Is it just me or is it awfully quiet?

[tescher]

Has it been awfully quiet about Huygens since those few teaser images were sent out? Geez, when we landed on Mars there was data everywhere. Almost seems like a blackout. Every new news article has the same four pictures. What's up?

 

[astrophoto]

If you've perused the entire set of images, there are only maybe 50 pictures with even slight hints of form, and maybe 15-20 pictures of any 'media ready' quality as a raw image. Those have been presented as panoramas and as animated scenes of the surface stitched together.<br /><br />Pictures are not all that Huygens had to offer, so do not despair - but do not expect a huge influx of newly released/processed images to show you much more.

 

[tescher]

Not just talking images here. Even the other data has been very sparse. Even the ESA site seems pretty light on the news.

 

[nacnud]

Huygens was only designed to deliver about one floppy disk of data. As it turned out it generated far more data than expected, about 20 floppies. <br /><br />Huygens is now dead on Titan as it's battery only lasted 3 hours and even that was longer than expected. There is not going to be the flood of data from Huygens as there is from the Mars rovers. <br /><br />Look to Cassini for the flood of data, it is expected to last many many years.

 

[nacnud]

Perhaps this will help your lust for more data <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />More of Titan’s secrets to be unveiled on 21 January [www.esa.int]<br /> <br />18 January 2005<br /><br />ESA PR 04-2005. One week after the successful completion of Huygens’ mission to the atmosphere and surface of Titan, the largest and most mysterious moon of Saturn, the European Space Agency is bringing together some of the probe’s scientists to present and discuss the first results obtained from the data collected by the instruments. <br /><br /> After a 4000 million kilometre journey through the Solar System that lasted almost seven years, the Huygens probe plunged into the hazy atmosphere of Titan at 11:13 CET on 14 January and landed safely on its frozen ground at 13:45 CET. It continued transmitting from the surface for several hours, even after the Cassini orbiter dropped below the horizon and stopped recording the data to relay them towards Earth. Cassini received excellent data from the surface of Titan for 1 hour and 12 minutes.<br /><br />More than 474 megabits of data were received in 3 hours 44 minutes from Huygens, including some 350 pictures collected during the descent and on the ground, which revealed a landscape apparently modelled by erosion with drainage channels, shoreline-like features and even pebble-shaped objects on the surface.<br /><br />The atmosphere was probed and sampled for analysis at altitudes from 160 km to the ground, revealing a uniform mix of methane with nitrogen in the stratosphere. Methane concentration increased steadily in the troposphere down to the surface. Clouds of methane at about 20 km altitude and methane or ethane fog near the surface were detected. <br /> <br />The probe’s signal, monitored by a global network of radio telescopes on Earth, will help reconstruct its actual trajectory with an accuracy of 1 km and will provide data on Titan’s wind

 

[centsworth_II]

<font color="yellow">"Has it been awfully quiet... What's up?"</font><br /><br />Shhhhhhh! Let us concentrate!<br /><br />I'm sure that's what the Huygens scientists are thinking as they try to sort through the data, which are not in any human language. It is raw information that has to be painstakingly put together in a form that is understandable. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>