Kodak moments at Pluto: Help requested |
Kodak moments at Pluto: Help requested |
Apr 3 2008, 09:54 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 706 Joined: 3-December 04 From: Boulder, Colorado, USA Member No.: 117 |
Hi folks-
We are deep in the process of planning the Pluto encounter (we're doing it now while all the essential people are still on the payroll!), and following the great success of our Jupiter "Kodak moment" program (thanks Hendric!), we are once again soliciting help from UMSF in planning scenic imaging of the Pluto system. Unlike at Jupiter, the only time when bodies in the Pluto system occult each other is within an hour of closest approach, when we'll be too busy for purely scenic imaging, but there may be interesting alignments or other opportunities at other times. To help find these opportunities, Henry Throop has kindly made available his New Horizons Geometry Visualizer, NHGV, which is the science team's prime geometry planning tool. It's at http://soc.boulder.swri.edu/nhgv . The tool shows the view of selected targets from the spacecraft at any time during the encounter. Below is some more detailed information from Henry. More information on the New Horizons instrument capabilities is available here. We'd like inputs by early June if possible- thanks in advance! John. QUOTE I have developed an on-line, graphical tool for planning and visualizing New Horizons observations. This is a web-based, graphical tool which uses SPICE to plot the position of bodies in the sky, and as they pass through the NH FOVs. The program is online at http://soc.boulder.swri.edu/nhgv . Features of NHGV (New Horizons Geometry Visualizer) include: * Integration with NAIF/SPICE, allowing for accurate positions and observing geometries for planets, satellites, and spacecraft * Integration with HD and Tycho-2 star catalogs, including access to catalog information such as positions, magnitudes, and stellar types * Light-time corrections for all computations * FOVs of all New Horizons remote sensing instruments * Wireframe images showing position grids and surface lighting * Albedo and surface composition maps * Display of Jovian aurora and satelite flux footprints * Lookup of spacecraft orientation and pointing from SPICE C-Kernels * Output of all data in graphical and table format * Flexible input and output coordinates, including both J2000 celestial and ecliptic systems * Cartesian or spherical projection of sky coordinates. * Simple web interface * Observations for a single time or a range of times * Rapid generation of tables of geometric parameters (distance, phase angle, etc.) over a time interval It can be thought of along the same lines as Dave Seal's DIGIT or Mark Showalter's Jupiter Viewer, although it has advantages over both (e.g., full access to star catalogs; NH FOV's; web-based; ecliptic coordinates; simple one-page interface). Although it was written for NH, it's really a much more general tool than that. Kernels are currently included for Rosetta, Messenger and Cassini, in addition to NH. It's used by the NH Science Team for planning future observations, and analyzing previous observations. This is essentially an internal tool that is being released externally on a trial basis, for use in planning potential NH observations. Please let me know of any significant problems. Extensive on-line documentation, examples, and screenshots are available at http://soc.boulder.swri.edu/nhgv/gv_info.php . Have fun! Henry Throop Southwest Research Institute Boulder, CO throop at boulder.swri.edu |
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Apr 8 2008, 06:58 PM
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Director of Galilean Photography Group: Members Posts: 896 Joined: 15-July 04 From: Austin, TX Member No.: 93 |
Dang, you take a few weeks off UMSF and all hell breaks loose. I don't have much time to contribute anything before the 15th, unfortunately, unless I plan on skipping sleep and ignoring visiting relatives.
Some additional ideas I haven't seen yet thrown out: 1. Planets? Anything near to a Pluto system object that would make a good outgoing photoshoot? 2. Starfields? Does the swingby put any interesting backgrounds to the planets? The Pluto shots will be longer than most shots we've seen. Sounds like a great time to do some astrophotography! 3. What about deep sky? Any interesting nebulas, clusters, galaxies, etc we can put in the background? A quick cursory look well before and after the flyby didn't really make anything jump out on Google Sky, but I didn't do a deep check with real planetarium software. I did see this, where Hydra should be passing just close enough to a globular cluster in Ophiuchus for a possible shot: http://soc.boulder.swri.edu/nhgv/gv.php?su...amp;title_plot= The tool doesn't plot globs, but you can see it at: maps.google.com/sky enter in 17:27:45, -05:04:30 for the search I couldn't find a decent map of Oph to get a name for it; I'll try to update later. John, how long of a shot would you need for a decent exposure of Hydra (based on what we know now of course)? Maybe one of the cruise phase instrument checkouts could be to take a shot of the globular before we get to Pluto. -------------------- Space Enthusiast Richard Hendricks
-- "The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss. Again as usual, they did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely impossible." --Rescue Party, Arthur C Clarke Mother Nature is the final inspector of all quality. |
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