[X] My Assistant

[Brian Burns]

Sorry if this has been discussed anywhere but I can't seem to find much information about it - why is it that Voyager's pointing is so haphazard, as in this video of all the RAW Jupiter images - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf5QJ8iFxUs?

I came across this link which says that pointing information for the images exists - http://pds-rings.seti.org/voyager/ck.html, but have also read on this forum that it's not very accurate. Would the information be useful in automatically aligning composite images and mosaics, or is it too coarse? Would it at least be useful in getting general alignments that could be refined by hand?

And does anyone know why the cameras could not be pointed more accurately, or why accurate information could not be returned with the images? I assume it was some technical limitation, but just curious what it might be.

[Bjorn Jonsson]

Yes, they're type 1 kernels - they just have pointing information for when the images were taken

Converting a type 1 CK kernel to type 2 is something I have regularly needed to do (I did it for most of the Voyager CK kernels).

This is what I did with the Voyager 2 Neptune CK kernel file (and I used comparable parameters for Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus kernels):

ckspanit -in vg2_nep_version1_type1_iss_sedr.bc -out vg2_nep_test_typ2.bc -typ 2 -tol 9000

[Brian Burns]

Thanks - I guess this means there are gaps in the pointing data...

I'm just getting started with this pointing stuff, so it will take me a while to get there. So far I can just project a straight-on view to a simple cylindrical map, but need to incorporate the pointing information and axial tilt, etc. Lots of trigonometry...