I thought it was time to start a new thread on Stardust's flyby of Tempel 1, the first time a comet receives a second visit from a spacecraft one perihelion later.
There was an interesting story about this on Spaceflight now recently http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1012/23stardustnext/
note that the flyby will be around 23.30 eastern time on 14 February, so thinking in GMT it will not happen on Valentine's day.
Stardust should have started imaging Tempel 1 twice weekly in mid-December, but there is nothing yet on the mission site http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html
see also http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/mission_status10_q4.html for updates on the mission status
Hmmm. Now, is that an office desk in its naked, uncluttered state, or one that's covered in post-Christmas stuff? 'Cos if they're going to base their measurements on mine then that's going to seriously mess up any calculations, you know..?
It's not that small really - http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/sc.html - if my desk was that big, I wouldn't fit in my cube anymore
I'm changing the thread title to be more appropriate.
Right, it's more the size of an outhouse. That doesn't seem an appropriate unit of size either though...
I'm really glad they are able to start doing more intricate extended missions like this and Deep Impact. 2011 appears to possibly be the most productuctive year for astronomy in some time. Should be quite exciting.
I think that the Web outreach for this encounter is going to be less than the mission would like it to be because of unavoidable timing problems. It's a small team and everybody who's involved in Stardust was also involved in Deep Impact/Hartley 2 -- same science team, same outreach folks. They were spread too thin to do much advance work on Stardust -- and then there were the holidays. I know they are scrambling now to get their website prepared for the flyby but I don't think we can expect a whole lot of advance information.
I hope this thing is bigger than my office desk or we aren't going to get much science back.
The spacecraft bus is basically 6ft x 2ft x 2ft - and the high gain antena is just short of 2ft across. This is a small, light (<400kg all up), cheap spacecraft.... but it's still not a desk
Surely some imagemage will shortly produce a faux movie poster for "Attack Of The Spacedesks"...but not post it on this thread!
In the hopes of dragging this thread back to some actual discussion of the Stardust mission, I thought I'd post this somewhat worrying http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/mission_status10_q4.html:
Ugh.
On the plus side this sounds like a well-understood fault state (esp. because it appears that there is some heritage with this system), and they are taking preventative actions well before the flyby.
Just gotta keep her together for another 3 months or so...go Stardust-NExT!
Quick question: is the rotation of Temple 1 understood well enough that the mission planner's can ensure that the DI impact site will be on the comet's sunlit side when Stardust-NExT flies by?
Actually - I would urge caution on the crater observation. It's a goal, but it's not a certainty. The mag-curve of the nucleus is double bumped, and using the shape model you can match it very well in both bumps - so basically, we may get the crater, or we may not.
If we get it - awesome. If we don't - we get to map the other side of the Nucleus which is also awesome.
"It's a small team and everybody who's involved in Stardust was also involved in Deep Impact/Hartley 2 -- same science team, same outreach folks."
That's where UMSF comes in...
Phil
That's where UMSF comes in...
Hey, anything we can do to help They know we're watching, ready and willing to lend a hand.
Just thought about the fact that it was 7 years ago today that Stardust encountered comet Wild2 and now here we are, 42 days from the encounter with Tempel1. I remember it as a hectic time at the Canberra DSN, we were prime for the comet encounter and 24 hours later, prime for MER Spirit's landing.
a new status update. stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/mission_status11_q1.html
it turns out the comet is still too faint to be visible in OpNav images
No updates for awhile, but this RSS feed may point to updates in that status page:
http://feedity.com/rss.aspx/nasa-gov/UVRWW1ZV
a new status update http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/mission_status11_q1.html
comet still not in sight
Thanks for keeping an eye on that site, Paolo!
Stardust has located Tempel 1.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-029&cid=release_2011-029
Heres a slightly cleaned up version:
That's just the coma - not the nucleus itself. Stardust's Navcam is 3.5 deg FOV, so we wont resolve the nucleus until very near close approach.
Hey Doug - good to see factual contributions on many threads all in a bit of a rush. Did they give you a day off?
Seriously, glad you're still on the case.
