Voyager mosaics and images of Jupiter, A fresh look at some ancient stuff Options

[djellison]

Bingo. The problem wasn't that the antenna moved, the problem was that it GOT moved.

[EDG]

True, I forgot about that part.

Sorry, I'm still bitter about Galileo - so much data lost (well, not even acquired in the first place). It served well as a teaser for what was there, and while it did send back some good images that did clear up a few things, it also raised more questions without any possibility of getting answers from the current dataset because it was so limited. IMO we really need another probe up there at Jupiter doing what Cassini is doing around Saturn (which is what Galileo would have done had it worked properly). Maybe it's not a failure, but personally I don't call it a success either.

And ye gods, that image compression thing drove me nuts, at least in the early stages of the mission (pre-C10 ish) - it was so frustrating to see the most interesting parts of the image often obliterated by the blocks.

[ZLD]

I wouldn't call it a success either. However, from mistakes, people are able to learn how to do better in the future.

NASA does what it can with the limited money available. Yet, they've still helped pave the way for a global internet, microwave communications, digital cameras, new materials and alloys and all sorts of other things.

So then, what impact did Galileo have on the world? Not a lot, really. But in the realm of science, we learned that Io is fantastically volcanically active, Europa is extremely likely to have a liquid ocean somewhere underneath the ice, a confirmation and extension on what was believed about Jupiter's atmosphere (which is really important when looking at Jupiter class exoplanets), a lot of information regarding Jupiter's magnetosphere and the interactions it has with the moons, and many other bits of information that will help pave the way for future probes and research within our solar system and beyond.

In light of that, I can't say that I'm not a little worried about JUNO and the massive solar array that it requires. Jupiter is a gravity well for all sorts of rocks, small and large. Increasing the overall size of the space probe also increases the chance for a collision and having it happen to one of the immense solar panels would be devastating. Here's to wishing that mission all the best.

I am truly excited to be living in a time where we as humans are able to explore so much and yet understand that it is still so little in the vastness of the cosmos.

[EDG]

In light of that, I can't say that I'm not a little worried about JUNO and the massive solar array that it requires. Jupiter is a gravity well for all sorts of rocks, small and large. Increasing the overall size of the space probe also increases the chance for a collision and having it happen to one of the immense solar panels would be devastating. Here's to wishing that mission all the best.

I've obviously missed something here, but why on earth would a Jupiter orbiter require a solar panel? RTGs would make much more sense, surely?

EDIT: Never mind, I found its page on wikipedia. Huh... well, it looks cool with the panels extended. Apparently it's because they can use solar panels out there, and RTGs are in short supply.

Though I'm somewhat horrified to see that there's no mention of imaging the satellites of Jupiter in the list of its objectives!

[Decepticon]

EDG You might like to look at this thread.. http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=2548 Your worries about moon imaging are talked about and how this mission really is not designed to observe Jupiter's moons. Something that I was not happy to see to.

But we will get some amazing images and internal science of Jupiter.

[ZLD]

Unfortunately JUNO likely will not be photographing too much of the moons of Jupiter in its primary mission. However, I'm still hopeful that some imaging will be done for the 4 or 5 inner satellites. I'm also hopeful for something in an extended mission though I'm not sure how much propellant JUNO would have left by then and how possible it would be to change the orbit to better reach the satellites. However, the camera isn't meant to last all that long. We'll have to wait and see (the most fun thing to do in UMSF of course!).

Best description of JUNO I saw was in the thread Decepticon mentioned:

gndonald
"this is the sort of 'basic science' mission that needs to be carried out so that we can plan properly for the next major mission without any more incidents like dropping the atmosphere probe into the wrong region as happened with the Galileo's mission."

[elakdawalla]

Juno will not likely survive long beyond its primary mission, because its orbit will rapidly evolve to take it deeply into Jupiter's radiation belts. It is expected to be fried not long after the primary mission ends.

[Bjorn Jonsson]

Exactly three months ago I posted a big Voyager 1 mosaic of the Great Red Spot (GRS):

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=163698

Today I'm posting a slightly improved version. The first improvement is that I'm now using a significantly improved formula for creating synthetic green. This makes the color more realistic (it was too reddish) and also more similar to the color of the Voyager 2 mosaic I posted recently (actually I used the Voyager 2 mosaic to determine the new formula). Secondly, the new version is geometrically more accurate. When working on the earlier version, during one of the processing steps a software bug somehow caused me to mess up planetocentric latitude and planetographic latitude without noticing it until recently (I'm not sure why I didn't notice it earlier). The effect was to make the resulting mosaic very similiar to the view Voyager 1 would have had from a bit higher above the equatorial plane than it really was so it wasn't particularly serious.

The new mosaic, at the top an enhanced, sharpened version and then a version that should have approximately natural color and contrast:

[PDP8E]

Bjorn,
Your work is stunning and humbling --- Thank you for my new background screen, you made my cleanup my desktop so I may see it !

[aventor.com]

Bjorn, hope you don't mind.
I run your last enhanced & sharpened jupiter image through ImageJ's FFT filter to remove some noticeable artifacts (it is lossy though), I attach a crop of the original and the final result for comparison.

There's plenty of tutorials on how to use imageJ's FFT filter for patterned noise removal so I won't get into details.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Floyd]

Did you accidentally load the same image twice? I have stacked the images and jump back and forth and see no difference.

[ugordan]

There's a difference in that the second image doesn't have the nearly-horizontal linear noise that's present for some reason.

[Stu]

Bit like picking a greenfly wing off a huge bunch of roses, I'd say; I think Bjorn's pics are as close to perfect as it's possible to get.

[Hungry4info]

I have stacked the images and jump back and forth and see no difference.

I had to look *really* closely but the differences are there, and affect ~pixel-sized the image noise

[machi]

nearly-horizontal linear noise that's present for some reason.

It's prominent kind of noise in Voyager's images. It can be suppressed by calibration, but not completely.

Aventor:
Nice result, horizontal lines are gone and fine details remains.