That doesnt sound too likely given the shape of the impactor force curve they showed on BBC2 on the night of the landing...

It looked a BIT like this ( fuzzy, very tired memory )



The initial spike is indicatve of the 'crust' obviously - and wsa sharp and short.

The bulge afterwards is indicitive of something with fluid in it - compressable and squishy

I think if it went thru an ice-pebble, it's be a very different shape indeed

Doug

It shouldnt be too hard if one starts with the depth maps - take this for instance

http://anserver1.eprsl.wustl.edu/navigops/...FF09BXP1933L0M1

It has RNL file IMG's that dont seem to make a lot of sense when img2png's

The XYZ files come in at 12+Meg each

The data's sort of there, just not 'accesable'

Doug

I was thinking ice cream and lighter fluid

Doug

You lucky sod

Cries of 'Fix' from off stage

Doug

Joe Public has seen the picture from the surface, seen the one with the very river-delta looking thing - gone "oo - titan - thats interesting - oo look, Kate Winslet's been nominated twice in the Golden Globes' The general publics interest in this sort of thing if fleeting, and momentary. and gone before they finish reading the 500 words on page 8 of The Times. Everyone I've shown the colour surface image has gone "wow - cool" - and then we're started talking about Kate Winslett again. The public does not and will not care. No ammount of released 500 tiny JPGs is going to change that. Ever.

A routine is in place for all space missions - the data is with the scientists who made it for 6 - 12 months, then it is released to the public at large. Cassini and MER have recently broken that mould with essentially useless JPG's - but every other mission, previous oo present - has done no more than ESOC did for the Huygens descent - Three 'headline' pictures and no more, and thats more than enough for the mainstream media - enough to show joe public - not enough to steal the scientists ( who lest we forget have toiled for two decades to get this data ) thunder on doing science with them.

And the proper raw calibrated data takes time to produce using techniques, technology and information that only the people who built the camera can do. No one else can do that. So, for goodness sake, let them get on with it!!

That we got what appears to be much of the data set in jpg format within 48 hrs is just as much as JPL do with Cassini and MER - if it IS the exact data as transmitted from Huygens - then hell - we're 6 months ahead of ourselves already.

We dont know how the images have been treated ( in the same way we dont know how the MER and Cassini images are treated ) - an 'auto levels' seems to be the most obvious way to get the most out of a murkey image of a murkey place in murkey conditions - result being it looks 'over' stretched. The Cassini auto-processing did it for 2 months - making each and every image of a saturnian moon into a white disk on a black background with no detail inbetween. A few weeks, and a few thousand images later - thats been fixed.

People have put 20 years of their LIVES into making these images - let THEM enjoy them - the proper data will be yours to play with soon enough.

Doug

They're identical to the top image - just stretching the brightness 'down' in photoshop



The more you take it down - the more obvious the deliniation between the two possible areas becomes.

Doug

I think the thing I'm trying to split is pictures OF a place, from pictures FROM a place - there is a specific difference to me - and no ammount of cunning and brilliant trickery will render it otherwise.

Doug

MRO will be doing that, and arguably, MOC has already been doing that

There is a paradigm shift between looking down very very closely ( which can, arguably, be done from any altitiude given enough optical power ) - and looking 'out' from a point.

Doug

I still dont consider NEAR to be views from a landing site. It's just not what it is. The view straight down from 20 metres altitude is little different to zooming in from 20,000 miles. There is a discreet and quantifiable difference between an orbit that just happened to intesect the surface and end - and landing. If you consider NEAR views from the surface of another planet - then so were the imacting lunar probes of the early 60's.

There's a very distinct line in my mind between taking photographs (however clear) and then landing - and landing, then taking a photograph. Landing must come before picture - if you are to take photographs of 'a place' - otherwise, you are taking pictures for a map. Yes - Near was the first landing on a small body - but it could not and did not take pictures from the surface of a small body.

Pictures from the surface of the Moon, Mars, Venus and Titan have been taken - but not an asteroid yet. Ditto - Deep Impact's impactor probe will not be taking pictures from the surface of a comet. Pictures from very close - but not FROm the surface - and to be honest, I see no difference between that, and NEAR - even though NEAR survived the landing.

You can reproject MGS imagery to make it feel like you've landed in 100,000 different places - that doesnt make it 100,000 landers Nor does reprojecting NEAR imagery - however cool and pretty it is - make it one lander.

Doug

Yes - but given the time and effort that the scientists need to give this stuff (yet no one seems willing to let them have ) - such things can be reverse engineered out to a certain degree - along with any artifacts of the optical system etc.

Doug

well - they are jpg's - so they will have lost some quality from whatever they actually originate by virtue of the JPG process.

Bottom line - if you want the ACTUAL image data - wait 6-12 months and it should be on the PDS

doug

Possibly some sort of refraction based thing due to a totally out of focus image sent down an optic fibre bundle?

