Continuing kidding, Death Star 1 should appear comparable to Lutetia, indeed (120 km is the "official" diameter)...

Click to view attachment

(taken from: http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/behold-lutetia )

Is that true color, Stu?

Absolutely, catergorically, 1000000% not

As I say in the blog post, that's just me being all arty and creative with one of the images, making it more of a "fanciful portrait" than a true colour representation. Just a "pretty picture", and nowt wrong with that.

I don't believe it is. IIRC, Lutetia is expected to be mostly just black-and-white.

I just said that.



The posts are both marked 12:30, so your post was probably posted while Hungry was typing.

Haha yep

A composite of the last two approach images, the 'Saturn' image and the first of the high resolution set (thank you ESA and the OSIRIS team!)

It reveals an interesting fact... the last (top) image can only be made to match the others if it is flipped left to right - NOT a 180 rotation but a flip. One sequence or the other is reversed. I don't know which. I have these arranged north-up, assuming the approach images are not flipped. If they were flipped these are all south-up. The landslide crater is visible as a bright patch in the last few approach images and the Saturn image.

Phil

Click to view attachment

I don't understand why they don't take care of this automatically in their calibration pipeline. It's not the first time this happened, either - recall the Earth flyby image with Australia mirrored left-right.

I admit this is kind of a lame excuse, but the reason is most likely that the spacecraft was flipped 4 hours before closest approach (between the relevant images if I understand Phil correctly) and some of the early release images are taken from early processing levels. Normally those are then rotated and flipped "manually". Apparently we forgot that here......

Not just impacts, but massive impacts creating craters a significant portion of the diameter(s) of the objects. In both cases, the largest impacts probably approach the threshold for completely breaking up their respective bodies. It would make sense to suppose the massive impacts are somehow related to the grooves.


It's a matter of perspective. Because Phobos is so much smaller, you have to get a lot closer relatively to see the grooves. It's why the hairs on a flea seem more defined than the hairs on a rabbit.

Lutetia's grooves certainly make it more likely that such features have an origin that does not rely on interactions with a planet, either from ring impacts or debris from large impacts on the surface of the planet. That's not to say they rule it out completely but I'm a lot less convinced about them now that we have evidence of very similar features on a body that almost certainly has never been near a planet. Shock effects from impacts, or (far less likely I think) tidal effects from passing near other bodies, seems much more likely now. The similarity with Phobos is quite spooky too.

I'm sure there will be many other interesting findings from this flyby but it's fantastic to see data come back immediately that should help develop better ideas about a really intriguing structural feature on small bodies that seems to be common and not understood.

http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/5/1248

Very nice indeed... poetically rhythmic in measured time, even with the absence of normal rhyme.

I found a couple craters that seemed a bit strange. They have what look like crevaces jutting out of them.

These are the only two craters I've identified with this feature. Anyone have any idea as to what caused this?

Emily mentioned these squiggly features in her blog. I think they are secondary craters from a fresh impact outside the image. Yes, I think you can have secondaries on Lutetia.

Phil

I noticed them at a first glance.
Just rolling stones, I suppose. Not FROM but TOWARD the craters.

Naturally these secondaries would have to have impact velocities less than Lutetia's escape velocity of ~80 m/s.

That's very low. Most (?) rocky impactors would survive the event. If any were visible in a crater for a mass estimate, then it might be possible to come to some estimates with regards to the surface's strength and structure.

Job for Dawn at Ceres and Vesta?

Andy

"Just rolling stones, I suppose. Not FROM but TOWARD the craters."

I like this idea, but then where are the stones? If they had rolled away again, they should've left tracks in that direction too.

no new images yet?


nice question.
buried?


Some grooves are perpendicular to others...

I heard from the ESA Ops guys on Monday that the OSIRIS team isn't planning on releasing any more images.

That's unfortunate, and seems to contradict what is said on the ESA Rosetta website: "All images received so far from OSIRIS team are now available in the ESA website. More updates to follow in the coming days."
I suppose they will eventually release all the images? Will they wait until scientific papers based on the data are published?

Entirely unsurprising, but still disappointing.

Given that they've not dumped any of the data taken since launch to the PSA, those holding their breath for more imagery will probably have to do so for quite a few years.

Is there a data archive plan for Rosetta on the Web somewhere? I suspect that it says they don't have to submit data for archiving until some period of time after Churyumov-Gerasimenko arrival, but I don't know for sure.

There was one at the PSA I think, but as it turns out it's a sad joke - was 2008 for some OSIRIS data IIRC. I rarely even bother checking anymore.

Part of me thinks it'll be similar to the 1st Cassini PDS release, but what does really prevent DLR from sitting on the old OSIRIS data even longer?

I've never found one. Alice has delivered very up to date data - as has MIRO and IES

http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/missions/rosetta/index.html

It might be worth it for some European person to send a polite email inquiry to Gerhard Schwehm and/or Rita Schultz asking about plans for public data release.

...as usual.
I really think ESA just posted those few "live" images to make us happy for the moment, and that's all. Just like for Steins, the're not going to release any more pictures: ESA is very jelaous of its own scientific data.

I would have thought that once, too, but not any more. There are still serious problems with ESA's data release, and individual scientists do seem to want to horde their data and images like Smaug sitting on top of his pile of jewels and gold, but I really do think there's been a change within ESA re the importance of public outreach and making missions, and their image data at least, more accessible. The Lutetia images were released very quickly compared to previous missions; ESA is now blogging, and Twittering, like crazy, really informally and entertainingly in some cases, which is a phase change from years gone by.

