doug - mind if I point out some of your great protopanorama work over at BABB? I promise not to slashdot the server!
Or did you lock pics for members only?
Boy - hopping between Mars and Titan and BadAstronomy and Here is hard work!
Thanks

Lyford

PS - It does remind me superficially of the Venera images as well - maybe since the field of view is so small too - for a cold shower just switch quickly between a good NavCam Shot from Spirit and the ground shot from Titan. Hope they improve that much when we send the Titan amphibious rover!

To me it looks like glacier which is crumbling. The river channels may be cracks where the ice is breaking apart. Just speculating of course.

I found this strange circular feature in the top image of triplet # 704. Any ideas on what it is?

link from wherever - no probs

just no /.ing - if i get /.'ed - the place will die.

Doug

Good Lord - that's Port Hueneme, California!

Esa says the surface closeup shows "ice blocks", hmmm.

This raw image was returned by the ESA Huygens DISR camera after the probe descended through the atmosphere of Titan. It shows the surface of Titan with ice blocks strewn around. The size and distance of the blocks will be determined when the image is properly processed.



http://www.esa.int/esaCP/index.html

Well, water is basically a mineral on Titan, right?

So ... Huygens was looking in a slightly wrong place?

Tom

I think it will help greatly when we have radar coverage of the site. Hopefully we can use it as sort of a rosetta stone for interpreting radar data from more of Titan.

None of the links work anymore, the pics have been removed?

Luckily I managed to download all 367 images with a mass downloader before their removal.

Does anyone know how big the full size images are ? I understand these are just thumbnails.

Darn it, I got a call from the bookstore concerning my textbook order... took so long to deal with that by the time I got off the phone, the images were gone. I have heard that ESA was having fits about their release....Damn them...First Mars Express, and now this.

From CNN:

For unknown reasons, NASA, which operates Cassini, the satellite orbiting Saturn that relayed Huygens' signal, removed an image of Titan's surface from its Web site. ESA had not released that image. No official information was available about the image from Titan's surface.

ESA's aerial image, a gray low-resolution picture, was snapped 16 km above the surface of the moon. It resolves features, some as small as 40 m across, such as dark winding stream beds.

from: http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/01/14/h...itan/index.html

WTF?!

The crackpots are going to love this...

Well the JPL site still has it!

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/.../huygens-1.html

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/

and it's there too on ESA's now?

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/index.html

But the complete set is still gone.

Well - I got the lot - and there's about - ooo - 150 images from the surface - you know I'm sure you can see the lamp getting dimmer as time progresses

Anyhoo - as someone suggest - I've tried to super-res the surface image from the 150 images taken. sadly - they orig.s were hiddeously jpg'd

but



compared to



Little difference really.

Doug

In light of the disappearing images you should read this piece:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-05g.html

I must say he's right about most of it. I too was screaming at the screen when they showed suits staring at the pictures instead of the pictures themselves. He could have formulated it a bit more politely though.

Was the complete set ever published at ESA or NASA? If not, I think the reason is that www.lpl.arizona.edu couldn't handle the traffic...

Does anyone know if the compression is a characteristic of the actual downlinked images or if it is just a feature of the public release data? As for the dissapearing data, if that were the case it seems a notice would have been put on the site.

Ted

...ewwwww.......i knew it had to be written by that Jeffrey F. Bell

Are the JPEG artefacts are the result of compressing the images for the web etc? rather than compression for transmission from Huygens?

Maybe this is anger talking, but I think considering we built many components of the probe got it there, relayed the data back, and recieved it on the ground, we should tell the Europeans to shove it and NASA should go ahead and release it without them. Then we should take our sweet time in delivering DSN telemetry from their missions....see how they like it.

Now where is the SOUND of Titan!?
It had a microfone right?

I read that piece, and I too must say that I was thinking much the same thing during the ESA press conferences. There was a lot of time concerning various bigwigs congratulating themselves, and very littla actual data released.

Did you notice that the NASA TV descriptions of the two ESA 'images' press conferences did not resemble the actual events all that closely? There were supposed to be about 18 images released during the first conference, with the rest released in the second. Instead, we had ONE image released in the first conference (and there were more available, at least one more image was flashed on the screen for a fraction of a second during the conference, but then hastily removed) and two more in the second 'conference'--although that one was mainly about patting themselves on the back.

