I don't know if anyone's posted this yet...but it's definitely worth a re-post.

I figured they would try something like this again.

http://geekcounterpoint.net/files/category-10.html

Just wait until they turn that bad boy towards Earth...

[Edit: Image no longer available]

Very nice. Of course, if they look at earth when it is closest... we will only be seen as a thin cresent.

I wonder if Moonshine would help a little?

Well - given that photographing the Moon with Earthshine results in the normal part of the Earth being totally bleached out - I doubt it. I imagine that there's a fairly big "keep out" zone for HiRISE pointing when it comes to the Sun - and at a time when Moonshine would be most usefull, chances are they'd be in that keep out zone.

Doug

I've often wondered if it would be worth the effort for HiRISE to attempt to image Mars-crossing asteroids. The orbits of most asteroids should be very well known, considering how many spacecraft have had to cross the asteroid belt, and the searches made for close flybys. So it follows that the ones that come near Mars should be traceable. I don't know if MRO could slew fast enough to avoid image smear, but it just might result in a few spectacular images, given HiRISE's resolution.

They would have to be very very close for it to be worthwhile - and you'd have to make an excellent case for the off-nominal sequencing involved.

Doug

Ikonos, SpaceImaging's earth-observing satellite has cameoed as a planetary observer. The Jupiter and Saturn pics were taken during its commissioning - It had some real problems with Saturn's low surface brightness, and badly underexposed the image. However, Jupiter turned out really well (and, for the record, the moon to the right of Jupiter is Io). The images of Mars were taken during the 2003 opposition.

I can't believe what thought process just went through my head.

"Oh yeah - that Ikonos image is the same sort of quality for Jupiter as HiRISE managed. Those Mars pics from Ikonos are good - I wonder what Mars would look like through HiRISE"

Duhhh



Doug

To be fair, orbital positions have to be taken into account. When Ikonos imaged Jupiter on October 27, 1999, it was 49.7" across as seen from earth, or you could say it covered 1940 square arc seconds.. From Mars, on January 11, 2007, when this image was taken, Jupiter was 50.9" across, or 2035 square arc seconds. In other words, its disk was only 4.9 percent larger. Keep in mind that my math is very crude here, but the proportions are right. I worked with Jupiter as a sphere, ignoring polar flattening.

That is correct. I beleive the zone is a 20 degree away from the sun keep-out zone, so it might be quite difficult. Even harder when you consider we've already taken a picture of the moon, on our way out of the Earth-moon system (Before I was a part of HiRISE...). This just happened to be a time when we had a stellar Calibration the same time as an opening to Jupiter, a lot of things that came up lucky.

BTW, I don't think this picture has been officially released yet...

Yup - not properly released. The UMSF policy on this is something we've discussed as an admin team given that - to be fair - HiROC is about as leakproof as a teabag and we've just about run out of fingers to count the number of times things have got 'out' before they should have.

If someone spots something that hasn't been released and posts to it directly from UMSF - we cull that - that's someone at UMSF doing something they probably shouldn't and in doing so, UMSF becomes part of the problem - and we try to tell someone appropriate ( usually via Jason ).

If some other site has been sent something - that's fine by me as UMSF isn't involved directly.

Doug

Sounds fair to me, and I do have it confirmed that it hasn't been released yet. The official release should be a bit better than these previews, I would guess.

Apparently not -- at least, I've been told it's the case by the U of A, so I'll be taking down my page containing it. I received the image about 4th hand, without any "do not distribute" language attached. Sure wish unreleased images had a watermark or something...

Lorne

Thanks for the quick removal. It's nice to see sources that remove unreleased images before they are released. But I can tell you that likely the image will be officially released sometime soon.

The problem is the unreleased images are quickly created, and passed to the team. A few team members decide, hey I can pass this on to my friends and family, it won't matter, and then someone there forwards it on to someone who owns a major website. So...

[...]

Ikonos also picked up some nice Lunar images - I'll have a look for the link later...

...I wonder whether HiRise will have a good view of Saturn, or indeed A Certain Comet at any point?


Bob Shaw

I have a liiiiiittle list of candidates (I would say 'volunteers', but that might not be entirely accurate) for the crew of the first Jupiter-orbit HST Servicing Mission... ...no, truth to tell, it's quite a *big* list! Politicos make great crew for risky flights - they're so, well, disposable...


Bob Shaw

[...]

Yes, that's a fantasy all right.

Phil

I apologize for any role I had in this...I had no idea about UMSF's image policy, which I can understand given proprietary concerns. I just thought "cool!" and fired it off; for me to be first would've been too good to be true. Seriously though...I apologize.

I must say that it gave me pause to find nothing about this on any other website (namely this one), sites run by people far deeper into the space probe pipeline than I've ever been.

Speaking of Jupiter, though...I remember a long time time (I mean, like 10 years ago) they were proposing an inexpensive space telescope that would do *nothing* but look at Jupiter. I thought the idea was capital, but like most of the proposed missions that I think are cool, it was never selected. I still think it's a great idea, though...imagine the diffraction-limited movies a space-based 16-incher could give us.

