Feh...another flat wasteland with a bunch of rocks

[anoolios]

Centsworth_II: yes, I totally agree with your comments. I must not have made my point clear. I'm not making a direct comparison to Venera or any other mission, I'm saying that a casual observer could easily make the mistake of comparing the apparent quality of Huygens images with missions from the past, not realizing that there are perfectly valid reasons for the way the Huygens images appear.

 

[slappymcb]

Those "perfectly valid reasons" being "we forgot to pack a high-res camera that pointed to the horizon, because we didn't expect gravity to work on Titan and the probe to actually land?"<br /><br />

 

[odysseus145]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>we didn't expect gravity to work on Titan and the probe to actually land<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote> <br /><br />I hope you're joking. The probe's main objective was to study the atmosphere. Landing is just a bonus. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[centsworth_II]

SlappyMcB,<br /><br />I wanted to make sure you and others of your ilk saw this from the Cassini/Huygens thread (my thanks to archibald for his to-the-point comment):<br /><br />"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." -- Archibald <br /><br />Good point. Maybe it will eventually sink in for those still harping on the image quality. <br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[najab]

><i>...we didn't expect gravity to work on Titan and the probe to actually land?</i><p>Actually, no they didn't. Hygens was an <i>atmospheric</i> probe. Nobody knew if it would survive all the way down to the surface, nor did they expect it to function for more than a few minutes on the surface. Remember, it was only by luck that it landed on a plain, it could just as easily have landed in one of the liquid areas - in which case we would have 20 high-resolution images of the bottom of a puddle.</p>

 

[CalliArcale]

Exactly, odysseus.<br /><br />You always have to balance all of the mission objectives when deciding what instrumentation to pack -- and you also have to consider cost and time as well.<br /><br />Huygens had to fit on board Cassini. It had a maximum mass allowance and maximum dimensions. These two factors greatly constrain what you can pack on board. It also had to operate purely on battery power from Christmas until last Friday, which constrains the electrical load of all the instruments, its computers, its pyrotechnics, and its communications systems. So, within these limits, you have to decide which of the vast number of worthy instruments you can put on board in order to maximize science data return while minimizing risk.<br /><br />Huygens was packed with instrumentation. Although I wholeheartedly agree that the pictures are excited, and also wish they were better, it's really not a big deal -- the pictures are extremely valuable, but it is more important to get spectroscopy data. Pictures will give you an overview and a lot of tantalizing hints, but spectroscopy will get you actual quantitative measurements of the chemistry around you. It's quite amazing what you can do with spectroscopy. Pictures tend to be a bit more of a pot luck, and in the case of Huygens, one of their greatest uses is in tracking the spacecraft's descent, to work out what the weather is like on Titan. It gives you valuable information about windspeed and atmospheric density, as well as shifting atmospheric conditions at different altitudes, by seeing how the probe's descent is affected. Anything else that robotically-acquired pictures tell is generally pure luck. In this case, I think Huygens scored very well. The tantalizing riverine imagery, and the hints of fluvial activity, making the landing site look very much like a riverbed.... It's too soon to say for sure whether there is surface liquid, of course, because they weren't fortunate enough to have Huygens land in some.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[CalliArcale]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Remember, it was only by luck that it landed on a plain, it could just as easily have landed in one of the liquid areas - in which case we would have 20 high-resolution images of the bottom of a puddle.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Huygens was designed to float, actually. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[grooble]

There are only around 3 images worthy of print at the moment.

 

[najab]

><i>Huygens was designed to float, actually.</i><p>Right, I'd forgotten that. So instead of the bottom of a puddle we'd have 20 high-res pictures of the top of a puddle. I'm <b>still</b> happier with my 100 low-res images.</p>

 

[spacechump]

<i>There are only around 3 images worthy of print at the moment.</i><br /><br />How's THAT true?

 

[kaisern]

I still am incredulous about this situation! I cannot believe with all the logical, science-oriented voices on this board there is not more outrage--or disappointment, at least--being expressed about the poor quality of the images taken by Huygens.<br /><br />All I hear (well, read) is excuses: The environment was hostile, the probe was moving, the haze, the low light, blah, blah, blah. Folks, we live in the age of modern digital imagery! There is absolutely no excuse for this. So far there is not ONE clear image of the surface of Titan.<br /><br />To those who say, "Well, Huygens was an atmospheric probe," give me break! $3.4 billion dollars (for Huygens and Cassini) and all we get is an atmospheric probe out of the deal? OK, fine, I recognize that much of the data is of extraordinary scientific value, but to go where no one has gone before and fail to take discernable pictures is inexcusable.<br /><br />Think of it this way: If crime lab investigators show up at a murder scene and collect fingerprints, DNA evidence, blood evidence, blood splatter patterns, and good witness testimony but take crappy, blurry pictures of the crime scene itself, would that be acceptable? They gather all the scientific evidence--the DNA, the blood, etc.--but fail to take simple, quality pictures--is that acceptable? Absolutely not. So why is NASA-ESA's failure to capture clear pictures of Titan acceptable?!<br /><br />Incidentally, for those who say, "Well, the light was low," please examine the photo below. It was taken with a cheap (< $100) Walmart digital camera at NIGHT with no light except a street lamp. Notice all the detail and COLOR you can make out in it. I think this should be plenty of evidence to make my point.<br /><br />

