The Ames MER microscopic imager toolkit

Opportunity, have spent several successful months on Mars, returning gigabytes of images and spectral data to scientists on Earth. One of the instruments on the MER rovers, the Athena Microscopic Imager (MI), is a fixed focus, megapixel camera providing a k3mm depth of field and a 3lx31mm field of view at a working distance of 63 mm from the lens to the object being imaged. In order to maximize the science return from this instrument, we developed the Ames MI Toollut and supported its use during the primary mission. The MI Toolkit is a set of programs that operate on collections of MI images, with the goal of makmg the data more understandable to the scieiliistb vn the ground. Because of the limited depth of field of the camera, and the often highly variable topography of the terrain being imaged, MI images of