First data from Venus Express ! |
First data from Venus Express ! |
Apr 13 2006, 03:22 PM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 370 Joined: 12-September 05 From: France Member No.: 495 |
Unexpected detail in first-ever Venus south pole images
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Venus_Express/SEMUTYNFGLE_0.html |
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Apr 13 2006, 04:24 PM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
Good stuff. Kudos to the team for successful operations and a quick first release.
I'm curious as to the wavelengths in the dayside image. It's probably stretched beyond "human" RGB to show that much detail, but it would be fantastic to have a multispectral dataset and sate some curiosity about what a "true" color spacecraft image of Venus would look like. VEx will answer this question as well as one could expect. The IR nightside makes me wonder about the prospects of seeing the surface through the cloud layers. That's a whole lot of cloud signal. Maybe greater temporal coverage will show us the surface in peeks here and there. Also, other IR may show the surface signal better. I'm surprised how the UV image looks -- quite different from the Pioneer images. Lots of calibration questions. |
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Apr 13 2006, 04:55 PM
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#3
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Member Group: Members Posts: 370 Joined: 12-September 05 From: France Member No.: 495 |
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Apr 13 2006, 05:37 PM
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#4
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Member Group: Members Posts: 109 Joined: 25-November 04 From: Dublin, Ireland Member No.: 113 |
Anyone here smart enough to work out the lat/lon gridlines for these first images? Presumably a half decent astronomy programme would at least tell where the subsolar point was on Venus @ say 9:07 UT on the 11th..
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Apr 13 2006, 06:33 PM
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#5
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
Well, since the axial inclination is only 3 degrees, you can count on the apparent pole always being pretty close to the actual pole. There's only one real degree of freedom in the subsolar point.
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Apr 13 2006, 08:27 PM
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#6
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2492 Joined: 15-January 05 From: center Italy Member No.: 150 |
UV map seems to show surface details, but this should be only my impression (atmosphere should be more transparent in IR and visible features do not match with radar maps around south pole...).
This is a small, naif combination of visible + UV image (former was veirated toward red while latter was detail/contrast enhanced). -------------------- I always think before posting! - Marco -
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