 

[claywoman]

kaisern,<br /><br />I think there is only a very few of you that are disappointed. The rest of us are elated because there are pictures!!! My God, do you even care what transpired here? Whether or not the pics are fuzzy or what, so be it! We can still make out the ground, we can still see what they saw when it probe landed, we could see what kind of environment it landed in!!! Isn't that in itself tremendous?<br /><br />Now next time, they will know what they are dealing with, so maybe they will send you along as the photographer? Seriously, I am satisfied here...I'm not disappointed at all and I personally think the pictures are great!!!

 

[no_way]

"All I hear (well, read) is excuses"<br /><br />Tell you what. Lets give you a simple task: pick out an imaging package, just name the instruments that you are going to take with you, and AFTER THAT we are going to tell from which environment you have to return high res images with that package, deal ?<br />Keep in mind, the environment and conditions are going to be 100% unknown except we are going to tell you that its on earth. For extra fun we are going to constrain your instrument package to 100 pounds and time to take those images to half an hour. Oh hey, why not limit you to at least seven years old technology too ?<br />Want that challenge ? <br /><br /><br /><br />

 

[mah_fl]

My initial thought was the pics were of poor quality, but after you think about it a few seconds its a remarkable achivement to get even these images back from a probe parachuting into an atmosphere with haze. The images in my opinion show Titan to have rivers and shorelines on its surface, proberbly of methane/ethane, which no one knew were there for sure before Huygens historic descent. Also after the images have been cleaned up and stitched togther they look a lot better.

 

[telfrow]

<font color="yellow">claywoman: Now next time, they will know what they are dealing with, so maybe they will send you along as the photographer? Seriously, I am satisfied here...I'm not disappointed at all and I personally think the pictures are great!!!</font><br /><br />Agreed.<br /><br /><font color="yellow">no_way: Tell you what. Lets give you a simple task: pick out an imaging package, just name the instruments that you are going to take with you, and AFTER THAT we are going to tell from which environment you have to return high res images with that package, deal ? <br />Keep in mind, the environment and conditions are going to be 100% unknown except we are going to tell you that its on earth. For extra fun we are going to constrain your instrument package to 100 pounds and time to take those images to half an hour. Oh hey, why not limit you to at least seven years old technology too ? <br />Want that challenge ?</font><br /><br />And then send it back to Cassini’s 20 watt transmitter and detect a signal with a power of 0.0000000000000001 watts here on earth.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <strong><font color="#3366ff">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yeild.</font> - <font color="#3366ff"><em>Tennyson</em></font></strong> </div>

 

[najab]

><i>Incidentally, for those who say, "Well, the light was low," please examine the photo below. It was taken with a cheap (< $100) Walmart digital camera at NIGHT with no light except a street lamp.</i><p>That street lamp is probably a 55W sodium vapour lamp, no more than 30 feet above the street. Titan's surface (remember, it's under thick clouds) has the same light level as if you took that street lamp up to about 1,000 feet.<p>Apples - Oranges.</p></p>

 

[yurkin]

Kaisern<br /><br />Your color picture is terrible. Those colors are nowhere close to what you would see if you were just looking at the scene. Most digital camera make night pictures appear more red and orange then scene actually is. <br /><br />If you were to take a picture of that same scene using Huygens camera you would get a much higher level of clarity. This is because it can take pictures in the near infrared. This is a preferably choice when taking night pictures.<br /><br />There also there is also the exposure length to consider. Your digital camera is programmed to know what the lighting conditions are on earth at night. So if you hold the camera steady it will take an exposure of the proper length. On Titan the ambient light levels were a mystery. If the CCDs are exposed for too long the image will become a blur.<br /><br />Not to mention the fog. I challenge anyone to take a clear picture of fog. I don't think it can be done.

 

[slappymcb]

Sorry, you people who say you are "thrilled" and "not disappointed at all" simply don't get it. Those of us who have worked in the defense, scientific, academic, or R&D industries and have had to justify our expenditures and grovel for funding know this project is a PR disaster for ESA. Because come budget allocation time, somebody's going to have to sit in front of a long table of administrators or politicians to explain their requests, and one of them is going to say "So, let's see what we got for our $3 Billion" and then pull out a big foam core board with your little 128x256 postage stamp image in the middle. When the laughter (at YOU) subsides, another will ask why probes 30 years ago did far better with far less? And your "b-b-but we got upper wind readouts, an-an-and..." excuses will be cut off mid-sentence. They'll then ask rhetorically what you wasted all that money on, and will then proceed to slash your precious budget. <br /><br />THAT'S what happens in reality, people! Face it, ESA screwed up with their failure to put any "sizzle" in a publically-funded project. Like it or not, that is the #1 rule for any group that depends on public or non-techie funding. It is a disappointing setback that will hurt the ESA in the years to come. Just wait till budget time... just you people wait... and then I'll revive this thread and you can see how right we were!<br /><br />(And for those who think it was an amazing engineering accomplishment, ummmm, no it wasn't. We have far higher resolution cameras operating in far harsher conditions -- such as orbit and deep space -- and solved the "landing on an unknown harsh world" problem in the 70's. Maybe the team had few resources and pulled it off despite their many obstacles, but that's an organizational, not engineering success. So can it. CAN IT!)

