Coregistration of Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) topography with high-resolution Mars images

Spacecraft continue to send back extraordinary amounts of data from Mars leaving scientists with the considerable task of analyzing an ever-increasing wealth of information. There are abundant uses for coregistered topography and images, but coregistering various datasets can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. We have developed a set of C-shell Unix scripts and Interactive Data Language (IDL) programs that overlay individual Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter topography footprints on high-resolution Mars images including those from the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC), the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), and the Context Camera (CTX). After all programs are installed, initial file customizations are made, and raw data are obtained, a user enters only three commands to overlay color-coded, scaled, and labeled topographic data on a high-resolution image. The codes have a variety of options including incremental labeling, zooming in on the topography, and shifting large-scale features to align with topography. They can be used as a group or individually. Our codes minimize human interaction in the coregistration process and produce usable, effective products.