Probably my busiest day on lab yet I find myself tweeting, facebooking and foruming the most, when I'm busiest - it's counterintuitive, but that's how it goes
http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/mission_status11_q1.html
Updated with TCM information.
They said they were running low even before the maneuver, and another 300 grams spent, any estimates on how much is left?
The estimates of how much they had / needed included TCM's such as this.
I realize that. I should've made that more clear in my post but I was just curious about how much will be left after the flyby; purely academic of course.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-044b&rn=news.xml&rst=2905 - details of media stuff for everyone's favorite Valentine's Day activity (or post-, depending on your time zone). Interestingly, there's no mention of spotting the Deep Impact crater; I'd guess it's considered unlikely enough that they don't want to get everyone's hopes up. Probably of most interest is that the first 5 images are expected to show up between midnight and 1:30 A.M. Pacific Time.
The comet's rotation isn't known well enough to know if said crater will be visible to the spacecraft during flyby.
They have made a simulated light curve based on DI data, and have an actual light curve based on Hubble imagery. From that - there is a correlation, but also there's another correlation at 180 deg from that, just not quite as strong.
Thus - they targetted to get the nucleus on approach ( http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/May07/stardust-NExT.jpg ) but it's not certain that they'll see it. It's not quite 50/50 - probably slightly better odds than that.
Of course, the comet may have changed so much over the past 5 years that we can't even tell if we're looking at the same side or not
A Stardust NExT 'Live' module will be on Eyes on the Solar System before Monday night ( http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eyes ) including a nucleus shape file with a map showing the expected crater, and the un-seen terrain. Yours truly will be demoing it during the first of the NASA TV broadcasts from JPL on the night of the flyby
Something to think about - this is a panel from my LPSC poster. Maps of Tempel 1 and Wild 2.
Phil
Stardust NExT 'Live' module is up and running on Eyes on the Solar System.
Great maps, Phil... for sure you will soon update left one!
closer.......
Don't forget to login to the Eyes on the Solar System for Stardust-NExT LIVE!
It's a great browser based simulation using realtime, real data for the encounter.
Watch Stardust as it glides past Tempel-1. COOL!
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eyes/
Psst! I think someone very close to the Forum had something to do with it. Shhhh.
I've heard that someone might be demoing it live, twice, on the first NASA TV broadcast tomorrow evening, and that there might be a frickin great big camera on top of his console staring him in the face.
(and if I do say so myself, the C/A looks really awesome in EotSS - took some work by a very very clever programmer called Jon to get the camera to flip from periscope to off periscope. He's actually programmed the spacecraft to do faux-auto-nav based on the provided trajecgories for Stardust and Tempel 1. Plus - our 3D guy, haivng produced a BEAUTIFUL Stardust spacecraft, went and created a brailliant Tempel 1 complete with stuff seen by Deep Impact ( grey ) stuff not seen ( blue ) and the hoped-for crater ( red target )
If I do say so myself, it's fairly cool.
Oh and don't - whatever you do - look at the tutorials page.
Don't have any chocolate the night before. Never fails the day you are going to be on television ...
What time does the NASA tv coverage start ?
Of course "what time?" depends on where you live on our worldwide forum.
The schedule is always available on the NASA http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Breaking.html...or just a Google query away.
I know, just being lazy, also I don't actually frequent the nasa site much, and would have had to guess where the tv schedule was......
Bottom line is it's on too late for me....I need to be zzzzzzzzz at 11:30 EST. Oh well.
I don't know if these updates all came in at once, or if changes in the page format fooled feedity:
http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/mission_status11_q1.html
Some excerpts.
So there was just a large solar flare. Did that send high-energy particles towards Stardust, and if it did, when do they get there?
I have EoSS on and Norton telemetry says it's safe!
You'll want to re-start EotSS later ( about 8.30pm Pacific - just when the broadcast starts ) - as we'll have adjusted for the updated C/A time.
And that flare was on the Earth side of the sun ...and using EotSS (sorry to plug it so much ) you can see Stardust is on the other side of the Solar System.