This is VERY frustrating, I agree - and not just for us armchair explorers; I know through personal contact and correspondence with them, that there ARE people within ESA who absolutely get how vital it is for ESA to share its images and data more openly, and who really want to follow NASA's examples, and ESA's media people are much more on the ball now. But, as has been pointed out before, the trouble lies with the Beakers whose instruments collect the data. It appears that they're either unaware of the thirst for images and data "out here" beyond the confines of their labs, or they're aware but simply don't give a ****. If that's the case, we'll have to unwrap their clenched, skeletal fingers from around their images and data to get at them.

This may, or may not, be anecdotal evidence on the interest Rosetta @ Lutetia generated. The ESA blog linked to my realtime simulation site, and that generated heaps (for me, at least) of traffic which I can analyse: 4,500 visits from 2,200 visitors during the 48 hours around C/A. The geographic distribution:

1. United States 1,033
2. Japan 799
3. United Kingdom 515
4. France 380
5. Germany 255
Then in declining number of visits:
Australia - Canada - Czech Republic - Belgium - Italy - Netherlands - Sweden
And a whole set of other European nations, New Zealand and Colombia in the top 25

Could it be a matter of money?!? Do they release data only upon payment, to cover expenses for missions?!? UE is not as rich as USA...

Money might be a part of it, but at the end of the day I guess it all comes down to the scientists involved actually WANTING to release their images to the public because, like their NASA counterparts, they "get" that it's the right thing to do. Why? Because, contrary to what they might believe - or want to believe - the "little people" outside the scientists' shiny little Big Bang Theory labs are actually interested in what's "Out there" and would love to feel involved in the missions, if only by being able to see, and comment on, the pictures taken. Trust me: some people - a growing number of people, I think - within ESA DO "get it"... but the data horders have barricaded themselves in.

But this is getting a bit "woe is me", and threatening to overshadow the great achievement of this encounter. We should just celebrate the images we have for now

Discussion of groove formation has been moved to its own topic.

Small Body Grooves,
Theories for the formation of grooves on Lutetia and Phobos

This question might have been brought up before, sorry if I missed it. I'm wondering how the instrumentation package on Rosetta compares to other asteroid encounters we have had in the last 20 years. Clearly the NEAR flyby of Mathilda was very limited (I seem to recall that only the camera was powered up), and I don't think we got much from flying past Anne Frank at such a long distance. But what about the Galileo flybys of Gaspra and Ida?

What I'm wondering is, will the final dataset on Lutetia be comparable to Gaspra and Ida, or is this more like comparing a Mariner 4 flyby of Mars to a Voyager flyby of Jupiter?

I think, that this question wasn´t here (but I´m not sure).
Some informations about operating instruments are in this status report
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/in...fobjectid=47448

On Philae Lander three instruments were operating - ROMAP (Rosetta Lander Magnetometer and Plasma Monitor) and two gas analysers (MODULUS PTOLEMY, COSAC).

can you image ESA using same policy on its images?
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?rele...mp;auid=6688535

Here's a great Mars imagery site using European data...

http://hrscview.fu-berlin.de/hw2_how_to.html

And here too:

http://global-data.mars.asu.edu/bin/hrsc.pl

(Zoom in, select an image, click on its thumbnail and it opens a zoomify-type window which lets you go in to full resolution like the HiRISE or LROC viewers)



Actually that wonderful Themis page linked to in the quote box just above also has that kind of zoomify version if you click on 'Interactive Map'. Saves on the gigabyte downloads!

Phil

How did the encounter affect Rosetta's path? Did the velocity/trajectory change much? I've been poking around the ESA site, and scanned thru this thread, not finding answers. Understandably, all the recent articles emphasize the science and details of the encounter itself.

"Swing by" is used to describe Rosetta's previous close encounters with Earth and Mars, as opposed to "flyby" here. I presume that denotes proximity and scientific priority.

I think it is too early to tell. But from the latest status report

Closest approach was at a distance of 3,162 km (1,977 miles) -- that is the distance between Boston and Denver -- or between Paris and Cairo - the closing rate was 15km/sec (!) The amount of bend (and/or speedup or slowdown) to Rosetta's trajectory due to the encounter will be minuscule, but somebody at ESA will measure it! We will have to see what the USO says....

FYI, I checked with the science team, and there will not be any more images released from the flyby until after the initial results are presented at a conference in September.

Thanks for checking on that. Which conference? Is it EPSC in Rome?

the real question is: how much time after the conference?

September of what year?

I'm assuming Europlanet. And then it'll be an image or two in papers and nothing more.

I've going a different route. Rosetta has an awesome Navigation camera - in the hands of the same sorts of people who look after MEX's VMC. I wonder if they'll be more data share friendly.

Good point Doug. MEX's VMC has been a real treat. Kudos to their team for that.

Actually there was a brief report at COSPAR in Bremen on thursday evening. Martin Patzold reported the
Doppler results. If I recall correctly the velocity change was of the order of 0.3mm/s, which translated into
a density of 2500 kg/m3 with large error bars (in part because they don't have a volume from imagery
yet) There is also an ambiguity in the retrieval of the gravity figure due to uncertainty in the
flyby distance (which again further analysis - the encounter was just days before the meeting after all -
will improve)

What I thought was cool was that the Doppler profile was actually dominated by the slew
of the high gain antenna.... I guess it moves by 0.1-1m over the course of an hour or so, so that
seems about right

Yup, that's the one. I'm going this year, so I'm looking forward to their show.

"Rosetta has an awesome Navigation camera - in the hands of the same sorts of people who look after MEX's VMC. I wonder if they'll be more data share friendly."
Question is, if some data from NC was transferred to Earth.
But NC looks promising for future 67P/Čurjumov-Gerasimenko orbits.

"density of 2500 kg/m3"
So Lutetia is probably C asteroid?