Littlebit, real-time release of Voyager imagery was only possible because most data was coming down, well, real-time. As for RAW image pages, that's a very nice practice, but it's only the mission folks' free will that enables such sorts of goodies for us amateurs.

I have to add that while I'm also looking forward to that departure movie of Venus, I'm expecting it to be pretty underwhelming (I'd like to see something other than a heavily processed sequence, a natural-ish color view instead), mainly a shrinking crescent with very little cloud structure discernible in the visible wavelengths. Certainly a lot less inspiring than that cool Earth departure sequence. Out of all 4 inner rocky planets, only Earth and Mars are photogenic enough (and rotate fast enough) for those kinds of movies to have a "wow" factor.
I'll be glad to be proven wrong, though!

Can we calm down the witch hunt please. We know they're going to release it all at some point ( look at the data of the Earth flyby - stunningly published in ful ) - give them time.

Doug

Well spoken! Don't shoot the MESSENG.... uh, never mind.

Hey, first images are up...

Awe-inspiring, aren't they?

BTW, full-res images here.

Very... white...

Looking forward to more detailed images.

Seriously tho, I think it's very cool that on the next clear night I'll be able to stare up at the sky and when I look at Venus blazing like a lantern in the NW I can say "probe just passed there..." When I look at Mercury glittering above the trees I can say "probe heading there..." When I look at Saturn to venus' upper left I can say "probe orbiting that..." When I look at Jupiter hanging above the southern horizon I can say "probe just passed there" and then, before dawn, if I can spot Mars shining in the dusk glow I can also say "probes BESEIGING that planet..."

Has anyone done a count to see if we've the public has received more Venus images from MESSENGER than from Venus Express?

This post has been edited by AlexBlackwell: Jun 14 2007, 09:57 PM

Give them a week or two more - and Messenger will outstrip VEX very easily.

Doug

Which is pretty depressing and annoying when you stop and think about it...

... but this isn't the place for such negative thoughts. Congratulations to the MESSENGER team on a successful fly-by, and thanks for the first images!

I might have missed it but did anyone else see this MESSENGER Fast Imaging Plasma Spectrometer (FIPS) Venus-2 graphic?

Bland as it may seem, there's actually some cloud details visible in the global view. I monkeyed around a bit with high-pass filtering and such in Photoshop and came up with this version, which displays a little more detail. Can anyone do better than this? (If you can, I'd love an explanation of what you do.)

--Emily

Hey! What did you do to Planet Cue Ball!?!?!?

Seriously, nice to see the spigot opening up a bit....

Here's my version:



This one has been sharpened with a high-pass filter that also removes illumination effects (limb darkening and darkness near the terminator). I could have increased the contrast even more to make large scale features (even) more obvious but if I do so the image becomes annoyingly noisy.

Nice work, Bjorn.

OK, after initial negative comments about a the lack of image releases, I all involved give my congratulations for the images. They have surpassed my expectations. I think that these images where taken with a violet-blue filter, so they show some cloud details while remaining within visible wavelengths. Very very interesting and comparable to earth based amateur observations (there are some very nice ones).