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Posted by: elakdawalla Aug 5 2009, 09:44 PM

I try to avoid linking to my own blog (figuring that if you guys think something's worthwhile you'll post a link, else not!), but in doing so today it's only to point you all to some amazing detective work done by another UMSFer, Ted Stryk:
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002035/

--Emily

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Aug 5 2009, 09:55 PM

Wow.

Real proud of Ted. What a great group to be part of. I'm not worthy.

Posted by: Stu Aug 5 2009, 10:00 PM

Jeez... that's truly amazing work, Ted. I know how modest you are about your image processing work, so any recognition and praise you get for this find will be well deserved.

Posted by: tedstryk Aug 5 2009, 10:18 PM

The color is rather tortured...the very left most part is simply based on the rest of the image, soon after the first moon image it becomes Orange-Blue with a tweaked "Green" fudged from an average of the two available images, then Orange-Blue-Violet with Blue tweaked to be more like Green, and, finally, just beyond the second "shadow", it becomes Orange-Green-Violet. In addition to try to force the non OGV portions of the image to behave like the OGV section, the transitions are done gradually over about 25 pixels in order to prevent discontinuities.

Posted by: Juramike Aug 5 2009, 10:24 PM

Awesome and congratulations!!

Very well done! Shows how a thorough search can pull new information out of old data!

Posted by: tedstryk Aug 5 2009, 10:35 PM

Here is a single shot of the transit with consistent OGV color (except for lining up moon and shadow color, which had to of course be done).

Posted by: SFJCody Aug 5 2009, 11:26 PM

That is astounding stuff. Makes me think about what else might be lurking in the PDS awaiting future discovery...

Posted by: Astro0 Aug 5 2009, 11:27 PM

This discovery should hence forth be known as the "TedStryk Transit"

Posted by: Phil Stooke Aug 5 2009, 11:50 PM

Just adding my congrats and appreciation for Ted's fine work.

Phil

Posted by: nprev Aug 6 2009, 01:23 AM

Wow...all I can do is likewise, Ted. Amazing work!

Emily's title for her article is extremely apropos..."amateur" definitely needs to be in quotes!

Posted by: Hungry4info Aug 6 2009, 02:32 AM

I, too, wish to extend my congratulations to Ted. Pretty darned awesome!

Posted by: tedstryk Aug 6 2009, 02:55 AM

So much, so much. I have had this one up my sleeve for quite a while, and I have a few more things in the pipeline (none on this scale though). Given that these were much-studied images, who knows what might be lurking in other shots. I think Voyager and other old data are hiding many things under their reseau paterns and gunky vidicon noise. Modern missions no doubt hide things via the pure volume of data they return.

Posted by: mchan Aug 6 2009, 04:16 AM

Congratulations on the find.

Posted by: tedstryk Aug 6 2009, 04:23 AM

To all the kind comments, thanks.

Posted by: mchan Aug 6 2009, 04:36 AM

Interplanetary Dumpster Diver!

That must have come from EGD.

(nope, Doug)

Posted by: Ian R Aug 6 2009, 06:40 AM

Fantastic work Ted! Makes me salivate for a Cassini-esque Neptune orbiter...

Ian.

Posted by: remcook Aug 6 2009, 08:34 AM

Imagine what people will see in all the Cassini and Mars data 50 years from now. Who knows?!

Great work Ted!

Posted by: PDP8E Aug 6 2009, 02:18 PM

Ted,
That is humbling work that you do, brother!
Congratulations on a wonderful piece of science.

Posted by: climber Aug 6 2009, 02:31 PM

Good on you Ted
Any work on Sputnik "Bip-Bip"?

Posted by: Enceladus75 Aug 6 2009, 02:44 PM

Brillant work, Ted. Well done!

Will you try to get the moon named after you? How about Tedinia?

Posted by: tedstryk Aug 6 2009, 05:17 PM

Despina is just fine What I possess is not a skill...it is a combination of stubbornness and tenacity.

Posted by: tasp Aug 6 2009, 05:41 PM

Too bad an extreme enlargement of Despina shows no craters eager to be named for you.

Perhaps you can deconvolute it or something to show a feature to be your namesake.

Or failing that, they just name the imaged hemisphere a Regio in your honor.

Posted by: tedstryk Aug 6 2009, 05:57 PM

In all seriousness, the phase angle is so low that there are not a lot of shadows, which (in addition to the low resolution) makes it look featureless.

Posted by: tedstryk Aug 6 2009, 06:47 PM

There are quite a few images crawling around the net showing "features" on Despina, but they are merely products of the deconvolution of the not-convoluted (at least not to that degree).

Posted by: DFinfrock Aug 7 2009, 01:49 AM

"Interplanetary Dumpster Diver! "

Great work Ted. In addition to the new title, maybe you should consider changing your personal icon to the Neptune transit image. It would be fitting.

David

Posted by: tedstryk Aug 7 2009, 01:58 AM

The problem is that at avatar size, one wouldn't be able to see it.

Posted by: elakdawalla Aug 7 2009, 02:11 AM

I think the Mars 3 crescent Mars image is very nearly as obscure as Despina. And while the Despina discovery is cool, I don't think it's quite as cool as the discovery of "Uranus-shine" details on Ariel -- I'd advocate for that as your avatar before Despina! Face it, no one matches Ted for finding cool stuff in cast-off data.

Two thumbs up for "Interplanetary Dumpster Diver."

--E

Posted by: tedstryk Aug 7 2009, 04:46 AM

Thank you for your kind words.


Phil Stooke found the planetshine images of Ariel - I just improved them a bit.

Posted by: Bjorn Jonsson Aug 12 2009, 06:02 PM

This is an amazing discovery - congratulations!

I wonder if there's more interesting stuff waiting to be discovered in the Voyager images.

Posted by: tedstryk Aug 12 2009, 06:18 PM

Thank you. I would say there is a lot hiding in vidicon gunk and reseau. There are definitely more transit images - this was not the initial "discovery" set.

Posted by: CosmicRocker Sep 3 2009, 09:33 PM

I just noticed it at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090903.html, so I came here to find a thread in which to offer my congratulations to Ted. Amazing work, as usual.

Posted by: TonyF Sep 4 2009, 01:07 PM

Ted that an amazing find congratulations on your discovery!!! I made a 4 frame animation from your image.
http://astronomy.fm/skylogs/heliosphere/236/Voyager-images-of-Despina-and-its-shadow-transiting-Neptune.html

How do you get access to the Voyager 2 data? would you be interested in doing a interview on one of our radio shows?

I think it is amazing to find data that has been over looked and look forward to more discoveries.

Tony

Posted by: tedstryk Sep 4 2009, 05:19 PM

Thanks! It is available at the Planetary Data System Imaging Node http://img.pds.nasa.gov/ and Rings Node http://pds-rings.seti.org/. They can also be searched here - http://old-pds-rings.seti.org/catalog/vgriss.html

Posted by: vikingmars Sep 15 2009, 10:22 AM

Ted, your work is just incredible !!!
I witnessed the VGR2 encounter at JPL in 1989 and I'm amazed by what you did with those "old" images.
Thanks again and CONGRATULATIONS !!!!

Posted by: tedstryk Sep 16 2009, 01:49 AM

Thanks! I really couldn't believe it, to be honest. I didn't expect to find anything new that was so prominent in images taken near closest approach. Maybe something that was brought out with special processing, or lurking in some Observatory Phase or Far Encounter picture, but this was a real surprise. The fact that Despina and its shadow are similar in size to reseau marks is probably to blame.