I used EotSS this weekend to wash my car and it did a marvelous job. It also repaired my grandfather's broken watch. I only wish I had discovered this incredible tool sooner. It really has changed my life.
my only gripe it
the site is MS only
i could boot up an illegal copy of MS win7
For i have NO intention to buy it
When I try to go to the site, all I get is hash (bars of colors). ???
That sometimes happens before your GFX card has finished initializing - give it time. If it doesn't clear after a few seconds, then...er.....it's still a beta.
NTV will be cutting to Eyes... live during the flyby
EoTSS running sweet here on Win7...nice view!
Steady as she goes, Mr. Ellison!
While we are waiting for our Glorious Leader to take the stage, may I take this opportunity to remark how unbearably boring NASA TV is 99% of the time - especially immediately preceding live events.
EDIT - it's on now 8:20 pm PST
Watching.
Broadcast started now on NASAtv.
Its not PBS or the BBC, but it also receives a really small budget in comparison, and still is able to put on informative shows, albeit with a certain cheese factor.
Dust Flux instrument is on!
EotSS demo coming up soon!
There's Doug!
Well done, Doug!
Closest approach done! (my heart jumped when that guy said 'impact').
This is really a fantastic tool. Curious, is the positioning of the comet accurate? The last I was aware, the comet movement wasn't known well enough to predict it at that time.
The orbit of the comet is actually very well understood. The big unknown is its rotation, though they have a pretty good idea based on light curves.
More dust after CA than before; interesting.
Not at all surprising, imho. Outbound, the spacecraft is heading into the "tail" IIRC.
Edit: 181 km was closest approach.
Doug was pretty awesome.
This was his view http://twitpic.com/3zywnw
Nicely done Doug!
Fun to watch simulation on 'Eyes on the Solar System'.
Comet encounters so exciting... dust impacts galore.... can't wait for images.
Have to nap for a few hours.... get up at 3:00am Eastern to see the fave five images and then out the door for work at 5:30am...
NASA TV boring!? At least we have coverage! I applaud them.
Craig
3 Ice Tea bottles of fuel, haha! I was wondering how much they'd have left.
Another layman's unit of measure!
EDIT: Prop on someone's desk too!
Yeah, demo II was terrific. Now, I know how to drive this thing. I might even have to watch some of those demos on the home page.
Canberra DSN did a great job today. Two antennas on point for the encounter and a very tired but happy team
Here's a pic of DSS43 in action from just a few minutes ago. http://twitpic.com/400llt
Stardust seems very low on the horizon, indeed!
Yep, we've been tracking all day, so a full horizon to horizon arc.
We'll be handing over to the Madrid DSN shortly.
Astro0, we don't say it enough: many many thanks to everyone at the DSN for making sure of the safe arrival of our precious data on Earth!
In relation to my question, I wasn't curious if the comet would be centered or if we knew the orbit, I was curious how well the orientation of the comet would appear in actuality versus what was seen in the simulation (was it set up to look the same/similar as what will be seen in the images).
Mr. Ellison, that was a great presentation!
We have a predicted trajectory for both spacecraft and comet - and then just like the spacecraft itself, Jon (lead dev for EotSS) programmed autonav - the spacecraft rotated and the mirror tracked to keep the comet in the middle of the field of view.
And as for geometry/lighting etc - we did our best to match this : http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GgFZHEkOXh4/TVk-cZ4hVBI/AAAAAAAAAZA/nBC2TBoK1F8/s400/planned_1.jpg : and I think we did quite well. There's an adjustment we've made here to the timing (15 seconds early) - so the 5 images will be more like -21sec to +51sec rather than centered on C/A
And thanks for the kudos guys - a lot of fun tonight, and it seems like the technology for EotSS, and our faithful old spacecraft...has held up.
We're in for a slightly longer wait for the images, but hopefully it'll be worth it.
Whats going on? lots of people around monitors.....my sound has gone off on the NASA feed
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/stardust/ Tiny ones, so far. ~2,500km away.
First taken, rather then 'planned five'.
Unknown why this happened.
