Using Cassini Raw Images, An Update Options

[djellison]

Over the past 3 years, we've been fortunate enough to have an ever expanding library of nearly 200,000 images from the Mars Exploration Rovers thrown onto the web as uncalibrated JPG's for enthusiasts like ourselves to get our teeth in to. The success of this is written on the walls of UMSF and elsewhere, and most remarkably, the scientists and engineers involved were pleased to see people getting their hands on 'their' data. Jim Bell even commented on Planetary Radio in November '05 :
"The team really appreciates the public support, and we put the images out there every day on marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov and people download them and make their own mosaics and panoramas and do their own analysis and we think that's great - it's great to have the public along for the ride"

Cassini followed suit and after some trouble getting images that were not overly stretched the workflow was sorted out and amazing images have been making it onto the JPL website ever since. From time to time we've seen some great results - mosaics, colour composites, animation - great work and a fantastic credit to the Cassini team, their policy of putting images online and the example set by MER.

However - over the last 18 months or so there have been some rumours and unpleasant undertones regarding Cassini imagery. Some enthusiasts who have created amazing images found that their creations were not universally appreciated. There seemed to be an unspoken 'look but don't touch' policy in place regarding the raw JPG's and thus they stopped working with Cassini imagery or took down bits of their websites and so on.

Over the past year or so, the UMSF mod and admin team have been discussing this, and recently we contacted JPL for clarification. Could we find some way to give people the confidence to get creative with the Cassini images as they have with MER images? I want to thank the Cassini outreach team for responding to us so positively and for everyone involved in helping us establish in writing what we all hoped was true, but were perhaps a little unsure of. I'm happy to report that the Cassini images are out there for us to use and enjoy in exactly the same way we do with MER imagery.

To confirm that - recently there has been an addition to the text on the Raw Images page saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

"Welcome to the Cassini raw image section, where the Cassini mission and Cassini outreach are happy to provide these raw images for the public to use and enjoy. ... "

As with MER - if you do something with the Cassini images - you should cite where the data comes from. For MER it has always been NASA/JPL/Cornell and for Cassini it should be NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute. For those of you that may have had concerns or doubts about getting thoroughly stuck in to the Cassini imagery, then you can put those fears aside and get stuck in - to cite a senior Cassini team member:

"Our intent in creating the raw image page was to accomplish exactly what Jim Bell said for the MER Project. The public is paying the bill for this, so we should be doing everything we can to help them enjoy the ride"

So - crack open your photo editing software and start exploring Saturn!

Thanks to Alice and the team at JPL for helping us with this, and personal thanks to the rest of the mod and admin team who, as ever, knew the rights words to say at the right time.

Doug

[CarolynPorco]

Everyone,

Interesting comments, along the lines -- both in number and nature -- of what I expected. I'm relieved that the majority of you `get' where we are coming from, and thank you very much for your understanding and support.

Some clarifications and comments:

- When I refer to `doing science' with the images and `scooping', I am referring to professional scientists publishing results from the raw JPGs before the Cassini Imaging scientists do. I am not referring to amateurs enjoying the real-time analysis and speculation of what's in the images scientifically. If you read my early Captain's Logs, I believe I even invited the public to enjoy this activity along with us. Also, I'm glad that you realize that mere sighting of anything in these images -- small moons, geysers, etc -- does not constitute a credited `discovery' on the part of someone looking at our images. This is so for several reasons, two obvious ones of which are: (i) it is almost certain someone here at CICLOPS has already seen it, since we go through all the images as soon as they come down to look for such things and to choose the best images for release, and (ii) as several of you have already said, we were responsible for the scientific motivation, designing the observing strategy, sequencing the images, determining exposure times, etc., and the scientific results in them naturally gets credited to the Imaging Team. No one credits the discovery of America to the guy in the crow's nest of Christopher Columbus' ship.

And no, it won't look to us like we were scooped if your speculations pan out. They are just speculations, and these are a dime a dozen in any scientific discourse. Remember: we Cassini scientists aren't exactly sitting idly by, but are forming our own speculations. The real brunt of the work, however, occurs in *proving* the speculation, and that's what separates the women from the girls.

So, feel free to speculate away and have fun. Your activities in this area are not a bother at all. In fact, it's been fun to drop in on those the very few times I have. And now that you know the coast is clear, feel free to submit your speculations at Sector 6.

- While one of the UMSF members might have said that the imaging team concluded that the Enc plume was a camera artifact, there were members of the team who felt otherwise. Given that it easily *could* have been a camera artifact, we had to be cautious (as another one of you so wisely said). We in fact knew they were real features long before the November 2005 Enceladus high phase image came down. But we didn't say anything about it outside of the Cassini project until our Science paper came out in March 2006, in which we also included the November results.

- The purpose of my post was to explain the point of view we here at CICLOPS have taken on this matter and to clear the air. As it seems I have been successful in this, I will now bow out and get back to tending to our experiment. We are in the midst of preparing a big image release, probably for mid- to late next week, and we hope you enjoy the results.

Hope to see you at Sector 6.

Best,
Carolyn Porco