Well all the raw images are 1024x1024 but the pans can be huge. For example my version of the Cape Verde pan (the biggest at Victoria so far) is 17039x3000. I'm sure you could resize and crop a whole load of stunning 1600x1200 images out of the mosaics produced so far.

And in context, it's at the bottom of the Gibson Pan:



James

I see now that I was getting confused. I was thinking the about the 1058 and 1060 positions as being the long baseline positions not 1060/1, so colour should be possible with the glasses the right way around. Greyscale for now though...

The baseline is very long, it works well for C1/2 (Hoy) area:



But takes quite a bit of distortion to get Cape Desire viewable:



James

Holy #@%&!

We've been having a bit of evening cloud here in Sydney the last few days so I haven't been out to see it set. The clouds did part for us to get a glimpse of it about 30 minutes after sunset (and 30 before it set) last night at home and I was pleased to see that it is becoming more visible as it gets into darker skies (not fading too fast). But wow! I hadn't expected to see pictures like those.

James

I did try this once (for a normal anaglyph as most of the blue/green filters are on the left pancam) but for some reason the result wasn't very satisfactory. Maybe I'll have another go with this.

And they would probably use the clear L1 filter for watching the illumination change during transit, L7 (and R7 ) would be a strange choice. Could even be a typo.

Yeah, which is annoying as the second mosaic is the right eye of the long baseline and L5&7 are needed for a colour anaglyph to be possible. 'L2 only' should be on the left, JB!

James

Here is what we have so far:



James

Moved posts about Aerobraking at Triton

Still, as it moves to darker skies it should be pretty spectacular for a few days yet.

Report from the southern hemisphere for the 16th.

Didn't make a special trip out last night as we had done the last two (and probably again tonight) and the sky near the horizon was looking a little cloudy. But then I realized that McNaught was now high enough in the sky that we might get a few minutes with it out our kitchen window. And we did, for 7-8 minutes we got to watch it, and with the tripod in the sink I even got a picture:



Heavily enhanced to show the comet better, it was only 13 minutes after sunset so the sky was still very bright.

I'm really not sure how the brightness had changed (especially not knowing how similar the atmosphere was) I did find it harder to pick up with the naked eye but though binoculars it looked about the same. I really must start taking some photos with constant exposures night to night to get a better idea of this.

Stu: I also looked for ages a few days ago to try and see it in daylight, but saw nothing.

James

Yep the tail was visible to the naked eye, not the really faint bit you can just make out in the first two photos, but you could defiantly see that it was extended. According to Rob McNaught over the last few days we get a magnitude or two boost due to forward scatter which will make the tail brighter. I think that effect may be over now, so we'll see what we see tonight.

James

Yeah, I've been hoping for that too.

Second attempt last night, short story I saw it!

Long story...

Arrived at The Gap about 40 minutes before sunset, which from this position was going to be right over the city.



While waiting I was amazed when we were joined by the famous (in Australia ) author, TV & radio presenter "Dr Karl" and his family. And what a great bunch they were, it turned the whole event into a bit of a party on the hillside. I was amazed to find out that Karl had never seen a comet before and given his enthusiasm for science, it was a pleasure to be with him for this.

After the sun had set it was obvious that looking across a city of 4 million wasn't the ideal way to see a comet! But given how bright it's supposed to be we weren't too worried. Finally saw it about 5 minutes after sunset, and then spent about 5 more minutes trying to explain where everybody should be looking "You see the fourth spire to the left of centrepoint..."

Here's an image from 10 minutes after sunset of McNaught heading for one of the only clouds in the sky!



And an enhanced greyscale version showing the limit of what was visible.



We then lost the comet behind said cloud before getting a quick glimpse of it close to the horizon over the city, soon after it was lost in the haze/smog layer.



James

Ahh, if I was really showing off I'd have moved a bit so that the Opera House wasn't behind that bush to the left of the bridge.

J

Yeah after my last post I went and made an anaglyph of the whole region with both jpg/tif and jp2 coverage and couldn't really convince myself that there was any stereo, so fair enough it's the same image. I did have to do quite a bit of streching to get the images to overlay so clearly one had been projected differently. I'm still really surprised at how different the lander looks in each image though.



Ahh so you missed the lander with the colour this time, I wasn't aware of that, thanks.

James

First attempt here in Sydney last night. We had had a cloudless day, without as much haze as much of the last week. But then what happened - cloud bubbled up as sunset approached Margaret and I even felt a spot or two of rain at one point. Of course I took this as a good omen remembering Stu's experience. But unfortunately we couldn't even see the sun during its last 30 minutes so we had no chance of seeing McNaught, it setting just 23 minutes after the sun. Had a few looks for it during daylight, but I don't think I've worked out it's position closely enough yet. Did get some nice views of Sydney as the light faded, so not a wasted trip.

(Note Venus at the far left)

Attempt two tonight...

James

I guess we'll find out soon but I suspect that the routines they have for getting tau from the sun images would be messed up a bit with a transit in progress. I think that observation will be of the full sun either just before or after the transit. A 'while the pancam is pointing at the sun anyway might as well slip in a tau' observation.

James

jpg on the left, jp2 on the right.

That's what I thought at first, but they are very different and it looks for all the world like the jp2 is taken from directly above and the jpg from somewhat side on, making the two ramps not appear antiparallel. I'm gonna take some convincing that those aren't two separate images from different angles!

One question: When can we expect colour?

James

No problem, just a helpful hint. A lot more people are likely to look at it if it's a jpeg rather than a bmp.

You should be able to remove the old versions and reattach new ones in of the existing posts using the Edit button (then 'Full Edit' from the list)

James

Looks like McNaught is just moving into SOHOs view now.



Not long for us southern hemisphere folk now.

James

You know, posting .bmp files isn't all that sensible, they take up lots of space, don't show up as thumbnails and a lot of browsers won't show them, forcing you to view them with an external program. Any chance you could use jpegs or pngs instead?

Looks like we're about to enter another transit season.

Comparing the jpgs released by NASA with the jp2 from HiROC.



There is quite a difference, particularly in the apparent angle the two 'ramps' make with each other. I don't think that the jpegs are of PSP_001890_1995 but of another image (to form a stereo pair).

James.

B)-->

See the old style page http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/PSP_001890_1995 it's 849Mb.

For Twin Peaks see Doug's post above (39)

James