Apparently, they intended to download the closest approach images first, but for some unknown reason, the images are coming in in the order they were taken.
edit: Will have press conference tomorrow to show closest approach images.
edit2: Tomorrow being... in the morning
They're saying ~6hr wait to get the closest approach images. Looks like it's time for bed. (And great consolation for all the folks who couldn't stay up!)
2 up at : http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/stardust/
Flicking between them shows some vagueness...
Still to early to say for sure.
EDIT: several more: oh this is excruciating! Looks like some vague circle. Dare I say it's the crater? Going to be no matter what now. Press conference delayed so at least I'll get some sleep.
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/516881main_n30008te01.jpg
EDIT: Revised animation sequence - first 6 images @200% (no sharpening)
6th image is down. Also blurry.
Tick... tock...
Hmmm tantalising, but still too early to say whether the same hemisphere's in view..
In image "n30007te01" 2 circular formations (craters) can be seen.
I don't know, the sharpened images Astro0 posted really suggest to me we're seeing that crater and crescent feature near the impact site, it's just that the comet is rotated slightly. If only my Photoshop at work didn't crap out on me...
If that is the case, it's also pretty obvious any resulting crater isn't huge.
hmmm website stopped updating with images.
They are proberbly asleep, or keeping them back for the news conference. It's 4:16 am at JPL.
Also the spacecraft isn't sending the pictures down in the order expected.
The broad end of the nucleus seems to be facing Stardust in the photos. I think that this means that the plan to take a detailed photo the Deep Impact crater just before closest approach has succeeded.
On the TV coverage I saw someone pick up the comet model and point to the fat end of the nucleus. The bearded project scientist responsible for determining the rotation of the comet then vigourously nodded his head in agreement. This is encouraging.
I tried to make crossed-eye stereogram with second and last pictures (after rotation/rescaling/sharpening processings):
http://www.cosmicdiary.org/blogs/nasa/franck_marchis/?p=1004
Do we know if the rotational phase seen by Stardust matched any seen by Deep Impact's HRI instrument during approach? Since the latter is a much higher res instrument, it actually picked up a good bit of rotation on the way in, as can be seen http://www.flickr.com/photos/ugordan/4244845380/.
For fun I tried matching one of the earlier HRI frames to the first good Stardust image. Looks like a slightly earlier snapshot than I picked would make a better fit, bit it was at too low a resolution. HRI image magnified some 200 % and rotated to "fit". Some vaguely similar albedo patterns there.
My impression based on your animation is that the HRI image should be rotated 90 degrees clockwise to match the new view.
Phil
I rotated it slightly over 70 degrees clockwise. Close but no cigar?
No, I mean the comparison as you presented it just above, still needs a 90 clockwise rotation. The bright spot on the right of your HRI image is the bottom point of the Stardust image. If you watch your animation zoomed in, you can see how the motion carries that bright spot down to the bottom of the nucleus, while the area that will become the one you're trying to match rotates into view.
Phil
Multiple new images, much closer to the comet.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/stardust2/n30029te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/stardust2/n30031te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/stardust2/n30032te01.jpg
They're beautiful - utterly beautiful - I wasn't expecting the camera to perform quite so well.
crater identification in 3, 2, 1....
Just catching up with this 'cos I've been at work all day until now, but wow, what an achievement. And well done Doug for all your hard work on this, too.
Amazing times we live in. Amazing times...
Wow! I had honestly been expecting images much less clear than these. Looks like this mission will pay off nicely.
I'm impressed at the image quality too.
A couple closer images.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/stardust2/n30033te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/stardust2/n30034te01.jpg
You're right, I got my orientation of the surface features wrong. It should be somewhere to the left of the circular crater.
A bit of processing... some new territory - now if we can just look round the corner!
Phil
I'm also very pleasantly surprised by the images. Some of the early ones had what appears to be motion blur (dust impacts?) and varying exposure, but this is awesome quality! Kudos to the whole team.
I think the identification of the DI crater from Hungry4Info was correct
It's the small white spot below the large crater, right?
