EPOXI Mission News Options

[machi]

I've made new entry on my blog, now with three Hartley 2 animations.
They are similar to my old Hartley 2 animation, but with more calibrated images (5 images vs. 43 images), they are more precise and much more detailed.
Two animations are available on youtube - link 1, link 2.
Third (animated gif) is on blog.

[elakdawalla]

Some of your best work yet

The second Youtube animation shows a lot of "sparkles" in the coma. Are these just noise/hot pixels amplified by the contrast stretch, which appear to move because of the morphing? Or are they comet snowballs twinkling in the sunlight, traceable from one frame to the next?

[Explorer1]

The gif on your site is just jaw-dropping; the snowballs gives a sense of place and movement so perfectly....

[machi]

Thanks!

The second Youtube animation shows a lot of "sparkles" in the coma. Are these just noise/hot pixels amplified by the contrast stretch, which appear to move because of the morphing? Or are they comet snowballs twinkling in the sunlight, traceable from one frame to the next?

I didn't trace "snowballs" in morphing, because this would be extremely difficult and time consuming (hundreds of working hours instead of tenths). This is reason, why I used original data in animated gif, so you can see global moving of snowballs around comet.
So I think, that your sparkles are probably snowballs changing position from frame to frame (they disappear for little moment).
If you are watching carefully, then you can see how some snowballs are moving around comet (but still animated gif is better in this way).

[Paolo]

speaking of EPOXI and Deep Impact, does anybody know what is the current status of the mission? I understand that the 2nd extended mission was not funded, but is the spacecraft still being tracked? has it been put in hibernation?
any info?

[Paolo]

I have posted the same question to the Deep Impact facebook page and here is the answer (in first person...)

I am still being tracked -- all spacecraft are tracked at some basic level. No, as far as I know, I'm not in hibernation... I actually took some pictures recently that I'm slowly radioing back to Earth.

[Paolo]

The latest mission tracking requirements published on the DSN Resource Allocation Planning Service website confirm that Deep Impact will be routinely tracked at least once per week until at least 2021.
See http://rapweb.jpl.nasa.gov/Events/DIF_event.pdf and http://rapweb.jpl.nasa.gov/Requirements/DIF.pdf

[djellison]

Consider that a strawman placeholder for an Extended Extended mission. As of yet - no such mission has been approved/funded.

[Tayfun Öner]

Here is another collaboration project. Daniel (machi) kindly made his animation frames available. Clearing the erroneous points due to jets took some time. Missing parts can be completed later for Celestia.

Attached File(s)

 hartley2_model.avi ( 694.46K ) Number of downloads: 178

 

[machi]

Cool!

It would be interesting compare volume of the final (celestia) model to official data - 0.84 km3.

[Paolo]

the EPOXI mission site has made available FITS of the recently released deep sky pictures:
http://epoxi.umd.edu/3gallery/deepsky_challenge.shtml
and http://epoxi.umd.edu/3gallery/deepsky.shtml for the original deep sky picture release

[elakdawalla]

I've just played a bit with the Deep Impact deep-sky images. They're very pretty, but cosmic ray hits are a problem. I strongly encourage UMSF members to go to the website Paolo linked to and do something with the data and submit whatever you do to their website. They seem very surprised not to have received any image submissions since they posted the data. We need to show them that it's worth their while to be so open with data! If you're not accustomed to FITS data, IMG2PNG can handle it, or you can use the FITS Liberator. I'd be happy to try to answer any questions about how to work with either one.

[machi]

...They seem very surprised not to have received any image submissions since they posted the data. We need to show them that it's worth their while to be so open with data! ...

I'm downloading M51 images for more than week (and still I have only 60%). After FUP depleted, I have now slow connection + their server is not much supportive for slow connections, so effective speed is now around 2048 bps! (Same as Pioneer 10 from Jupiter)

BTW, nice results, I didn't realize, that they used imaging with filters, so results can be even more interesting (because of color), that those on their pages (brilliant work).

[ElkGroveDan]

I'm downloading M51 images for more than week

Maybe one of us could mail you a DVD next time

[ugordan]

Here's my take on the M51 set, longest exposure filter 1, 2 and 4 sets combined. Clear frames for luminosity, 514 and 750 nm filters for color.