Bill

The author is complaining that the TV coverage did not focus on the scientists and the data, but rather on the politicians involved.

It's important to note, though, that the press conferences were - contrary to his claims - to a very large part focused precisely on the scientists and the data. Although one politician did take part in one of the press briefings, the rest of the people there were scientists or technicians.

Furthermore, the author claims that had NASA done a mission like this, there would be no focus on politicans on the Big Day. Strangely enough, I remember NASA TV paying plenty of attention to Al Gore and Arnold Schwartzenegger during the MER landings.

---

That said, I - as a contributor to the organization - still agree that ESA has handled the public aspect of the landing very badly. I too really disliked that they spend ten minutes having people talk about their feelings for the images, and only showed the image for a few seconds. However, I would have been equally displeased if they had let technicians instead of politicians talk about their feelings there. I too would like to see all images released at once, and I would not mind a bit if NASA went ahead and released them without permission (though I know perfectly well they'd never to that, but I can always whish).

I just got the impression that they were badly set up for publicity and had not really thought through how they were going to deliver information to the public -- or perhaps had not really thought that their job was to deliver information to the public at all, but simply to have an announcement and do an Oscar-night recitation of thanks. I didn't see a lot of politicians around (though I'm a little shaky on who counts as a politician there), but I did feel that too little time was spent on the science.

Hey, give 'em a break- ESA has never done anything this big before and it's no big deal if they allow themselves a day of self-congratulation. They've been working on this for 15 years and we'll get to see more science results in a day or two, once everyone has calmed down.

One should remember, too, that for ESA this is the very first event of this type with this amount of press interest, where NASA have 30 or more years of experience handling this kind of publicity.

I also think it's misleading to label this behaviour as "European", becase I - as a European - did not recognize it at all. Personally, I would have labeled it "German", but that's just me. I'm sure a German who disliked how the event was handled would have labeled it "French" or something. My point is that claiming that this is how all Europeans do thing, while all Americans do it another way, is misleading at best and dishonest at worst.

Well, except the Giotto Halley encounter. I remember reading that it was chaotically handled as well.

Yes they were the scientists and technicians and yes they did mention the science, but really; 90 percent of the time it was:

"We are so happy with this partnership"
"ESA did such a wonderful job"
"This shows how Europe can achieve great things"
"Nasa made this possible for us, thank you"
"The team came through! This is an historic event for all partners" ( in 3 languages )

( I should add that these things disgust me too in NASA press briefings. Suits. Shudderrr. )

I must have missed that press briefing - I only saw number two and three.

Let's also keep in mind that during the first three briefings, there were no data available for ESA to comment on.

The main thing I remember about Giotto at Halley was a thoroughly unimpressed Margaret Thatcher calling Giotto a 'waste of money'--due, as I recall, to the fact that the Halley images were released to the public in a difficult-to-understand posterised false-color format. When, weeks later, they were released in a more natural 'naked-eye' format, they were far more impressive and easy to understand--but public interest had already waned.

Well, they did say it would be a week on the DISR site before they had proper mosaics. (not to mention color). So that made me think something. When the media show images from Spirit and Opportunity, it is always those first images after landing. Despite the fact that both have returned much more interesting images. So perhaps this also effects their willingness to release raw data early on.

To sum up my position, please criticize ESA for how it has handled certian things, but use real factual arguments rather than racist ones (I'm saying this in relation to the article, not in relation to anything said on this board).

I was glued to the TV and web when the two rovers landed, and they released the images to the public the moment they were downlinked. In essence, all the world got to see them pretty much at the same time, with Squires, Arnold, and everybody else. That felt really good since we all shared the wonder and awe with the mission scientists. During the MER landings the focus was on the images and the reaction of the scientists. They paid attention to Arnold, yes, but I don't remember him announce anything and congratulate anybody before the first images were shown.

How ESA handled the first image release today was really in a bad taste in my opinion. They are still sitting on a mountain of images, spoon-feeding them to us as *they* feel like it. Same thing goes on with the Mars Express to this day. Seems they want to be 'priviledged' and it is backfiring on them big time.