My identification was incorrect. The crater will be somewhere inbetween the two neatly defined circular ones.
According to the NASA site (as of right now), that last pic was taken from a distance of 946.05 trillion kilometers. That's quite a zoom lens they've got there.
(what's a factor of 10^12 between friends?)
Phil
Rotated the Deep Impact image to be close to the Stardust orientation. I think...
WOW!! These images are far, far better than I was expecting.
Based on the DI 'first flash' image I think the crater might be approximately where the red arrow points but I'm not sure - and I can't identify anything that is obviously a new crater [EDIT: Probably a bit more to the right]:
Stardust on the left, Deep Impact on the right, with the "official" impact site arrowed. I sure don't see the new crater...
I think I can see KrisK's and Bjorn's impact candidates in the pre-impact Deep Impact image.
I've done a 'blink comparator' overlay job and I can't see anything that looks like a new feature. Some things seem to have disappeared, but nothing formed. Is it all either eroded away or buried under ejecta?
Phil
With a porous surface, and a dense impactor, I wouldn't be surprised if the comet more or less swalled the impactor without much of a crater.
So the original impact plume from Deep Impact was too big and bright to see surface detail and yet the crater left behind is perhaps too small to even resolve? That's an interesting result!
The instant science is just a-poppin' here! One thing's for sure, we're all guaranteed tenure.
Phil
Phil mentions he's seen things have dissapeared. The crater may have eroded away over the past few years.
Regardless of how visible the DI crater is, I'm very impressed with how well the predicted flyby geometry matches the images. It looks like they timed the flyby flawlessly. Despite the pre-flyby handwringing that they might have targeted the incorrect peak in the rotation light curve, it looks like they chose correctly!
Fascinating images- much better than expected. Here's a processed version of the closest shot available at the moment.
I'm wondering about the phase angle too. I was ready to declare an identification of the crater based on Phil's enhancement of this earlier image (see dark circularish ring inside my white circle):
More pics.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/stardust2/n30035te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/stardust2/n30036te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/stardust2/n30037te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/stardust2/n30039te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/stardust2/n30040te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/stardust2/n30041te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/stardust2/n30042te01.jpg
Great images! I expected the crater to be much bigger! Now we can't even find it..
Absolutely amazing pictures - I was expecting less quality than the DI pics, but these are comparable if not better.
I'm amazed that the crater isn't very obvious considering the material plume the impactor kicked out. That's 370kg's of copper travelling at around 10km/second.
Apparently a crater in the order of 100m in diameter was envisaged. The surface obviously absorbs an impactor much more than expected.
Simply amazing work on the part of the team to achieve this sort of targeting and imaging.
What pathetic humans we are, we can't even make a lasting impact on a measly comet...
Looking at Emily's http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002917/, it looks like I got the geometry in post http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=6868&view=findpost&p=170660 about right after all.
The "EPOXI mission" scientists seem to be just as confused as the rest of us:
"Using the composite image from Deep Impact and cropping, rotating, brightening 30036 from SD-N...Where's the crater??."
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=151095161611151&id=1573578549#!/photo.php?fbid=499567526726&set=a.494441911726.269083.290094756726&theater
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=499567526726&set=a.494441911726.269083.290094756726&theater#!/EPOXI
To see the link you need first to log on using FACEBOOK. I have proven that any account will do.
kudos to the science team! not only for the successful flyby, but also for getting the phase right!
and the "mystery of the missing crater" is amazing instant science. we are privileged to have seen this live!
the "closest approach" image (n30037te01), processed using the same steps as mentioned previously.
Supercomet!
'shudda made the probe out of Kryptonite
This is my (very tentative) guess:
Three views of the nucleus, oriented with south roughly at the bottom.
Phil
The joy of science - valuable results whether you see what you expected or not.
It's the lack of even an obvious albedo feature that surprises me the most. The impact threw up so much material, I'd have guessed it would leave more of a trace, even if it didn't make a significant crater.
