MESSENGER News Thread, news, updates and discussion |
MESSENGER News Thread, news, updates and discussion |
Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Jun 17 2005, 06:54 AM
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#31
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Yes indeedy. Quite a bit (even including using Messenger's laser altimeter to map Venusian cloud top altitudes). The question is whether it will do much of note that Venus Express won't (hopefully) already have done.
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Jun 28 2005, 12:05 PM
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#32
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Jun 15 2005, 07:57 PM) "Because Messenger is usually too close to Earth to see it as more than a speck..." Gaaah. I'm going senile. Make that "too FAR FROM Earth to see it as more than a speck". Usually, true, but it's getting closer all the time during these few months. The mission site now has animations depicting the Earth/Venus flybys, and I have some hope that Messenger could produce the "definitive" CCD images of Earth from space. There are darn few good CCD images of the full Earth, but Messenger will have an almost-full Earth for most of its approach, when Earth would fill and more than fill its camera frame. If they got some full-color shots at 6-hour intervals, it would be a wonderful thing, and an unusual photo credit for a Mercury-bound craft. |
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Jun 28 2005, 12:27 PM
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#33
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Galileo and NEAR both did it - producing movies of the flybys by the time they'd finished
Doug |
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Jun 28 2005, 01:37 PM
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#34
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Member Group: Members Posts: 648 Joined: 9-May 05 From: Subotica Member No.: 384 |
They did it....BUT WHERE ARE THE IMAGES OR MOVIES???
There are only few images...here and there. -------------------- The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.
Jules H. Poincare My "Astrophotos" gallery on flickr... |
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Jun 28 2005, 01:50 PM
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#35
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
ERmmm..
NEAR - http://near.jhuapl.edu/Images/.Anim.html specifically - http://near.jhuapl.edu/Voyage/img/earth_swby_lg.mpg Galileo http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/earthmoon-all.cfm Took 60 seconds to find them Doug |
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Jun 28 2005, 03:24 PM
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#36
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IMG to PNG GOD Group: Moderator Posts: 2254 Joined: 19-February 04 From: Near fire and ice Member No.: 38 |
And if you want thousands of PDS-formatted Galileo images of the Earth there's always this:
http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/Nav/GLL_search.pl |
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Jun 28 2005, 04:48 PM
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#37
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
QUOTE (djellison @ Jun 28 2005, 05:27 AM) The NEAR stuff is of a half-Earth and looks like it was compressed to the point of severe data loss. You can see lone pixels of red standing out with no other red around them. Maybe there's quality data there somewhere? Galileo's images are nice, but suffer just a bit for being a very gibbous Earth and (like NEAR) highlighting Antarctica, which misses out on the egocentric "There I am!" potential, but also just looks atypical of any other land mass. What I'm hoping is that Messenger produces a better product. Galileo's are not bad, but fall shy of canon-level (currently, that one overused Apollo image is about the only such image to have a full Earth and an inhabited continent). |
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Guest_Sunspot_* |
Aug 2 2005, 07:45 PM
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#38
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Guests |
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/pres...se_8_02_05.html
NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, headed toward the first study of Mercury from orbit, swung by its home planet today for a gravity assist that propelled it deeper into the inner solar system. Mission operators at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md, say MESSENGER’s systems performed flawlessly as the spacecraft swooped around Earth, coming to a closest approach point of about 1,458 miles (2,347 kilometers) over central Mongolia at 3:13 p.m. EDT. The spacecraft used the tug of Earth’s gravity to change its trajectory significantly, bringing its average orbit distance nearly 18 million miles closer to the Sun and sending it toward Venus for another gravity-assist flyby next year. |
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Aug 4 2005, 06:33 AM
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#39
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2492 Joined: 15-January 05 From: center Italy Member No.: 150 |
waitng for the movie...
The picture reported in the Messenger site, taken with a telescope from Earth, show some darkening in the central part... look to this enhanced version: Could be due to spacecraft re-orientation? -------------------- I always think before posting! - Marco -
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Guest_Myran_* |
Aug 4 2005, 01:35 PM
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#40
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Either reorientation or its in a constant slow rotation.
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Aug 28 2005, 02:19 AM
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#41
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 13 Joined: 4-June 05 From: Michigan, US Member No.: 400 |
Just noticed this: http://planetary.org/news/2005/messenger_f...movie_0826.html
The movie of the rotating Earth receding in the distance is beautiful. It appears the dark, non-reflective area (i.e. dry land) going into darkness between 07:00-09:00UT is the north coast of Australia. Then near the end of the clip the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa are visible through the clouds. |
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Aug 28 2005, 02:54 AM
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#42
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Member Group: Members Posts: 356 Joined: 12-March 05 Member No.: 190 |
Oh that is just spec-freakin'-tacular! So smooth animation too! Wish there were a higer resolution version though.
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Aug 28 2005, 01:48 PM
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#43
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Director of Galilean Photography Group: Members Posts: 896 Joined: 15-July 04 From: Austin, TX Member No.: 93 |
We do have one hell of a beautiful planet.
Anyone know of rotation movies of other planets? -------------------- Space Enthusiast Richard Hendricks
-- "The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss. Again as usual, they did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely impossible." --Rescue Party, Arthur C Clarke Mother Nature is the final inspector of all quality. |
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Aug 28 2005, 04:14 PM
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#44
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
QUOTE (hendric @ Aug 28 2005, 06:48 AM) No links here, but a quick list from memory: Jupiter is probably the most prolific, with both Voyagers and Cassini having done movie-quality sequences. I think Cassini also did an approach sequence on Saturn, but it is not released yet. The data is out there for partial rotation sequences of Titan and Iapteus, but that will never be full from a single pass. There's a nice partial rotation movie of Io in Jupiter's shadow. Pioneer Venus has a few frames for Venus, but nothing movielike. |
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Aug 28 2005, 05:47 PM
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#45
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Interplanetary Dumpster Diver Group: Admin Posts: 4404 Joined: 17-February 04 From: Powell, TN Member No.: 33 |
QUOTE (JRehling @ Aug 28 2005, 04:14 PM) No links here, but a quick list from memory: Jupiter is probably the most prolific, with both Voyagers and Cassini having done movie-quality sequences. I think Cassini also did an approach sequence on Saturn, but it is not released yet. The data is out there for partial rotation sequences of Titan and Iapteus, but that will never be full from a single pass. There's a nice partial rotation movie of Io in Jupiter's shadow. Pioneer Venus has a few frames for Venus, but nothing movielike. I imagine one could be made from the Mariner '67 Mars images. -------------------- |
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