I can't wait to see this Jupiter picture, but in the meantime, some of the posts in this thread got me thinking about other possible targets. It looks to me like MRO could be in a position to take some nifty pictures of Ceres later this year (August-ish) at a resolution near 20 km/pixel. If I did the numbers right, this would be better than the Hubble pictures at the value of 30 km/pixel quoted in wikipedia.

Bart

EDIT: D'oh! My bad! I was off by a factor of 10. Only 200 km/pixel.

And imagine the downlink rates at Jupiter via Hubble's antenna!

*cough*GALILEO*cough*...

I would love to see this!!!!

That's OK, George and the boys would have erected a nice big hi-gain antenna on an EVA. Hopefully they'd get it to point in the right direction.


Bob shaw

I wish there was some way these types of threads could be flagged as "hoax", or "no longer valid" or some such wording. The first post mentions images of Jupiter but when I go to the link, there's nothing. I've read through and now understand (I think) what happened, but how about putting a note a the beginning to that effect?

Don't mean to complain - I've enjoyed following the discussions immensly. Also, you might have some mechanism in place that I'm not aware of. If so, please let me know.

Thanks.

Image have been deleted from where the first link point for the reason you know... since you've red all the thread

If, and I stress, if HiRISE were to do such a picture again, one of three things would have to happen.

1. It would have to be an extremely high priority, known about weeks or longer in advance, or
2. It would have to be near the next stellar callibration (Which I beleive is in early July).
3. The object would have to be in Martian orbit (I know there are a few calibration images of Deimos and Phobos, but they are rare).

It is very difficult to plan an image that isn't pointing at Mars, there is a pretty large list of flight rules that have to be check to make sure they aren't violated, stuff like making sure it's not pointed at the sun, etc. The Jupiter image took well over a month to plan, be tested on the OTB (Basically a MRO simulator, used to make sure the spacecraft won't crash), and be uploaded to the spacecraft. I'm not saying it can't happen, just that it would take something pretty important to go through so much hassle.

Indeed - there isn't a specific way to do that, but the initial poster could edit his post to make clear that it's not available anymore.

Doug

Will this image be available soon? Was Jupiter imaged at all? Very confusing.

It was imaged, a picture leaked onto a different website, then realised it shouldn't have been made public, so taken off again......and sooner or later HiROC will release it properly

Doug

Most likely in the next week.

http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/di...PSP_002162_9030

Now released in it's full glory!

Nice work. You can see what I referred to as a "brown barge" just below the Great Red Spot in this image.

I can almost listen New Horizons saying:
I'm ready for the close-up Mr. HiRise!

Fantastic image!

I'm trying to figure out which moons are which in this image. They didn't include the date and time in the caption (I've sent an email and got an immediate reply that they'd figure it out and post it) -- but I'm wondering, tuvas or volcanopele, if either of you have figured that out already?

--Emily

They're...

Oops, I'm sorry. I see that you asked tuvas or volcanopele

Ha ha ha. Very funny.

GuyMac got back to me already, actually: 2007-01-11 21:02:51

--Emily

This magnificent image makes me want to see an 'Earth and Moon' from HiRISE.

[...]

What would be real cool is if simultaneous observations could be done with HiRISE and Hubble to get stereo images of the outer planets.

James

I can see the headlines now:

"Hubble and Mars Orbiter Prove Uranus Is Round"



--Emily

Fantastic image ! I'd like to see Saturn, Ceres and Vesta

Now replying to an earlier post ......



Well the list of "volunteers" for Bob's mission has grown considerably today; in the form of "visionless" NASA budget cutters

http://www.planetary.org/news/2007/0131_Co...s_Cut_NASA.html
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=3846

HiRISE Camera Views Jupiter From Mars Orbit
By Lori Stiles
University of Arizona News Services
January 31, 2007

Actually, you can use one viewpoint and just wait for the planet in question to rotate, which doesn't take long. If you take images of any of these planets 45 minutes apart or so, you have all you need to make a 3D picture. There's a little tiny glitch due to the Sun seeming to be in two different positions, but with the Lambertian nature of clouds this is more of a theoretical problem.

The practical problem in most cases is that the giant planets are mainly pretty bland.

With Saturn, you can take pictures some YEARS apart to get a 3D image of the rings. There are some good examples out there -- you have to turn the image 90 degrees from the usual presentation to get the effect since that's the way the planet's plane "rotates" with respect to us.

[...]

So, what you're really asking all of us is, does this data make Uranus look fat???



-the other Doug

p.s. -- those of us guys who have ever been married already know how to answer that question...

Technically speaking, if Uranus looks fat...

no no no, it's: "does my planet look big in this?"

Hum... I made a better picture with my 130 mm reflector with a Toucam2 in raw mode

...

Seriously, this image is fantastic . I'm waiting for an Earth-and-moon-imaging Hirise release -_-

Hi I'm new, but I figured I might as well jump in now; Do you think it's possible that they could turn it towards Pluto?