Editing Viking program (section)

===Camera/imaging system===
[[File:Viking mission - Viking Lander Camera.png|thumb|Viking Lander Camera]]
The leader of the imaging team was [[Thomas A. Mutch]], a geologist at [[Brown University]] in [[Providence, Rhode Island]]. The camera uses a movable mirror to illuminate 12 [[photodiode]]s. Each of the 12 silicon diodes are designed to be sensitive to different frequencies of light.

Several broad band diodes (designated BB1, BB2, BB3, and BB4) are placed to focus accurately at distances between six and 43 feet away from the lander.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |title=PDS: Instrument Information |url=https://pds.nasa.gov/ds-view/pds/viewInstrumentProfile.jsp?INSTRUMENT_ID=CAM1&INSTRUMENT_HOST_ID=VL1 |access-date=2023-03-28 |website=pds.nasa.gov}}</ref> A low resolution broad band diode was named SURVEY.<ref name=":1" />  There are also three narrow band low resolution diodes (named BLUE, GREEN and RED) for obtaining [[RGB color model|color images]], and another three (IR1, IR2, and IR3)  for [[infrared]] imagery.<ref name=":1" />

The cameras scanned at a rate of five vertical scan lines per second, each composed of 512 pixels. The 300 degree panorama images were composed of 9150 lines. The cameras' scan was slow enough that in a crew shot taken during development of the imaging system several members show up several times in the shot as they moved themselves as the camera scanned.<ref>{{cite book|chapter-url=https://history.nasa.gov/SP-425/ch8.htm|title=The Martian Landscape|author=The Viking Lander Imaging Team|publisher=NASA|date=1978|chapter=Chapter 8: Cameras Without Pictures|page=22}}</ref><ref name="nytimes-19760721">{{Cite news |last=McElheny |first=Victor K. |date=July 21, 1976 |title=Viking Cameras Light in Weight, Use Little Power, Work Slowly |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1976/07/21/archives/viking-cameras-light-in-weight-use-little-power-work-slowly.html |url-status=live |access-date=September 28, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210222145516/https://www.nytimes.com/1976/07/21/archives/viking-cameras-light-in-weight-use-little-power-work-slowly.html |archive-date=February 22, 2021 |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] }}</ref>