The only thing that comes to mind is that if the material in the top tens of meters is well-mixed, there'd be no reason for significant albedo features due to the impact, since everything you dig up looks like the material already on the surface. If the surface is fairly soft, then it could've just been unable to retain a crater. (As was already mentioned, a footprint in sand might disappear overnight.)
Jeff
We probably would not be able to recognize a new crater antipodal to the entry wound . . .
Amazing stuff, it's funny how the camera got better results now than with Wild 2, when it was a bit newer.
No obvious crater should narrow down the contest significantly... I remember a theory pre-impact that the projectile would punch a whole clean through the comet! (EDIT: Tasp beat me to that!)
Fascinating views of the far side as well... a long, thin dark feature on both sides.
Byron:
We have same idea!
Quick and dirty attempt to find DI crater. Looks like big boulder from impactor images is gone.
We've all been so busy hunting for the crater, I haven't seen anyone looking to see whether that flat tongue of material has expanded or retracted since DI saw it!
Briefing at 12:45 now, apparently.
I wonder if these results will change informed opinion on the effectiveness of attempting to use a nuclear device to divert an earth-bound comet.
The DI impactor imparted energy equivalent to around 5 tonnes of TNT, but we can't even see the resultant damage, from close range and with a pretty decent camera.
So remember how there were supposed to be 5 images near closest approach that were queued first for transmission to Earth? Well....about that....it seems they somehow wound up being the LAST transmitted. That's the reason for the most recent delay to the press briefing. Ooops!
Unrelated topic: has anybody here worked with Halley Multicolor Camera images?
Starting now!
150 meter crater, with mound!
Before and after comparison from the NASA website: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stardust/multimedia/Schultz4.html
It seems to have demolished a small peak.
That's what I figured it was too, Rick. Far more subtle then the natural craters.
I just saw the image of the crater they showed at the press conference. By George, I think I got it. - Rick
Another crosseye view, now only crater area and from different images.
What's interesting to me is that the crater left by the impactor didn't seem to drastically disturb the crater just "below" it. If you didn't know it was left five years ago, you might be forgiven for thinking it were older than the natural craters. That, to me, suggests a lot of the energy of the impact was dissipated into the comet instead of out to the sides as you would expect for a surface with a higher density, less porous composition, etc. It's almost like the impactor sunk in. I wonder how much of it is left down under there.
I'm still somewhat sceptical about the official crater ID, even if it agrees with my own original ID! Looking at this flicker gif, it seems to me that the "central peak" may be a pre-existing feature:
Thanks to all wizards at Stardust Team, JPL and UMSF for a thrilling scientific adventure...(and great thread!)
Penultimate status update:
Here's my hastily assembled movie of the encounter (containing 61 frames):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFkeDmMVwWA
dang, looked like we were going to hit the thing!
thanks Ian, that helps put the time frame of the encounter in perspective
You're welcome! Only problem is, the movie is playing in reverse! I've updated the link in my previous post for the slightly slower, 'forward' version.
I think, that almost all subtle differences are caused by different viewing geometry. This is reason, why I mark only two prominent change (new crater and regress of smooth material, which looks as real change).
Thanks a lot for that, Machi - that's exactly what I had in mind. I'm curious what software you used to distort the DI image?
http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/ + http://biocomp.cnb.uam.es/~iarganda/bUnwarpJ/ plugin.
Aha! I've been looking for a new rubber-sheeting program for ages. I'm using a geocorrection routine in a GIS. This looks promising as an alternative. Thanks!
Phil
Yes - good observation! They look good when enhanced - like Enceladus!
Phil
My attempt at stacking images to make the crater (and mound) more visible:
More on the jets... here I have made the image into a cylindrical projection. The limb would be a horizontal line if the nucleus was spherical. The jets show up nicely. The three long arrows are the three Emily first noted. Two short arrows identify two more. There are signs of small jets between the first three, and a diffuse zone of emission to the right of the other jets. A feature at the left end might be dark-side topography illuminated by light reflected off a nearby sunlit ridge.
Phil
Interesting method Phil. The results of the projection are very nice. What plugin / software did you use to produce that?
