Jupiter from HiRise, Wow...just wow! Options

[J.J.]

I don't know if anyone's posted this yet...but it's definitely worth a re-post.

I figured they would try something like this again.

http://geekcounterpoint.net/files/category-10.html

Just wait until they turn that bad boy towards Earth...

[Edit: Image no longer available]

[RedSky]

Very nice. Of course, if they look at earth when it is closest... we will only be seen as a thin cresent.

[Decepticon]

I wonder if Moonshine would help a little?

[djellison]

Well - given that photographing the Moon with Earthshine results in the normal part of the Earth being totally bleached out - I doubt it. I imagine that there's a fairly big "keep out" zone for HiRISE pointing when it comes to the Sun - and at a time when Moonshine would be most usefull, chances are they'd be in that keep out zone.

Doug

[monitorlizard]

I've often wondered if it would be worth the effort for HiRISE to attempt to image Mars-crossing asteroids. The orbits of most asteroids should be very well known, considering how many spacecraft have had to cross the asteroid belt, and the searches made for close flybys. So it follows that the ones that come near Mars should be traceable. I don't know if MRO could slew fast enough to avoid image smear, but it just might result in a few spectacular images, given HiRISE's resolution.

[djellison]

They would have to be very very close for it to be worthwhile - and you'd have to make an excellent case for the off-nominal sequencing involved.

Doug

[tedstryk]

Ikonos, SpaceImaging's earth-observing satellite has cameoed as a planetary observer. The Jupiter and Saturn pics were taken during its commissioning - It had some real problems with Saturn's low surface brightness, and badly underexposed the image. However, Jupiter turned out really well (and, for the record, the moon to the right of Jupiter is Io). The images of Mars were taken during the 2003 opposition.

[djellison]

I can't believe what thought process just went through my head.

"Oh yeah - that Ikonos image is the same sort of quality for Jupiter as HiRISE managed. Those Mars pics from Ikonos are good - I wonder what Mars would look like through HiRISE"

Duhhh



Doug

[tedstryk]

To be fair, orbital positions have to be taken into account. When Ikonos imaged Jupiter on October 27, 1999, it was 49.7" across as seen from earth, or you could say it covered 1940 square arc seconds.. From Mars, on January 11, 2007, when this image was taken, Jupiter was 50.9" across, or 2035 square arc seconds. In other words, its disk was only 4.9 percent larger. Keep in mind that my math is very crude here, but the proportions are right. I worked with Jupiter as a sphere, ignoring polar flattening.

[tuvas]

Well - given that photographing the Moon with Earthshine results in the normal part of the Earth being totally bleached out - I doubt it. I imagine that there's a fairly big "keep out" zone for HiRISE pointing when it comes to the Sun - and at a time when Moonshine would be most usefull, chances are they'd be in that keep out zone.

Doug

That is correct. I beleive the zone is a 20 degree away from the sun keep-out zone, so it might be quite difficult. Even harder when you consider we've already taken a picture of the moon, on our way out of the Earth-moon system (Before I was a part of HiRISE...). This just happened to be a time when we had a stellar Calibration the same time as an opening to Jupiter, a lot of things that came up lucky.

BTW, I don't think this picture has been officially released yet...

[djellison]

Yup - not properly released. The UMSF policy on this is something we've discussed as an admin team given that - to be fair - HiROC is about as leakproof as a teabag and we've just about run out of fingers to count the number of times things have got 'out' before they should have.

If someone spots something that hasn't been released and posts to it directly from UMSF - we cull that - that's someone at UMSF doing something they probably shouldn't and in doing so, UMSF becomes part of the problem - and we try to tell someone appropriate ( usually via Jason ).

If some other site has been sent something - that's fine by me as UMSF isn't involved directly.

Doug

[tuvas]

If some other site has been sent something - that's fine by me as UMSF isn't involved directly.

Doug

Sounds fair to me, and I do have it confirmed that it hasn't been released yet. The official release should be a bit better than these previews, I would guess.

[Lorne Ipsum]

...This just happened to be a time when we had a stellar Calibration the same time as an opening to Jupiter, a lot of things that came up lucky.

BTW, I don't think this picture has been officially released yet...

Apparently not -- at least, I've been told it's the case by the U of A, so I'll be taking down my page containing it. I received the image about 4th hand, without any "do not distribute" language attached. Sure wish unreleased images had a watermark or something...

Lorne

[tuvas]

Thanks for the quick removal. It's nice to see sources that remove unreleased images before they are released. But I can tell you that likely the image will be officially released sometime soon.

The problem is the unreleased images are quickly created, and passed to the team. A few team members decide, hey I can pass this on to my friends and family, it won't matter, and then someone there forwards it on to someone who owns a major website. So...

[JRehling]

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