likely reflecting in blue. Blue reflectance typically indicates a recent impact and freshly exposed volatiles.

The imaged region is centered at approximately -45.3 degrees southern latitude, 276.6 degrees east longitude.

LAMO 45 - PIA20400

Imaging Map (2016-03-14)

LAMO 44

LAMO image 44 has been released to the JPL Photojournal.

LAMO 44 features the far northern extent of Yalode crater, the rim being present in the lower left portion of the imaged region. Long cracks are present along this rim. A very bright patch of material is also present right of center near the bottom of the imaged region. The origin of this bright material is unclear. However, it may be related to a crater sitting just left of this material. This region likely has a quite diverse soil composition, reflecting colors across the spectrum.

The imaged region is centered at approximately -24.7 degrees south latitude, 296.3 degrees east longitude.

LAMO 44 - PIA20398

Imaging Map (2016-03-10)

Saturday Morning Films - Mar 12

Saturday Morning Films features educational film reels of the past for you to wake up to, on your Saturday morning. Typically there is a combined running length of roughly one hour and usually focus on a single broad topic.

No theme today.

Technicolor for Industrial Films - 1949

Archive.org - Technicolor for Industrial Films: Film promoting use of Technicolor process to industrial film producers. - Technicolor Corporation

The Media center in action - 1972

Archive.org - The Media center in action: Shows how today's modern media center is working with schools, with a media specialist as coordinator to help teachers make the best use of media. - Coronet Instructional Films

Alaska: A Modern Frontier - 1948

Archive.org - Alaska: A Modern Frontier: Views of the Territory of Alaska. - Coronet Instructional Films 

Out of This World

Archive.org - Out of This World: A strange propaganda-like advertisement - Frigidaire / General Motors

The Big Bounce - 1960

Archive.org - The Big Bounce: The story of the Echo communications satellite project, and how scientists learned to bounce a radio signal off a big balloon. - Fairbanks Productions 

LAMO 43

LAMO image 43 has been released to the JPL Photojournal.

LAMO 43 features an unnamed region south of the degraded mountain, Liberalia Mons and northwest of prominent mountain, Ahuna Mons. The large impact crater in the center is approximately 15.6-kilometers across and appears to be the result of a quite recent impact, having a well established rim, smooth crater walls and a smooth ejecta blanket surrounding the crater. The crater also reflects strongly in the blue spectrum with a slight shift into green, suggesting a diversity in soil composition and the possible presence of volatile compounds.

The imaged region is centered at approximately 0.6 degrees north latitude, 311.3 degrees east longitude.

LAMO 43 - PIA20397

Imaging Map (2016-03-09)

LAMO 42

LAMO image 42 has been released to the JPL Photojournal.

LAMO 42 features an unnamed region situated northeast of Fejokoo crater and southwest of Oxo crater in the northern Hemisphere. The crater at the right of the region, appears to be mid-range in age, with smooth and well defined rim and walls, but also with a fair amount of impacts covering the floor of the crater and the lack of a noticeable smooth ejecta blanket surrounding it. The color map shows light coloration in this area, having been degraded over time due to solar radiation.

The imaged region is centered at approximately 36.5 degrees north latitude, 333.3 degrees east longitude.

LAMO 42 - PIA20296

Imaging Map (2016-03-08)

LAMO 41

LAMO image 41 has been released to the JPL Photojournal.

LAMO 41 features an unnamed region very near the Cerian North Pole. At the far upper right corner, the far western edge of Ghanan crater is present. Overall, the imaged region appears saturated with craters, suggesting the terrain is quite old. Several interesting large hills are present near the middle left region. These formations may be related to Ysolo Mons, which is slightly to the north of this region, roughly -45 degrees diagonally up from the left corner of the image.

The imaged region is centered at approximately 77.5 degrees north latitude, 2.1 degrees east longitude.

LAMO 41 - PIA20395

Imaging Map (2016-03-07)

Ahuna Mons in LAMO

Today, NASA and the Dawn team have released a first look at Ahuna Mons, the giant mountain of Ceres, as captured in the Low Altitude Mapping Orbit or LAMO. While slightly distorted for the mosaic, the images appear to be at the maximum, 35-meters per pixel resolution capability of the Dawn mission in this phase.

PIA20348

The terrain at the top of the mountain appears to be very rough, with a large number of scarp-like carvings throughout. In contrast, the slopes around the mountain appear exceptionally smooth, free of any craters. This may be an indication that most of the slopes are screes, and only gravitationally stable.