My image was made by using filter - distort - polar coordinates (polar to rectangular) in Photoshop, after moving the (approximate) center of the disk to the middle of the image. The black parabolas are places where I added space round the original image (image - canvas size) to create space to allow me to center the image.
Phil
Wha??? I don't see the latest images in the Comets and Small Bodies gallery of the Planetary Photojournal
Did pull them up using search option for Stardust spacecraft:
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/Stardust
The link I most commonly use at Photojournal is: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/new (which you can also get to by clicking on "latest images" at the bottom of the homepage)
My version of enhanced jets, starting from TIFF image and using solarization+gamma+sharpening...
I see eight jets and another one in Phil's reprojected image (9!). I look forward to raw images .
Finally I finished morphed animation from twelve images - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy90BWvqzjY.
There isn't any color data; what you're seeing are phase angle effects coupled with the autostretch on the images. I think that machi just colored the whole thing a sort of brown shade that matches the overall color from Deep Impact's color imaging.
(Awesome animation!)
Fantastic as always machi!
Beautiful!
Thanks!
Animated sequence from just before C/A to about 2500 km out. Individual images have been rotated and registered to minimize rotation:
Absolute. Freaking. Wizardry.
That's really, really impressive, Daniel.
Yes, amazing!
Vossinakis,
Could you do an animation of the flyby that way? That would be neat, and give us sort of an idea where the jets are originating.
The jets are only visible on a couple of images - not all of them. The exposures were set longer on a few certain images to try and catch them.
The full animation sequence is now up on Planetary Photojournal: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA13867
I've finished the two animated sequence I was going after, they are on my flickr page if anyone is interested:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/5459663885/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/5460272332/
I looked at best image of the comet Tempel 1 with jets and I tried some basic comparison with old Deep Impact's images.
Notable change is missing massive jet, which is visible on the left in Deep Impact images.
Another thing is, that Stardust's images are in fact better in terms of resolution of jets, because in better (with higher resolution) images from Deep Impact
jets were drowned out by Impactor's explosion.
http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/mission_status11_q1.html
Stardust: I'm not dead yet.
I asked the Project Manager, Tim Larson, precisely that question back before the Tempel 1 flyby and he indicated that indeed, a burn to depletion is planned in the decommissioning. Such a maneuver provides a valuable opportunity to test the precision of several methods of modeling the remaining fuel onboard and that validation can benefit other JPL and NASA missions.
Time to say goodbye.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-094
Tomorrow night, PDT.
Someone needs to update the blurb at the end.
The boilerplate press blurb is on overtime as well I think
In orbital dynamics there's no such thing as a 'long slow spiral into the sun'. You make a change in velocity with the rocket burn, that defines a new orbit, and you stay in that orbit forever unless something else disturbs you (like a planetary flyby). The main concern here was that the orbit would not impact Mars or Earth. The small and unpredictable thrust most likely made only a small difference to the orbit anyway.
Phil
Thanks for straightening me out, Phil. I probably should have known this; I've read enough that I should understand by now how it works, but my Earth-bound mind insists on thinking in terms of friction and drag and loss of momentum.
There was some new info on the status page... they actually decided to hurry things up a few days ago.
Mission complete. The engine burned for 146 seconds.
Goodbye old friend.
Just a heads-up that the Tempel 1 flyby data is http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/holdings/sdu-c_cal-navcam-3-next-tempel1-v1.0/ at the PDS Small Bodies Node.
One takeaway image, before closest approach:
"oh my God—it's full of jets!" (as compared to older jpeg previews)
Cross-eye stereogram:
BTW, I just read on Twitter, that "Image data from Stardust's flyby of comet Tempel 1 has just been posted to NASA's public archive".
No, they are here already for 3 weeks (from 13.10.).
Turns out they hadn't meant for the data to be public yet; the data set is still under review. They didn't count on you guys noticing it was there. They underestimated you
http://pds-smallbodies.astro.umd.edu/data_sb/missions/stardustnext/index.shtml
anybody know if (and possibly when) results from the Tempel flyby are going to be published in Science?
Sorry for the bump, but possible interstellar dust (from the original mission)!
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