So I'm assuming that there is already a fixed, narrow cone of space that
can be intensely studied for objects that can be observed by NH after the
Pluto encounter? I hope we get updates on how the search is going,
negative as well as positive results, (has it started in earnest yet?).

It depends upon to what target.

Anyway, this would be of some help to get an even closer to a desired target along with employing own propulsion.

After adjusting the trayectory of New Horizon spacecraft to be closer to Pluto, it might deviate its trayectory in somewhat?

However, this case must be evaluated since changing the trayectory will implicate many plan changes such as the calibration of scientific instrument for collecting data from Pluto during its close journery. Let us see it in future whenever if there is a new interesting target.

They have about 9 years to look for a KBO target.

We did a pilot search in 005-2006 to prove the technique but Pluto is against the center of the Milky Way in Sagittarius This makes useful searches too time consuming-- the starfields are too dense! So we have always planned to begin in 2011 when Pluto moves out of the worst of it.

-Alan

Alan, is there any chance that one or more of those test search images might be released to the public? I'm just really curious to see what they look like...dense starfields at high resolution are interesting in themselves.

Slightly OT, here, but finally went over to the NH site and wow that cake looks good! Might have to take a trip to a bakery...

http://www.pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPer...011708_2_lg.jpg

Odd, I don't remember Jupiter having a Great Blue Spot

Alan, I'm sure you guys have already thought of this, but have you considered using NH itself to help the search? I note that NH can already image Pluto, so it stands a reasonable chance of imaging promising KBOs too. Using the baseline between NH and Earth ought to lead to much larger movements of the objects than just watching the area from Earth and comparing results from year to year. I don't know how you guys do these searches, but if I were writing the program myself, I'd think larger moves would be a lot easier to detect.

Failing that, given that the camera is so good, has anyone thought about trying to do a parallax measurement to someplace far away -- like the Pleiades? It's a long way to Pluto and not a heck of a lot else to do on the way. :-)

--Greg

Been there, done that, search this forum for the reasons why it wont work.

Doug

I, on the other hand, don't remember anyone saying that was a natural color composite...

Doug is right on, that was discussed previously.

However, John Spencer pointed out to me that I'd oversimplified the original reply I made on when we will search for KBOs: In essence, Pluto doesn't really clear the galactic center star fields until 2012, but to quote John and give you a little more detail about why we begin in 2011: "Our advantage waiting till around 2011 to resume the search is that the search area is MUCH smaller than it was in 2004, so we can hit each spot with a lot more images to subtract the background stars." 2012 just gets better, of course, as the search area decreases more and PLuto is then clear of the dense star fields.

-Alan

Ah, you did already answer this in 2006. Oops.

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=76307

I'm still curious, though, if it could be used to get parallax measurements of stars or other objects, using the (now) 10AU baseline.

--Greg

Earth gives you 2 AU of baseline, so you just have to beat the resolution of the best Earth-based telescopes by that factor (now 5... eventually 15-25). HST has about 10x LORRI's resolution, so we aren't there yet, but will be later.

Raw and calibrated files from the Jupiter encounter is now available on the PDS. Now don't all rush to download while I am getting 770 KB/sec. Now, I really should find a way to get these files ingested into ISIS:

http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/missions/newhorizons/index.html

Great news, thanks for the heads up, VP!

You can all now go ahead and download I waiting till tonight to download the MVIC and LEISA data (now have all the LORRI stuff). It was interfering with my Halo game.

Thanks very much for the heads up, Jason! Working on the MVIC data now...

I still had all the LORRI stuff on my machine from its premature release in May, so I'm now uploading the IMG2PNGed versions to the Amazon S3 server. As soon as it's up and I've got the file permissions set, I'll post a link to an index file for y'all.

--Emily

Keep in mind that not all the data was released last May. At lot of the late encounter data (LORRI data volume 3 I do believe) was not in the volumes released then.

That's the piece of data I was missing. Strictly speaking, I guess I really need to compare Hipparcos' resolution with Lorri's -- unless HST is actually better than Hipparcos. Also, I suppose it's worth pointing out that HST is heavily booked for other things, while Lorri really hasn't got a lot to do for the next several years -- and for many years after it passes Pluto.

With a 2AU baseline, Hipparcos got measures as far as 1600 light years. I think Alan suggested that New Horizons would still be functioning when it exited the Kuiper Belt, many years from now. With a 40 or even 50 AU baseline, I like to think that Lorri could get rather good Parallax measures to very remote things. Maybe not as far as 40,000 light years, but it'd be nice to know for sure.

