I think our man on the inside can confirm there is more detail in those images than we get to see in the 'raw' jpgs

Doug

This is the problem - they probabyl are not overexposed, but the stretching done - probably automatically - before they get dumped onto the web basically RUINS the pictures! GRGRGGRRGRG

Doug

The Titan hills

The titan seas

I think Titan does as noun and adjective to be honest

But I'm sure some IAU bod knows the real story

Doug

To me it looks like large clouds over something

Doug

Yeah - the auto-stretch being done renders them essentially useless for looking at the moons at the moment

Doug

Dont know who managed to get that actioned - but WOOHOO

I think I might have to start cassini.rlproject.com

Doug

Was the best I could do with the imagery taken of the heatshield

Doug

I'm away till Tuesday - driving down to Chichester to visit the Goodwood Festival of Speed - THE motorsport festival in the world

Bruce - I've added you to the list of admins - if anyone kicks off - feel free to kick out

Cheers chaps

Doug

Heee hee - bruce, you're too used to the hell of using a Yahoo group

Those first links are FINE It shortens them, in the post itself, but they still link to the correctplace.

Oh - and you can edit posts here as well

Thanks for the links - interesting reading.

Doug

Oh - I know that one wheel failing isnt a particular problem - but as one gearbox fails, whats to suggest that the others will not follow shortly? Perhaps, of the 12 wheels on mars - that one is the only one which will exhibit trouble ( which they may eleviate by heating it a great deal and redistributing lubricant as suggested ) - or perhaps it's a trend that all wheels will begin to show similar signs at some point after 3km

Either way - it's worked 5x past it's design already

Doug

I dont imagine they'll decend a great deal further into the crater - and to be honest, I think it's succesfully traversed up AND down the hardest part of the drive it might encounter.

I think they may well spend another few weeks here - rating and spectrometer work on the rocks further down the crater wall - then leaving for the heatshield and perhaps the etched terrain to the south - maybe finding a small rock with which to tilt the rover sunward for a couple of weeks during solar conjunction.

I fear for Spirit more than Opportunity - Spirit hasmore than twice the metres on the clock and is mechanically beginning to show age in that one wheel which could be an oman for wheels dying one by one - or just a bit of a freak.

Doug

Thats me Although now it's Ellison, 25.... And if I even pull together a book on MER it'll be Ellison, 43.

Dig deep enough at http://near.jhuapl.edu you can find all the raw images from the cam onbaord NEAR - and using NASA view I dumped out some BMP's and stitched in Photoshop. It seemed like NASA wasnt making the most of some amazing images, so I thought I'd have a bit of a play.


Doug (72)

It's onboard Cassini - and my signature's on there http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/kids/amazing-dvd.cfm

Doug

UBER version of the above

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...vmap-B140R1.jpg

Doug

Thats how the MEX one works - one stereo channel is forward looking, one is backward looking.

The backward looking one will see the same bit of surface as the forward looking one a short while ( and many km's ) after it. i.e....


F -> R
\ /
\ /
\ /


Doug

Half the reason that HiRise will get dumped out to the public so rapidly is that there are not enough scientists on the planet to analize the sheer volume of data it's going to create

Seriously though...

MER and HiRise have and will set the right example. Whack out the quick-and-dirty imagery on a frame by frame basis and push it out to the public on an almost realtime basis - it's of little real scientific value as it's not properly calibrated, etc etc.

Then - after the usual embargo (6 months for MER) release correct data sets via the PDS to the scientific community and the very-keen public.

It's probably far FAR too late for Cassini to impliment anything like that, but the sheer quantity of imagery that we'll be getting from Cassini over the next half-decade or so warrants the effort to allow the public to generate some interesting eye-candy (as has been done time and time again with MER, and I did with NEAR some years ago ) and the public interest that results from that can only help in the search for more funds at Capital HIll

It would be an excellent move for Nasa to stipulate some sort of similar methadology on all missions. Look at MODIS on Terra and Aqua - daily data pushed out usually within 6 - 12 hrs. Ditto with SOHO.

It's almost as if the BIG missions ( Galileo, Cassini ) are 'too important' to allow the public to see the raw imagery as it comes down Then again, at 120bps, Galileo was hardly a waterfall of pretty pictures

Doug

Right - how do I get your job? Seriously? It's what I've always wanted to do (And am doing at an amateur level with MER imagery)

Doug

Not in the same way as an MER - BUT - by taking images from two places, you can generate stereo imagery - i.e. before, and after closest approach to a moon.

Analogy = instead of using two eye to make it - use one eye, and move your whole head.

Doug

In english - that's 6pm our time

Doug

Well - they WERE taken in the same time frame - so it should be possible to do a mosaic FIRST, then merge the three channels for colour

I might try it at some point

Doug

90% of them are from way back on Sol 60ish

Doug

To be fair - outages of a few days for the Exploratorium are FAR from unprecidented

Even if Opportunity had got 'stuck' in the crater ( unlikely ) - It could still transmit UHF passes quite happily. I think they're just being lazy at JPL again


Doug

OH MY 10X better to come as well

Doug

Know what you mean it's very odd indeed - I really dont understand it

Doug

Say 20,000 images from each, at 150kb each ( some are 300k, some are 1k) - 3 Gig.

I gave up trying to archive the lot - it was a futile exercise, and I just gather what I want - work with it, then delete it..

What I will download and archive properly, is the proper distrubuted science data in a few months time

Doug