Doug

To be honest - using RGB - there's little to be gained from a single b'n'w image

Slightly more on Enc using cl1-ir1 / p120-grn / p120-UV3





Cranking the levels a LOT with that - on the bottom image - you can see some sort of linear feature between two different types of surface very clearly - I dont think this is an imaging artifact - has this been seen before?

Doug

Nahh - see - I dont think it should be. Yes - we've seen it from an altitude of what, 20 metres or something - BUT - most importantly - we havnt seen a view of the horizon from the surface. I think that's the important part. That Eros view could have been taken from 500km with a big enough camera. It's just another piece to stitch into a map.

The moment you are on the surface and looking at the horizon - then, you are no longer looking at a map - you are looking at a PLACE That's different

Doug

From where it is now - the sun sets on a bearing off towards the end of west spur and the landing site

Doug

I see a lot of duplicates - perhaps their automated processing was expecting triplets like...

a.b.c.d.e.f.g.h.i.j.k.l.m

but because some were on channel a - it automatically filled in the expected images with ones it had - so we get

a.a.c.d.e.e.g.h.i.j.j.j.m

Perhaps?

Doug

Remove them - and you're part of the Conspiracy

Doug

TO be honest - sounds like a huge data hog - and I cant see what benefit it would be. Look out at the planes - you cant SEE shadows - so moving shadows-that-you-cant-see-anyway would be of no benefit

And actually - look at the data on panorama images - typically, Pancam pans are taken at 1200 - 1400 lst - and it's typically only the end of day Navcam and Pancam images for the following days driving that are taken anything later than that.

Doug

It reminds me of one of those sea-side resorts that has a huge tidal reach - and when you get a veyr low tide - you have miles of damp sand - and occasionally - tiny little trickles run thru it.

The thing landed 2 miles west of Weston-Super-Mare !!

Doug

There's more outcropping over there - without doubt - that odd pink colour was what we saw of Burns Cliff before we got to the crater rim

Doug

I've emailed David Southwood. I'm not happy with the second-hand info I've heard about the HSRC re it's SRC on MEX ( wow - acronym heaven)

This is what I wrote...

First of all – congratulations to all on the success of Huygens – some spectacular imagery and data to follow – something for all of Europe to be proud of. Who would have thought 20 years ago – that the first instrument to touch titan would come from Milton Keynes!



However – I email you to ask as to there status and whereabouts of High Resolution imagery from the HSRC on Mars Express. Almost a year of orbital operations – and yet not a single released image at the ~2m resolution capability of the HSRC – and not just that – but no explanation as to why there is no imagery! The rest of the cameras abilities have been published in some astonishing imagery that really does show Mars in a whole new way – it’s fantastic. But someone, I cant help feeling that us tax-paying Europeans are missing out on some information here – and doubly frustrating, missing out on WHY we’re missing out.



Whilst, obviously, NASA and JPL are much more experienced with such things – MOC aboard MGS has released of all imagery in 6 month batches, at 6 month intervals – and I cant help feel that Mars Express should be operating a similar routine – or at least explain what plans there are to do so.



Courtesy of a specialist reporter who attended a conference in the USA recently – I’ve heard suggestion that there are calibration problems with the SRC – and that scientific data from the HSRC will be released fairly shortly – but, to be brutally honest, third hand information that may or may not be accurate just isn’t good enough – and if ESA is to stand on the world stage proudly with data in hand saying “look – look at what we’ve done, what we’ve achieved, what we’re able to do – as well as anyone in the world” – then we need to have a level of disclosure much much greater than we have now – or the image of ESA as a whole will, to some extent, move away from that of an equal to NASA ( which is something it should be able to do )



I am hugely proud of Europe’s achievements in space - I see American success and, whereas not so long ago one would thing “wow – I wish we could do that” – now I can say “yes – we CAN do that” – a paradigm shift that has occurred perhaps only in the last 18 months or so – started with MEX, and exploded with Huygens – but there must be transparency and disclosure to keep this pattern on going.


If I get a response - then I'll let you all know. The address I used was david.southwood@esa.int - as that's what I found by googling for D.S.

Doug

Well - I was thinking a balloon - not a powered blimp

Doug

Yes - but the Press Release says 50 metres - which is 150ish feet

Doug

I certainly think a blimp or similar would be a wise idea - drifting during the long titanian day - and settling to the ground at night. In a world with a thick atmosphere and low gravity - Blimps work very VERY well

Problem is - it'd have to be RTG powered, so it'd have to be quite heavy - and thus very large - probably something like 1 - 1.5 tons to Titan - outside the scope of anything but the heaviest launch vehicles today - and even then, would require multiple flybys of multiple planets to get there.

Ideally you'd need a companion orbiter to relay - use electra technology relay in UHF - and get 100kbps from blimp to orbiter and orbiter to ground.

You could have a large heatshield of the blimp descent stage at the top/front of the spacecraft, and use it for Aerocapture at titan - saving a LOT on delta V

Doug

The 'Turkey' Pan is fully down - and put together. It'll be released sooner or later - although to be honest, it's not that amazing.

Doug