The DISR guys at arizona.edu put the images up as they got them (in good faith most likely); whether they were removed due to bandwidth or whether ESA came down on them like a hammer, we'll probably never know.

I have seen several landings in my life, and I really appreciate the NASA image release policy.
Nothing beat that feeling when MER landed and watching live at JPL - basically they had some imagers desktop on the screen- one thumbnail came down, then another, then the whole screen filled with pictures in a flood of data. The applause and screams oversaturated the mic on the cameras there... it was amazing!
I really felt the emotion of the event, as well as the technical triumph.

This is very different. I feel "naughty" for even trying to get leaked images.

here is a combo of all the sideways shots I got from slashdot - (don't worry they don't know about this board... )

http://homepage.mac.com/lyford/ramm/pano567-nodupes.jpg

I think it was a "splashdown" into a few inches of ???????

11:38:11 GMT was the Impact timeaccording to the SSP

The SSP wokred fine - all 8 instruments got data

I'm not sure what the hell was going on with the Images - but the practice of a news conference that tells you nothing and includes back slapping and metaphors is certainly not an ESA invetion

That 7th image from the end is just very very VERY like a shoreline, with waves

I thikn we're missing some images from that massive set ( which I got all of ) - as there are two sets of 3 or 4 images that show that coastal feature really well Hopefully the imaging team will focus in on that when they put stuff together for a conference tomorrow

Doug

Are those images running in the order that they were taken? If so, it certainly looks to me like Huygens has landed onto a 'reef' some distance offshore.

Looking at the post-landing image, it looks like it is resting in a few cm of liquid, with numerous 'boulders' rising above the liquid.

Once more data are released over the next few days, we should know for certain.

I completely agree with you, that the way ESA handled the publicity was very bad, and the way NASA handles it is very good - at least for the MERs (I still want better Cassini quick-and-dirty raws, even though they seem to have improved recently!).

However, I think the reason for the involvement of politicians during the landing is a lot more benign than some of you seem to think. You have to remember that the Huygens mission is a truly international mission. It's not created by a single country, like the MERs, but by a large number of vastly different countries, many which fought a world war against each other only half a century ago. I don't think it's a stretch to see the involvement of politicians from different countries as part of the political process going on in Europe right now, rather than seing it as a malicious act of mismanagement.

And lets be honest - we're just impatient - we've waiting 7 years for this - another 48 hours isnt going to kill anyone

Doug

Very well put.

And Mongo I think those are in order - the probe was spinning at a variable rate so it's facing all over the place...

Perhaps, but I think they are completely missing it with their PR engine. The best way to bring everybody together in one cause is to release it in one go, without anyone using their priviledges deciding what and when something gets released. That way all people from all nations can feel they are part of the discovery and excitement. I grew up in Europe, I know the cultural and ideological differences all too well.

I'm looking at the penetrometer data graph -

They think it was a clay, or a wet sand or a snow - with a bit of a crust on the top (Creme Brulle)

Doug

I think the problem with Europe is that we're happy to work on something together - BUT - we want OUR credit at the end of it - congratulations not as 'europe' but for each member nation.

With MER - you can just go "well done america, now here's some pictures"

Doug

Well done, Europe - now here's some pictures :

http://homepage.mac.com/lyford/j/raw/_._.html

Mirror of the raw files. Please let me know if ESA and INTERPOL are on my case...

Really? You must have been traveling a lot, if you know the cultural and ideological differences between, say Estonia and Lithuania, or France and Germany, or Norway and Sweden. I've lived my entire life in Europe, and even I only know a tiny fraction of those differences. Europe is exceptionally heterogeneous. And yes, i deliberately chose countries geographically close to each other. Pick two countries for from each other, and the differences will be even larger.


That's very true. If anything, that could be seen during the management of the Beagle 2 mission.

lyford -- you da man!



Well, I was a musician and did some traveling back then , culture was a big part of what I did and where I went, and ideological differences were very apparent when the iron curtain was still up. Oh, and I did grow up in one of the countries you just named above

It's landed in a bloody STREAM

Watch this carefully

http://www.mars.asu.edu/~gorelick/huygens1.gif


Doug