Mercury Flyby 1 Options

[SFJCody]

A third image is up:

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/scienc...MG.DLS.fits.jpg

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[ugordan]

Here's an animation of the OPNAV frames so far:



EDIT: Edited to add the 4th frame.

This post has been edited by ugordan: Jan 13 2008, 12:03 PM

[SFJCody]

The images have been renamed. New links can be found at:

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/pics/

[imipak]

The caption for the latest image caught my eye.

"...this image has a resolution of about 44 kilometers/pixel (27 miles/pixel). MESSENGER will pass 200 kilometers (124 miles) above Mercury's surface..."

ie., the closest approach would appear five pixels from the limb (if it happened to be perfectly situated relative to the camera) in that image! Really brings home the incredible precision of the engineering needed to control a spacecraft.

[PDP8E]

Here is the latest Mercury image from Messenger that I lightly processed.
As a rule I really dont like working from JPEGs (wish I had the raw data!)

cheers!

[tedstryk]

Here is my latest on the newest image. These are not bad for jpegs.

[tedstryk]

While we are waiting, I made a new stand-in red filter to make an approximate UV/Blue/Green color image (sort of Voyager-esque in that sense - Voyager had an orange filter, but often press release images were UV/Blue(orViolet)/Green). I have attached links not only to the large jpeg (which is heavily compressed), but also to the PNG file, which, be warned, is 7 megabytes.

At the very least, it kept regions which are brighter in UV from simply seeming desaturated like they did in the version I posted earlier.



JPEG Version

PNG Version - 7 MB

[nprev]

Beautiful, Ted; thank you!!!

Entirely unoriginal here, but can't help remarking on the fact that Mercury looks like the Moon from a distance, but not at closer scales. The large craters seem much shallower (gravitation differential? magma fill?), and the fresh ones (the punchbowls) often produce bright ejecta...very different. The lack of cratering in the wrinkled terrain is also notable.

I can hardly wait. Go MESSENGER!!!!

[volcanopele]

An attempt at identifying some of the craters in the latest opnav image:

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Bjorn Jonsson]

While we are waiting, I made a new stand-in red filter to make an approximate UV/Blue/Green color image (sort of Voyager-esque in that sense - Voyager had an orange filter, but often press release images were UV/Blue(orViolet)/Green). I have attached links not only to the large jpeg (which is heavily compressed), but also to the PNG file, which, be warned, is 7 megabytes.

Wow! This is by far the best global image of Mercury I have ever seen and should remain so for a few days at least .

[SFJCody]

Image 4 reveals *lots* more details!


http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/scienc...0108616141M.jpg


That image of Ted Stryk's makes me annoyed. Annoyed because Mercury has been represented by old b/w photomosiacs with prominent seams for decades, when that beautiful image was hiding in the data all along. That's what should have been in the textbooks!

[ugordan]

The 4th image (based on spacecraft clock, it was taken on January 12, 2008, 09:06 UTC, precisely one day after the last one) shows nice detail, indeed. Here's an enhancement to show more details on the sunlit limb, magnified 2x:



I've also added this most recent frame into the enhanced OPNAV animation in post #107.

There'll probably be only one more frame released before the science observations start some 30 hours before C/A. Extrapolating into the "future", this would be the (non-magnified) pixel size of Mercury on Jan 13, 09:06 UTC seen by the NAC camera: Solar System Simulator view. 70% larger than the latest one.

That image was presumably already taken and downlinked and MESSENGER should be into the color approach movie sequence right now.

[Stu]

My own humble attempt to find some detail in the new image... you guys clearly have nothing to be worried about!

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

Where did you get that 4th image from? I can't find it here -http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/

[ugordan]

Where did you get that 4th image from? I can't find it here -http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/

It's uploaded to the web server at http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/pics/ , but no caption was written yet.