Anyway, the lack of any "parallax program" for NH suggests that it just doesn't work. As you say, even if Lorri is very impressive, it may just not be quite impressive enough. But if it's just that no one has looked at it yet, it'd be nice to know what the numbers come out to.

--Greg

Think of the downlink bandwidth available for parallax observations at those distances and the available power for LORRI. NH may be alive long after exiting the Kuiper belt, but that doesn't mean the cameras will be.

Drat. You're right. Back to the beginning then.

Anybody else trying to use wget to get these files and getting "403 forbidden" errors?

--Emily

I'm waiting for you to get them - as there isn't a 'browse' folder with these - so I can enjoy the Emily-o-matic PDS-for-the-public amazing web-pages.

Doug

OK, hope you can be patient! Might be a couple of days. In the meantime, the May versions are here:
http://planetary.org/data/nh/

I'm beginning to mess about with the MVIC data. Anybody else working with this? Reading the documentation on the disk, my impression was that each FITS file was supposed to contain two versions of the image, one "bias-subtracted and flattened" and one "bias-subtracted, flattened, and distortion-removed," plus a couple of other images containing information on errors and data quality. However, the tools I've tried to use to display the FITS images (ImageTOOLSca and DS9) seem to be showing me only one image for each FITS file. My understanding of how FITS format works is pretty shaky; is anybody else working with this data who can give me a little advice?

--Emily

Ahhhh... So THAT's what the four almost identical images are in each FITS file. I was under the impression those were 4 channels, but they looked the same. Maybe next time I should read some documentation first

I'm using the FITS Liberator 2 plugin for Photoshop but it seems to have slowed down on me after opening a whole bunch of NEAR calibrated images. I though it was a memory leak, but it's slow even after rebooting...

P.S. I, too, can't access the archives anymore...

Thanks for the pointer to FITS Liberator, ugordan, it's letting me see the "distortion removed" images.

Now that I can open the images that I want, I have a question. DN in the images seems to vary from -999 to some number above 2000. I have choices when I import the image in how I stretch it. If I set the minimum DN to 0, the image looks black in all the right places; clipped pixels are in places that I think should be black space. So it seems I should set the minimum DN to 0. How about the maximum, though? Should I set it to the maximum value for the pixel in each individual image, or should I set it so some arbitrary number that is the same for all images that seems higher than the maximum DN I'm encountering in this data set, like maybe to 2400 or something?

--Emily

I suppose it doesn't matter to what highest DN you set it, as long as you keep it constant if you want relative brightness differences between each filter preserved. Apparently the Red and NIR filtered images are the brightest so that can provide for an upper bound, especially the saturated pixels.

Here's a large swath of Jupiter's terminator from MVIC, red/blue natural-ish colors:


And a closeup of atmospheric waves the team reported as one of their findings:

Which images did you use for that, the ones with or without distortion removed? I'm playing with some Io images (the ones in folder 20070228_003496) and attempting to use the distortion-removed versions and it seems there has been filter-to-filter distortion introduced in the process; I can align them to make a color pic only if I use the versions of the images that have not had distortion removed. Now I'm really confused.

--Emily

I was using first images in the FIT files, that would be without distortion removal I guess. I don't think using "distortion-corrected" images for such a small target as Io is worthwhile. The rescaling involved could actually blur the original data.

As a reality check, here's two Photoshop files, each containing the four Io images from that observation. Try to line up the mc0 and mc2 (Red and NIR) channels in the distortion-removed one; I can't do it.

http://planetary.org/emily/0034966318_0x536_sci_1.psd
http://planetary.org/emily/0034966318_0x53...ion-removed.psd

Guess maybe I'll stick with the non-corrected ones?

--Emily

Where are you getting the distortion removed files? I've been downloading the archives for MVIC at http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/holdings/nh-j-....0/dataset.html . Are those the ones?

Yes, those are the ones.

BTW, are we sure this data is finally meant to be released, and not an accident like the last time? Seems odd the file access would suddenly be forbidden after just a day...

EDIT: Nevermind, I see it's just the http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/holdings/nh-j-...nhjumv_2002.tgz file that's broken.

Yes. Opening them in Photoshop using the FITS liberator plugin, the distortion removed files are Image 2, plane 1. I think. See page 53 of the ICD from the document folder for an explanation.

--Emily

That is a great plugin for Photoshop! Wish I knew about it before I bought the license for ImageVIEWca...

