Extracting Mars ground temperatures from Mars data.

[Roel Knol]

Hi there,

 

I am working on my Astronomy Bachelor thesis and for that I need to analyse the Mars ground temperatures during at least one Mars year. My problems is that I can't seem to find the relevant data to process while I am sure it must be available in the available data sets. And I can assure: this was not due to lack of searching; can anyone help me please? I think I am looking for the wrong thing. How did others manage to extract (ground) temperatures? Any ideas are welcome. Big thanks in advance,

 

Regards,

 

Roel Knol,

Holland.

[Susie Slavney]

[From an expert TES user we consulted:] One approach to generating the temperature maps you want is to use a software tool called "vanilla" (http://themis.asu.edu/software) which was developed by the TES team to access their data.  If you download vanilla and the binary data files from the TES database onto your local machine (except spectral data "rad*.var" files which is large and you probably do not need) vanilla works quite fast to retrieve data into an ascii format.  As I recall you will also need *.tab and *.fmt files for each data file for vanilla to work.  There may be a way to point it to a web site, but I have never tried it.

 

For example, if you retrieve latitude, longitude, Ls, and bolometric temperature into an ascii table, you can then sort that ascii data file into the appropriate map bins using your favorite software language.   Use the *.fmt files to identify the fields you want to retrieve and the vanilla documentation for how to use it.   You may want to down select the data based on quality flags,  smear effects (depending on the intended map resolution), time of day, etc. Again, check the *.fmt files for relevant data fields.  

 

There is a mapping tool call "dmap" you can try, but as I recall this tool is not good for global maps as it will bog down and run very slowly.  

 

Also, there are other temperature fields you might consider aside from bolometric, which will depend on your application.  There are also a few "virtual fields" computed on the fly from the spectral data by vanilla.

 

Hope this  information helps to get you moving.