On one side, bright material is present and seems to stream down the slope. The origin of this material is not clear but may be related to the crater at the far right of the summit, just to the left of the bright material. The origin of this crater is also not clear. It may be impact related or possibly volcanic in origin - either could have resulted in the bright material on the connecting slope.

The nearby crater to the north of Ahuna Mons also remains slightly puzzling. In numerous other craters on Ceres, mass-wasting events have lead to the floor of the crater being obscured and the rim of the crater degraded and slumping inward. The crater north of Ahuna Mons seems to be atypical to this normality, having an obscured crater floor and interior slopes as exceptionally smooth as the surrounding slopes of Ahuna Mons. Such smooth slopes within a crater also typically correlate with a recent impact. However, much of the former smooth ejecta blanket surrounding this crater, is rather degraded with numerous impacts across the terrain, contradicting the possibility of a recent impact.

One possible explanation could be that the the area surrounding Ahuna Mons is very soft and loosely held together like gravel or lunar soil, unable to retain a deformed state. However, an unknown material with a much stronger composition would need to be present within Ahuna Mons for this to be possible.

PIA20349

The team also released a synthetic oblique view. This image was created by using multiple images from the Framing Camera to derive altimetry data products such as a topographic map and a digital elevation model (DEM). For the oblique view, it appears the latest HAMO DEM was loaded into 3D space and textured with the latest LAMO images of the region.

In this synthetic oblique view, we can see a slight depression in the left most portion of the summit. Centered within this depression appears to be a central peak of sorts. Whether this is an indication that a crater was once at the summit in this location, now heavily deformed, is unclear.

Below is an cropped, enhanced view, similar in processing to the contextual images I regularly post.

Blog Status: Moving Animations to Posts

I'll be doing some slight backend maintenance on this blog today. Originally I had placed many of the uploaded Dawn animations in what Blogger calls 'Pages' which aren't typically used as much as I have in this blog. You are restricted in several aspects, namely the URL, when using 'Pages' versus 'Posts'. So I will be moving each animation into a single 'Post' to better organize the vast material on already here and going forward for the vast material I've yet to post, and the material I've yet to create.

Weekly Read & Watch List - Week of Mar 6

Week of March 5, 2016

This feature is a curated list of articles, white papers, concepts, events, videos, and data releases. Some listed items may not be current but are nonetheless quite interesting.

Articles & Sites of Interest

• Space.com: Bigelow Aerospace - Inflatable Modules for ISS
• DSFP: The Last Days of the Nuclear Shuttle (1971)
• Spaceflight Insider: Solar Electric Propulsion - NASA’s engine to Mars and Beyond
• International Association of Astronomical Artists 
• Ames Laboratory will lead new consortium to research caloric materials, advance refrigeration technology
• European conductor for ITER Toroidal Field coils ready
• Big milestone at ORNL reactor - 1 Million Megawatts Days
• AstroBio: Searching for Extraterrestrials Who Might Have Found Us First
• AstroBio: Avoiding False Positives in the Search for Living Worlds
• AstroBio: Telling Twins Apart: Exo-Earths and Venuses With Transit Spectroscopy
• OSA: OSA Century of Optics
• How ExoMars-2016 will be launched
• The High Frontier: Once around the Moon - The Soviet circumlunar race
• CNRS: Great tilt gave Mars a new face
• ORNL: ORNL researchers stack the odds for novel optoelectronic 2D materials

Concepts & White Papers

• arxiv: Radar scattering of linear dunes and mega-yardangs: Application to Titan
• arxiv: The Age Distribution of Potential Intelligent Life in the Milky Way 
• arxiv: Could Jupiter or Saturn Have Ejected a Fifth Giant Planet?
• arxiv: Next Generation Very Large Array Memo No. 6, Science Working Group 1: The Cradle of Life
• arxiv: Probing exoplanet clouds with optical phase curves
• NTRS: Development and Utilization of Nuclear Thermal Propulsion
• NTRS: Mars Surface Tunnel Element Concept 
• arxiv: Transiting Exoplanet Studies and Community Targets for JWST's Early Release Science Program
• arxiv: Demonstrating High-precision, Multiband Transit Photometry with MuSCAT - A Case for HAT-P-14b 
• ESA / JUICE: Mission Scenario and Operations
• ESA / JUICE: Science Payload
• arxiv: Interaction Cross Sections and Survival Rates for Proposed Solar System Member Planet Nine 
• JGR: Sequence and relative timing of large lakes in Gale crater (Mars) after the formation of Mt. Sharp (Sci-Hub)
• arxiv: Identifying Planetary Biosignature Impostors - Spectral Features of CO and O4 Resulting from Abiotic O2/O3 Production 
• arxiv:  Telling twins apart: Exo-Earths and Venuses with transit spectroscopy
• arxiv: A Transiting Jupiter Analog  
• Nature: Late Tharsis formation and implications for early Mars (Sci-Hub)
• arxiv: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in Earth's Solar Transit Zone 
• NTRS: Launch and Commissioning of the Deep Space Climate Observatory 