 

[bobvanx]

>>"So, let's see what we got for our $3 Billion"<br /><br />Hopefully somebody else on that panel will understand how engineering constraints dictate what you can acheive.<br /><br />Oh yeah, by this time next week we'll have seen the processed images along with the new diagrams of Titan's atmosphere, its chemical properties, as well as possibly new illustrations of its evaporation/condensation cycle. Watch for new science over the next several months, derived from the total dataset!<br /><br />So that board will have its answer. The answer will be: "Your money's worth!"

 

[najab]

Two questions. First, have you even bothered to look at any of the processed images? They are a <b>lot</b> clearer than the raw images - as would be expected.<p>Second, given that they couldn't be sure that there'd even be enough light to take pictures, and given that the dataset was <b>extremely</b> limited - it would fit on 20 floppy disks - what measurements would <b>you</b> have left off in order to get high-res imagery? It is, after all, as simple as that: better images means less of something else.</p>

 

[centsworth_II]

kaisern,<br /><br />Your photo comparison is a <b>JOKE!</b> We know what cars are, we are very familliar with sidewalks, street lights and trees. You may not realize it but your mind is filling in a lot of detail from all this knowedge. In reality, your image quality sucks (by your standards). By the way, the color is useless. It tells us nothing of the objects we are seeing. <br /><br />If you really want to do a comparison, take a picture of some sand and rocks in the same light. See what detail you get. Take a picture, at night fall, from an airliner crusing at 5 miles altitude. See the detail you see in land formations. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[yurkin]

<font color="yellow"> and solved the "landing on an unknown harsh world" problem in the 70's. </font><br /><br />Haha. There is no “Landing on Unknown Harsh World Kit” that ESA could have used. Even the most recent rovers on Mars involved extensive work with its entry-landing systems. Landing on Mars is very different from landing on Titan. <br /><br />I’m not sure you quite understand what it is we are seeing. These are the very first pictures of a new world. This most have been like how Christopher Columbus felt when he first saw land. If you don’t understand that then I don’t think you would even if the image resolution was 1000X1000. Sure future probes will send back pictures that will put these to shame. But there can only ever be one first. Personally I would rather be here when the first ones come back.

 

[centsworth_II]

<font color="yellow">"...let's see what we got for our $3 Billion..." -- SlappyMcB</font><br /><br />For your 3 billion, you got the entire Cassini/Huygens mission. Four years, plus a probable extended mission, of intensive investigation of Saturn and its moons. Huygens itsself cost 250 million pounds ($465 million today). And you are only looking at the pictures -- one small part of the total data returned by Huygens. We don't even know yet what treasure trove of new information waits for scientists in the data collected by the various science instruments carried by Huygens.<br /><br /><i>Edited to correct Huygens costs.</i> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[no_way]

"We have far higher resolution cameras operating in far harsher conditions -- such as orbit and deep space "<br /><br />Both known environments. Its dealing with unknowns thats tough. <br />If you dont know whether youll be flying in hailstorms or thick fog, high pressure gases, landing in several meters deep soft snow or dust, maybe in acidic liquids, volcanoes .. whatever .. its damn hard to plan for everything even with unlimited budgets.

 

[JonClarke]

Have you actually looked at these images instead of whinging about them?<br /><br />You have not once mentioned the extraordinary features seen in these images. Why not? Look at them. What is your explanation for the drainage systems? Are the formed by runoff or sapping? Is the dark area a sea? Is it wet or dry? Is the dark material a residue of the sea or has it frozen over? Why are some of the channels and "offshore" features so linear? What causes the topography? Why are the pebbles rounded? Is it due to weathering, sublimation or erosion? Have they been transported? If so, by what?<br /><br />No probe has ever taken panoramas during descent - it has been something dreamed about. No probe has been able to transmit them in real time before - one of the obstacles to taking such images.<br /><br />Note your cheap camera does not operate at obscenely low temperatures. It does not have to transmit data on rediculously low power levels across billions of km. It does cope with hard radiation. It has not function perfectly after being inactive after 12 years. How many cheap cameras resolve 20 m objects from 16 km away?<br /><br />You still have not acknowledged the fact that these images are unprocessed. Had ESA waited a few days or weeks until the images were processed before they were published you would have complained about that, wanting immediate release.<br /><br />Nor have you acknowledged how orginary the first images from the rovers were until they have been cleaned up and camera calibrated.<br /><br />Jon<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Whether we become a multi-planet species with unlimited horizons, or are forever confined to Earth will be decided in the twenty-first century amid the vast plains, rugged canyons and lofty mountains of Mars</em>  Arthur Clarke</p> </div>