BTW, it looks like archive files larger than 2 GB are not available at this time. This includes the first volume of the LEISA dataset and the second volume of the MVIC dataset (both calibrated).

Although the archive files don't seem to be available (I've emailed Anne Raugh about this), it's easy to get the data files in question. They are all in one folder, so this wget command line will bring them down for you:

wget -r -np -e robots=off http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/holdings/nh-j-...0070228_003494/

--Emily

Almost precisely one year ago, on January 24 New Horizons took one of its first Kodak moment shots capturing Io and Ganymede. Just for fun I tried to colorize the LORRI shot, using one of Christopher Go's awesome Jupiter color shots. Here's what turned out:

Click to view attachment

Whaddya think? It's a sort of a reminder to some exciting times we had last year around this time.

Whaddui think? It's heartbreakingly beautiful, Gordan. I want to go. Now!

Beautiful- nicely done!

John.

I got a nice email from Anne Raugh this morning, saying the problem with the two large files was on their end; through a miscommunication, the files were being hosted on an "ancient" server that lacked large file support. She said they were working on fixing the issue. Indeed they must be working on it because while I was in the middle of trying to download one of the LORRI volumes this morning their server went down

--Emily

That's really nice, Gordan. Which one of Go's shots did you use for the colorization? Was it his January 18, 2007 one? That looks like not a bad match to the cloud patterns...or maybe Feb 18, 2007?

--Emily

No, actually I used a March 18th one, dunno why really, maybe it was the subtleties in the overall color between his shots or maybe that's the first one that turned up in my search.

That's almost two months later, but what the heck... It's one of those things you try just for the sake of it, thinking it can't turn out good and then afterwards you wish you actually took the time to find an image closer in time... Luckily, Jupiter's appearance doesn't change THAT fast and no matter what image I used anyway, the biggest cloud patterns would never align. The image is maybe 90% Go's color, with the rest tweaking the color for specific features.

P.S. Regarding large file downloads, that's why I learned (the hard way) to use a download manager capable of resuming.

Wow! That is incredible, Ugordan.

Reminds me a bit of a colorized image I posted last year:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...3743&st=177

Gordan's image looks sharper and also more spectacular thanks to the satellites. Incidentally, the color in my image was in part based on color from Christopher Go's images.

Yeah, I remember that one! Did you colorize that all manually? The color doesn't appear to be noisy at all, unlike mine.

Yes, I did this manually in Photoshop using the Clone Stamp to 'copy' color into the grayscale image.

I've been noodling around a bit more with the MVIC data. We're all familiar with the MVIC image that captured Io and Europa together that was used to colorize this shot. That was the second-to-last MVIC picture of Io. It took one more set of Io observations almost 20 hours later, on 2007-03-03T06:05:59.521. While playing with this one I noticed a tiny little scratch off to one side on two of the MVIC images. Guess who? It's Callisto. Neat. It's only there in two of the images, the ones taken through the blue and red filters, and they're too high-phase for it to be possible to make them pretty in color. So here's a monochrome view, the one through the red filter.

Click to view attachment

--Emily

Wow- well spotted! We never noticed Callisto in that image (I didn't, anyway).

John.

Surely the camera pointing suggests that mission planners were aware of Callisto's presence in the frame, otherwise Io would have appeared much nearer frame-centre?
Well spotted however Emily!

Oh, that's not the whole frame. MVIC produces truly enourmous images 5026 pixels wide by N pixels high, however many N they chose for the observation. Here's the whole frame, red filter. Io's at the center, Callisto is almost on the edge. Callisto is right off the frame for two of the filters.

--Emily

Click to view attachment

Hang on..

Did Emily just discover Callisto?



Doug

While preparing this for posting, I dug into the LORRI data looking for photos of Io and Callisto captured at the same time. LORRI got one of Io (which I posted in the writeup) but it didn't look at Callisto again until a day later. I got that picture of Callisto and got a little surprise -- this didn't seem to be a picture of Callisto at all, it's a picture of crescent Jupiter!
Click to view attachment

But take a look at a spot on the limb, and stretch the bejeezus out of it, and you do, in fact, find Callisto, an almost invisible dark crescent behind Jupiter's limb.
Click to view attachment
I really, really love this data set!

John, can you explain why New Horizons took six photos of Callisto in as many seconds when it was peeking from behind Jupiter's limb like that?

And Doug, I've finally downloaded all the LORRI data, now have to chug through the conversions....

--Emily