New Horizons Jupiter Encounter Options

[elakdawalla]

Sorry for the (in retrospect) stupid question -- thanks. GNU Tar did the trick.

All by myself I found another application online called ImageTOOLSca that can batch convert the FITS files to a few other formats -- Bjorn's IMG2PNG can't handle these. So they're being batch converted to TIFF now, then I'll run them through ACDSee to batch convert them to 16-bit PNG, and then to create JPEG thumbnails, and then I'll fiddle around with the metadata in the CUMINDEX.TAB file to create an html page to browse them all. So hopefully I'll have a useful webpage up for you folks in a couple of days. I'll also Zip all the PNGs together to save you all downloading the 6 GB .tar file.

Those of you out there who have messed with image calibration before and are interested in this data set -- can you have a look at the data set's documentation and see if there is any calibration step it would be worthwhile for me to perform on these images? It appears that ImageTOOLSca can do batch calibration as well, but I don't have the time to go in to the documentation and play around with the data to figure out whether any calibration is useful.

If this goes well maybe I'll have a go at the MVIC data too...we'll see...

--Emily

[volcanopele]

I've been using ImageTOOLSca for the LORRI and MVIC images and it seems to work great (particularly for converting the data sets to something I can use in Photoshop). WRT calibration, the Level3 data has already been calibrated, and no further work (that ImageTOOLSca would preform) is necessary.

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Sorry for the (in retrospect) stupid question -- thanks. GNU Tar did the trick.

It wasn't stupid at all. For some reason, I had the impression that you knew about GNU (no pun intended) or had used it before, and I was afraid of flunking an online pop quiz.

[tedstryk]

It wasn't stupid at all. For some reason, I had the impression that you knew about GNU (no pun intended) or had used it before, and I was afraid of flunking an online pop quiz.

What do you mean? Of course everyone knows what GNU is! I did. Granted, I wouldn't have told you, but only because I wanted to see if you knew

[nprev]

Well, Ted, it's all gnuews to me...

[elakdawalla]

Sorry folks, it appears that that data release was inadvertent, so the New Horizons guys asked me to quit working with it, and it now appears that the links have been taken down. That's OK, I have plenty to keep me busy with Dawn about to launch and MESSENGER at Venus anyway! At least I learned how to deal with these data, so when the official release comes I'll be quick off the starting blocks...

--Emily

[Alan Stern]

Emily, all--

We will post the data at PDS as soon as the PDS certifies it. They are currently conducting the review. We don't want people working with things that may have inadvertent errors in them, potentially leading to spurious findings or even papers that could be written and then might be subject to retraction. So last night and today
we asked for PDS to take down the open data links until their peer review there is complete.

Hopefully, this will be quick. Our mission goal is to get it out there quickly, and right. Quickly alone isn't good enough. So we're waiting on PDS to finish their review and we will then release anything (hopefully everything) that is not at issue, holding back only what (if anything) we have to correct.

Sorry for the crossed wires. We didn't expect PDS to post the datsets until after they were peer reviewed
(a normal PDS step), so we were caught off guard when it all appeared on the web a day or two back.
What a week....

-Alan

[volcanopele]

well, that's cool. Still sounds like the official PDS will be earlier than the date suggested in the data release document on that same page (May 2008).

Sorry for my part in all this. I went to that page to get an answer to Emily's question as to when the PDS release was. Lo and behold, it was already there, and it certainly wasn't there a few days before.

[dvandorn]

How could you know, Jason? If the links are there and active, it's not your fault for thinking that the release has occurred. It's a natural, almost inescapable conclusion.

-the other Doug

[stevesliva]

Does any one know if New Horizons is like to encounter a Neptune trailing Trojan, when New Horizons crosses Neptune's orbit?

I don't believe any of the Neptunian Trojans so far discovered are in that trailing Lagrange point. A past PI perspective update did in fact mention that NH will pass through the Lagrange region, and that something may serendipitiously be encountered. There's mention of it in a thread here...
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...=2196&st=11

The fact that there are likely many objects in that region makes one really root for the new KBO+etc search telescopes to come online all the sooner and scour that region. And then find a KBO target for NH.

Wikipedia actually has a good list... 5 Trojans at the leading Lagrange point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objec...grangian_points

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Alan Stern answered here. We also discussed Neptunian Trojans in this thread.

[volcanopele]

A nice overview presentation on the science results from New Horizons was given by Hal Weaver at last week's NASA Planetary Science Subcommittee meeting:

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/pss/presentations/weaver_nh_j.pdf (this file is over 40MB in size)

While much of the info in this file isn't new to diligent readers here, there are a few very interesting slides of note. A couple of the slides use images posted here by Emily Lakdawalla and dilo. Great job guys. There are some slides shows results from LEISA and MVIC at Jupiter. The MVIC images of Jupiter's terminator are particularly fascinating. Another fascinating slide with stuff I haven't seen elsewhere are the results from observations of Ganymede in eclipse. These show aurorae due interaction between Ganymede's rarefied atmosphere and Jupiter's magnetosphere. Additional data presented include results from a stellar occultation and ALICE measurements of Ganymede's atmosphere.

[dilo]

Thanks for the highlight, Jason!
Nice to see my nickname under NASA logo... I will ask to put my full name instead, but probably is too late!

[dilo]

I received an answer from author (Hal Weaver); I think I should share with all you this section from his email:

As I said orally during my presentation, the folks at Un-Manned Space
Flight.com and the Planetary Society (I'm cc'ing Emily Lakdawalla too) are
doing some amazing things with the New Horizons data. Their support and
enthusiasm are very much appreciated.

[marsman]

Yesterday, I attended a public lecture by Alan Stern at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. It was nearly a full house with lots of questions about the New Horizons mission and his role in NASA. It was wonderful to hear the "oohs and "aahs" when he showed the volcanic plumes of Io from the recent Jupiter encounter. So many people don't yet know the wonders of our Solar System.

A data point I was unaware of is that Pluto is tilted 120 degrees. He also mentioned that New Horizons spacecraft will never catch up with the Voyagers because they received numerous gravity assists from the gas giant planets. Lots of discussion about "dwarf planets" and Kuiper Belt objects. He gave an interesting analogy that just as large stars are the rarity while small dwarf red stars are the majority in a galaxy, big planets are the rarity is our Solar System and small "dwarf planets" like kuiper belt object are the majority. This analogy can be taken at even a larger scale where very large galaxies are greatly outnumbered by smaller galaxies.

Webcast of the lecture can be viewed at the link below.


http://www.nasm.si.edu/webcasts/archive.cfm