Emily knows all the details - but to be flight qualified I think they were made of something a little less plastic and a little more metalic.

"The DVDs were fastened to the rovers with clamps in the shape of LEGO bricks."

An expensive way to make fridge magnets, that's for sure

Doug

Bingo That works!

Doug

I don't think the exoplanet example is particularlly appropriate

http://brucegary.net/tutorial_exoplanet/All_BLG_Data.png
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2...-05-preview.jpg
http://www.ucolick.org/~laugh/tres1.vanmunster1.jpg
http://www.ucolick.org/~laugh/Tres1_gary1.jpg

A long long long way from a single data point out of unreasable noise - I don't think that criticism is valid.

These are all very small changes - yes - but these are also very very sensitive instruments that are specifically designed to find small changes - and found them they have - particularly when you see how spot on with predictions these changes are once a discovery has been made.

I don't think Exoplanets are pulling information from noise at all.

I think there are cases where people are pulling something from nothing - typically the fringe theory or artificiality nuts (you know who I mean ) but a real scientists who's going to end up with his work being peer reviewed before published just couldn't get away with pulling something from nothing.

Yup. The file names tell us that they are within the same second, one thing I'll ask in my next Jim Q'n'A is exactly how simultaneous are they - the very same moment, or perhaps a few ms apart etc.

Doug

What I mean is - the files are unavailable...I try and save one and it's not found....but I remember them all being available a few months ago (as I was looking at them w.r.t. putting together the mobility report maps)

Doug

http://anserver1.eprsl.wustl.edu/anteam/mera/mer_osu.htm

Two things..

1. Phil - YAY - bundle adjusted references for all the sites in the top two txt files!!!

And 2. Um....what does one do with those Bin's. Damn I wish I could code...if anyone knows a means to get that lot into any sort of appropriate 3D format they win the UMSF 'special cookie' award

Just for fun - I bunged the XY data of MERB into Excel. It's not 'square' i.e. it's not accurate - but I think I'll go for something accurate in Photoshop

Also - Z axis against Sol for Spirit...I've seen that graph somewhere else...but making it ones self from data is always much more fun - you can clearly see Bonneville, Missoula, West Spur and the return to Larrys Lookout.

Doug

Is it just me or do all the lbl's work but noneo f the rvf's work here
http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/geodata/m...r2rm_0xxx/data/

Doug

None of the above. It's totally absent from that images stereo pair - so it's an artifcat of a cosmic ray hit or similar.

Doug

Problem is - UMSF doesnt have 'pages' - it's all dynamically generated by IPB using PHP and SQL. The IPB stats are the most appropriate.

Doug

I can't say how many hits a specific section has had...but the figure "total topic views" is the most appropriate.

Currently it's

Spirit
870052
Opportunity
780623
Cometary and Asteroid Missions
281068
Icy Moons
188708
Titan
157542
New Horizons
136868
Past and Future
112563
Tech, General and Imagery
101139
Cassini General
86982
Community Chit Chat
68743
Jupiter
67795
MRO 2005
58656
Mars Express & Beagle 2
55411
Manned Spaceflight
54527
SMART-1 + Lunar Exploration
49469
MSL 2009
37405
Venus
36475
Front Page Stories
36310
Mars
36213
Space Based Observing
31161
Private Missions
28017
EVA MMU
27017
Mars Global Surveyor
26312
Forum Management
26062
Books and Resources
24343
Pluto / KBO
23709
Venus Express
22237
Earth Observations
21660
Director Updates
20973
Policy and Strategy
20173
Voyager and Pioneer
20017
Sun
19866
Uranus and Neptune
18401
Phoenix 2007/8
13650
Mercury
11142
Mars Odyssey
10776
Messenger
9997
Saturn
4047
Outer Solar System
2264


Total 3600263

If you add up the MER related ones (Spirit, Oppy, Imagery) - it's 1751814 - so about half of all forum activity.

That's a stat from the forum software. From the hosting as off the end of March - 155,700 unique visitors ( i.e. seperate IP's that have visited) and a total of 506,000 site visits, 5.3 Million page views and 315.75 gig of bandwidth. The number of 'hits' is actually 35,275,071 - but that's for every page, image, etc etc - and there's probably 10 images on every page as a minimum.

Doug

VIMS is the Mini-TES of Cassini...you know it's there, and you know it must be doing a lot of very interesting stuff....and you even see it getting dumped into the PDS (but can't figure out how to use it)...but for some reason there just isn't a lot of press material from the VIMS team.

I think there's one barrier in the way of a LOT of interesting work by people here with VIMS data..and that's because it's not easy to get in to. ISIS - The big linux software suite seems to be the only means to read VIMS data unfortunately.

There is 'browse' data
http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/data/cassi.../extras/browse/

But it's not a patch on using the proper data.

Doug

Infact - the orig trajectory design would have been years before ITAR even existed. Quite how that situation ever arose I do not know.

Doug

But we can improve the dynamic range

Doug

Good call - perhaps a handfull of pixels

Then again - even one pixel is better than nothing

Doug

A jpg's a jpg's a jpg - they were a little less stretched - but they were never a calibrated data release. That happens this summer.

Doug

One has a big simulated sky and one doesnt? Or one is colour-stretched and one isn't...take yer pick

Doug

I've not seen any Huygens stuff on the PDS at all Ted - what 'full quality' do you mean?

Also - the SSP team said that the vehicle did move after landing. Not a lot but stil...

" The probe had penetrated about 10 cm into surface, and settling gradually by a few millimetres after landing and tilting by a fraction of a degree"

It might not be much, but it's something - depends on the angular res of the camera I suppose - but if nothing else, stacking a lot of images of exactly the same spot should help increase dynamic range.

Doug

What was release soon after landing was very highly stretched JPGS ( much like the MER Jpgs )

once the proper 12 bit images are release to the PDS ( this summer I believe ) then it might be worth trying to do somethign with the data w.r.t super-res imaging.

As Jim Bell and I mentioned in a Pancam update - Super Res with JPG's just isn't worth bothering with really.

Doug

That must be spectacular!

Doug

Well - it wasn't a science mission - but at some point the role of cutting edge engineering and science merge into one fuzzy middle ground.

However - the new press/outreach guidelines from a few months ago certainly don't take "the sock" out of anyones mouth

Doug

And of course the baseline mission at the time of launch had Cassini off over the horizon much MUCH quicker after landing than the altered mission design.

Of course, we're making assumptions. How much memory was onboard Hugyens? Would have even been possible to retain all the data from both channels from the entire sequence to the point of landing, and then begin transmitting it all again but on swopped channels ( for ultimate redundency ) - perhaps only for imagery. So - could ALL the imagery have been retained on board for the duration of EDL? Was the ability to reprogram Huygens post-launch to that extent even possible.

Doug

They were racing the Huygens investigation release

Doug

http://archive.eso.org/preview/preview/pre...1F1Q/jipa/ascii

Lots of HST stuff w.r.t. Triton on there. Obviously it's just going to be spectral work really - it's too small/distant to resolve anything I'd have thought.

Is that an Athena 2?