Q & A With Steve Squyres, Coming in September |
Q & A With Steve Squyres, Coming in September |
Jul 27 2005, 11:46 AM
Post
#1
|
|
Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14448 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
As previously reported, there's a great lineup of speakers at the BAA out of London meeting on September 3rd - including MER Principle Investigator Steve Squyres.
Steve has kindly offered some of his time so that we can meet up and do a Q'n'A based on questions submitted by you lot. Obviously - there will be loads and loads of questions you want to ask and only so much time in which to ask them - however - I'll do what I can to pick as many of the best as I can squeeze in in the time available. There will be a write up here, obviously, and I will try and record it as an MP3 and post that here as well. Steve's book 'Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity and the Exploration of the Red Planet' is published next week - and a signed copy will be winging its way to the person submitting the best question! * If you have questions you want me to pitch to Steve, then drop me an email to doug@rlproject.com with the subject SS Q&A As a heads up - please take note of the other speakers at the BAA meeting - and if you have specific questions you'd like asked of them - I'll do my best to try and get them in after their presentations at the meeting. The last two ( Profs Greeley and Muller ) are on the Sunday and the Friday respectively, but I will be trying to get down to those presentations as well - but no promises. -Prof. Carolyn Porco, Principal investigator, Cassini imaging system -Prof. John Zarnecki, Principal investigator, Huygens surface science -Prof. Mike A'Hearn, Principal Investigator, Deep Impact, -Prof. Ron Greeley, Scientist on several planetary missions, Chairman of NASA & NAS Mars exploration panel -Prof. Jan-Peter Muller, Scientist on Mars Express hi-resolution camera team, University College London. Doug * 'best' to be picked by SS and myself on the day |
|
|
Aug 22 2005, 06:54 AM
Post
#2
|
|
Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1870 Joined: 20-February 05 Member No.: 174 |
Cosmic Rocker quotes: They say, "The two images shown in Figure 2 are from the AMOS 3.67 m telescope using infrared light. They have lower resolution than the visible-light images because infrared wavelengths are much longer than the wavelength of visible light. Telescope resolution is directly related to the wavelength of light, the mirror diameter, the mount stability, and atmospheric turbulence effects."
BUT.... the AFRL images are THERMAL infrared with a wavelength probably near 10 micrometers, not Near-Infrared, with a wavelength of around one micrometer.. which is twice the wavelength (0.55 micrometer) of yellow-green light (the wavelength of visual maximum sensativity) Resolution is diffraction limited only if the image on the sensor is diffraction limited AND the sensor samples the image with a pixel spacing finer than the diffraction limit. Often, Imaging is not diffraction limited, but has other engineering constraints. Many camcorders have tiny (cheap) CCD detectors. They can take decent images, but have fewer square micrometers of area per pixel, are less sensative, and most importantly, can hold fewer electrons.. and "fill up" faster and saturate sooner, resulting in either lower-signal-to-noise-ratio or overexposed images. One possibility, I'm not a silicon chip optics expert at all.. is the silicon of the CCD may be so transparent at 1 micrometer that there's "bleeding" of the image between pixels due to sheer transparancy of the chip at near-IR wavelengths. |
|
|
Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 31st October 2024 - 10:57 PM |
RULES AND GUIDELINES Please read the Forum Rules and Guidelines before posting. IMAGE COPYRIGHT |
OPINIONS AND MODERATION Opinions expressed on UnmannedSpaceflight.com are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of UnmannedSpaceflight.com or The Planetary Society. The all-volunteer UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderation team is wholly independent of The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has no influence over decisions made by the UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderators. |
SUPPORT THE FORUM Unmannedspaceflight.com is funded by the Planetary Society. Please consider supporting our work and many other projects by donating to the Society or becoming a member. |