Events & Involvement

• Mar 8: Exploring the Outer Solar System - Now in Vivid Colour

Videos

• Eternal 5D optical data storage: high density data storage for all-time
• ESO: Hubblecast 90 - The final frontier
• NASA Goddard: (AUDIO ONLY) Affording and Sustaining Human Mars Exploration - Recommendations from the Third Community Workshop
• LASP: Pluto - The pugnacious planet!
• US-Gov Hearing: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Ocean Worlds Budget
• NASA Johnson: A One-Year Mission Retrospective
• NASA Johnson: The Science of the One-Year Mission
• NASA SSERVI / ESA: ESA Looks to Build Permanent Moon Base
• FORMS IN NATURE - Understanding Our Universe
• ESA: ExoMars prepares for launch
• ColumbiaU: Discovery of Kepler-167e - A Jupiter Twin
• Mar 6, 1869: Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society
  
• Mar 6, 1981: Walter Cronkite's final presentation as hosting journalist to CBS Evening News
• Mar 6-19, 1986: Four spacecraft (Vega 1, Suisei, Vega 2, Sakigake) perform flybys of Halley's Comet in the Halley Armada
• Mar 6, 1992: The Michelangelo computer virus begins to affect computers
• Mar 7, 2009: Launch of Kepler space observatory, to search for transiting exoplanets
• Mar 8, 1618: Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion
• Mar 8, 2001: Launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-102 - Post-flight Presentation
• Mar 12, 1894: Coca-Cola is bottled and sold for the first time in Vicksburg, Mississippi, by local soda fountain operator Joseph Biedenharn
• Mar 12, 1933: Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers the first of his series of 'Fireside Chats'.
• Mar 12, 1993: The 'Storm of the Century' begins, dropping large amounts of snow across the eastern portion of the US with tornadoes, thunder snow storms, high winds and record low temperatures - the storm would go on to last 30 hours

Spacecraft Updates

• Feb 29: JAXA / Hitomi (ASTRO-H) - completion of critical operations phase, instrument tests to follow
• Mar 5: Juno - 801,082,000 km from Sol, 66,662,000 km from Jupiter @ 25,872-km/h - 120 days until JOI
• Mar 5: New Horizons - 5,214,507,000 km from Sol, 294,987,000 km from Pluto, 1,272,700,000 km to KBO-JimGreene @ 51,990-km/h - 1030 days until flyby
• Mar 5: Voyager 1 - 20,079,965,000 km from Sol @ 61,233-km/h
• Mar 5: Voyager 2 - 16,539,098,000 km from Sol @ 55,418-km/h
• Mar 6: Cassini - ISS movie sequence of the narrow F ring
• Mar 8: Cassini - ISS observation during distant flyby of Titan at 425,863-kilometers
• Mar 8-10: Cassini - ISS movie sequence of the A ring Encke Gap
• Mar 9: Cassini - ISS / CIRS observation of Mimas at 201,880-kilometers
• Mar 10: Cassini - ISS observation of F ring in high resolution
• Mar 10-11: Cassini - ISS movie sequence of the D ring
• Mar 11: Cassini - UVIS observation of Enceledus and plumes at 979,130-kilometers
• Mar 12-19: ISS / CIRS / UVIS observations of the Saturn atmosphere

Blog Entries

• Weekly Read & Watch List - Week of Feb 28 
• Juling and Fluusa craters, an Oblique Mosaic  
• LAMO 36 
• LAMO 37 
• LAMO 38 
• LAMO 39 
• LAMO 40 
• Saturday Morning Films - Mar 5