Cassini/Huygens Mission Update Thread

[soulseeker]

Isn't there any sound after the landing?

 

[centsworth_II]

<i>"To Those Discussing Image Quality... the light level would be somewhat similar to late twilight at most.... technology exists for low light cameras but the quality is rarely what can be called good." -- Archie</i> <br /><br />Good point. Maybe it will eventually sink in for those still harping on the image quality.<br /><br /><i>Edit:<br />In fact, Archie, I hope you don't mind that I'm reposting this in the "Feh..." thread so it might sink in with some of the "feh-sayers" over there.</i> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[centsworth_II]

Concerning the image by the downward looking camera after Huygens' landing: <br /><br />It looks like the light turned on during the last part of the decent is still on. If so, I wonder if the dark area in the lower left is a shadow from part of the lander. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[alokmohan]

Life means life as we know it.We are searching for it titan.

 

[centsworth_II]

Re: alokmohan v. claywoman<br /><br />You're communicating on two different wavelengths (spiritual and scientific). In any case, The Huygens probe was not looking for life as we know it, but for the molecular precursors of life. <br /><br />Of course, Titan is very different from Earth now. But it may not be so different, in some ways, from Earth as it was four billion or so years ago, before life arose. Titan has almost no oxygen and neither did Earth. What other similarities Titan's atmosphere has with the early Earth's, I'll let the scientists debate. That's one reason Huygens was sent there: To move that debate forward. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[silylene old]

Yes, it does look like materials on the bottom lens ebbing to one side. Either way, could this be liquid condensation? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><em><font color="#0000ff">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</font></em> </div><div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><font color="#0000ff"><em>I really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function.</em></font> </div> </div>

 

[darrrius]

has anyone seen any pictures from am height of about 100-200 metres above Titans surface? Although the pics so far have been stunning, they all seem to be from an enourmous height other than the one on the surface itself. Do we have pics just before huygens landed? have these not been released yet?

 

[serak_the_preparer]

<i>Fantastic processed images just released! See link below....<br /><br />>http://www.planetarysociety.org/news/2005/huygens_update_0116.html</i><br /><br />Emily Lakdawalla does a great job. Critics of the 'slow' release of 'blurry' and 'out of focus' Huygens photos will have their questions and concerns answered. As she writes at the page you referenced:<br /><br /><i>In the 48 hours since Huygens' data first began streaming back to Earth, a few processed images of the channeled landscape and bouldery landing site have been released to the public. Now, the Descent Imager Spectral Radiometer team at the University of Arizona has put all of Huygens' images online for the public to view....<br /><br />The Descent Imager Spectral Radiometer, or DISR, has three cameras pointed at three different angles (out toward the horizon, almost straight down, and an angle in the middle). As Huygens rotated while descending, DISR captured "triplets" of images as the cameras faced different directions. Each individual image is just a postage stamp, not even a tenth of a Megapixel in size. DISR's true ability to show Titan's surface will only come through once the science team has a chance to assemble the postage stamps together into mosaics. Because Huygens' rotation and swaying seems to have been a little more erratic than was hoped, this task is going to be difficult, but you can be sure that the team will be working very hard to produce mosaics in the days to come....</i><br /><br />They're working hard to bring the data together into something scientists and the public can both appreciate. A little bit of patience on our part is all that's required until those results become available.<br /><br /><i>We must go back!<br />Heck, use the NASA Mars Science Laboratory development work that is already underway and eventual lessons learned from the upcoming 2009 mission and sent one of those babie</i>

 

[hansolo0]

The science channel on digital cabble/satelite has a very interesting program on 'discoveries this week' (target: titan?) they talk all about the huygens probe and Titan. These programs tend to be run several times so be sure to check. One thing they mentioned was that radio telescopes were locked on to Huygens when it beamed the now lost 'channel A' data toward cassini, and that we may be able to reconstruct the data here on Earth! They also stated the surface of Titan had a similar compostion to wet sand or clay! I learned more on that program about Titan than I had in years previously!

 

[rogers_buck]

I heard the light level described as being 1000 times less than daylight and 1000 times better than full moon. That's pretty good for a solid state camera with a high quantum efficiency.<br /><br />The way to think of the quality of these images is by meters square per pixel. Contrast and other aspects can be processed, but the information contained per pixel cannot. So even though the cameras are low res they are incredible with respect to meters per pixel. You would need something like a Keyhole spy sat with a 10,000x10,000 element CCD to approximate the detail of the worst of the Huygens pictures at high altitude. Not only that, you would be constrained to only fuzzy longish lamdas that can make it through the smog.<br /><br />So people should only be enthrawled by these images and be on the edge of their seats while they are being processed and stitched together. ESA has done a remarkable job landing on the unknown and getting all this incredible data.<br />

 

[thedeans]

