Edge-detection applied to moving sand dunes on Mars
This work addresses the problem of tracking geological changes on Mars for planetary scientists, but it is incremental as it uses an existing method on new data.
The researchers applied the Sobel edge detection filter to compare images from 1999 and 2007 of moving sand dunes on Mars, enabling measurement of dune motion over a longer period than previously studied.
Here we discuss the application of an edge detection filter, the Sobel filter of GIMP, to the recently discovered motion of some sand dunes on Mars. The filter allows a good comparison of an image HiRISE of 2007 and an image of 1999 recorded by the Mars Global Surveyor of the dunes in the Nili Patera caldera, measuring therefore the motion of the dunes on a longer period of time than that previously investigated.