First post here. Looks a like a great forum.I've been downright depressed about the image quality coming out of Titan. Now before people start saying I'm ungrateful - I'm really not. It's been a fascinating ride regardless. But I've waited 7 years, as everyone has, to really SEE what is beneath that cloak of haze. Unfortunately, I feel like we STILL don't really know. And it's agonizing to think we have to wait probably 20 years to get another glimpse. Having said that, the engineering achievement is truly stunning.In a nutshell, here is my viewpoint. We send a probe billions of miles to an outter planet - perhaps the only such mission in our lifetimes - and the mission planners decide to take images that are so highly compressed and of such low resolution that you can't make out even large land features clearly. This strikes me as very odd. I realize that they are going to stitch together panoramas of processed images and that was the goal. But if you look at the raw postage stamp images, they are so highly compressed that it's dificult to actually distinguish between land features and compression artifacts. I also realize that hazy conditions prevail on Titan, however my problem is not with any "blurryness" (that's to be expected), but with the actual extremely low sub-megapixle resolution and the extreme compression. My point is that, considering data stream bandwidth restrictions, why not take FEWER images at higher resolutions and lower compression rates? Let me put it this way. Wouldn't you, or any geologist/planetary scientist rather have 100 images that show as much detail as the atmospheric haze will allow rather than 700 images that are of such poor resolution, one can barely tell what is being imaged? I argue that taking less images at lower compression rates and greater pixel resolution would have been preferable.Don't mean to offend, just wanted to throw that out there.

 

[earth_bound_misfit]

thedeans, hi and welcome.<br />It appears your not the only one disappointed with the pics, check out the rest of the threads in M&L. Personally i'm a little disappointed aswell, but i'm not writing off the mission, theres still loads of good science to follow IMHO.<br />Cheers and again welcome E_B_M <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p><p>----------------------------------------------------------------- </p><p>Wanna see this site looking like the old SDC uplink?</p><p>Go here to see how: <strong>SDC Eye saver </strong>  </p> </div>

 

[bobvanx]

>>100 images that show as much detail<br /><br />That's sort of what they will end up with. Bear in mind, the images are really a small fraction of the story. It's the spectrographic, gas chromatograph, aerosol analyzer (and so on, a whole suite of instruments) data that is the real star of this show.<br /><br />One thing is that this method of imaging is fundamentally different from what we are used to. We think a picture is a picture. But these folks said to themselves, how do we get the most out of the meager power and data allotment that we have been given? Let's think about pictures as blocks of smaller pictures. That way we'll be able to assemble larger images from minimal apparatus. <br /><br />I'm glad you understand that. Because of the stitching and overlapping they will be doing, the compression artifacts for each postage stamp portion really aren't that big of a deal. They will be able to tease all sorts of great data out of the readings they got.

 

[arobie]

soulseeker,<br /><br />Yes there is sound that has been released.<br /><br />Sounds of Titan

 

[billslugg]

Post deleted by billslugg <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p> </div>

 

[claywoman]

arobie,<br /><br />I think soulseeker wondered if sound was recorded after Huygen landed. Those recordings were taken while it was descending...But as far as I know, nothing about sound was released after it landed. I would love to hear what the planet sounded like also...does the wind whistle? Does it blow? That would be fabulous....hehe

 

[retro555]

Not disappointed in the least - but blown away by the uniquess of this planet-sized moon's landscape. I just saw a great panorama on spacedaily.com. You must realize that they had only 2 1/2 hours in the descent to transmit ALL data at a mere 8000 bit per second. Three hundred images is fabulous in that timeframe. Compressed can be uncompressed. Enjoy it - this is history and we are priviledged to be its witness.

 

[arobie]

Ohh...Ok, I've found that also. Thanks for bringing that up Claywomen.<br /><br /> Space.com article, included sounds of Titan's winds and Descent.<br /><br />Enjoy! <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" />

 

[fangsheath]

Well, considering what we have seen, I propose renaming Titan The Rocky Road Orange Sherbet Cow Pie Planetoid. This will cover all bases and invite further debate as to the true origins of the orange bovine cryoplastic coproforms.<br /><br />¨there´s so much I don´t know about astrophysics¨<br />Homer Simpson

 

[bobvanx]

>>The Rocky Road Orange Sherbet Cow Pie Planetoid.<br /><br />That is someplace Red Dwarf would go.<br /><br />Let's see, Cat would be torn between needing some o' that Rocky Road and avoiding messing his clothes on the Cow Pies, Kriten would be allergic to the Orange Sherbet, and Lister, he'd make a cow pie pie for Rimmer.<br /><br />Partial Hilarity of course, ensues.

 

[rogers_buck]

Actually, I think he is looking for the sound on the surface and not the radar return. Sounds sans decent winds gushing by. Sounds depicting the "splat" or "thud" when it hits the surface followed by the "whoosh" as the surface methane flashed to vapor. That sort of sounds. I would surely like to hear them myself.<br />

 

[rogers_buck]

Spot on. It's a bit like Pioneer and its polar densitometer. A spinning space craft measuring polarization and brightness as a fixed single pixel whirred around the axis of the spacecraft on a stick. The UofA was involved in turning that data into the stunning pictures of Saturn and Jupiter that nobody expected. If you looked at a single data set from that instrument you would se a single pixel or a swath. People need to give the processors some time and enjoy the alien vistas that we are getting glimpses of at present.

 

[alokmohan]

The sound of titan we like to hear .How many years ?

 

[Leovinus]

I was disappointed that we didn't land near the ocean or have a tree or two in the photos. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[astrophoto]

Re: animated gif with floating white things<br /><br />I wonder if what we're seeing is the quench when the hot rover hit the ice, vaporized it, then it re-condensed and fell back to Titan as snow/ice flakes. Whether water-ice, methane, or whatever I think the process would work about the same. At those temperatures it wouldnt take long for any ice to quickly change back to solid after vaporizing and thus remain local to the lander.<br /><br />Am I way out there?