Huygens Office Pool Bets: Friday's Options

[check]

Wouldn't it be cheaper to just send a Kodak camera from Wall Mart. It would be in color and the resolution would be a million times greater.

You know one of those el chepo 5 dollar models

And you do you propose they send this film to Cassini? Those $5 kodak cameras aren't digital you know.

 

[Nereid]

Wouldn't it be cheaper to just send a Kodak camera from Wall Mart. It would be in color and the resolution would be a million times greater.

You know one of those el chepo 5 dollar models

Hmm, let's see now ... how does this kind of camera produce an image?

What is the range of light intensities that it is capable of handling?

How well does it withstand 7 years in deep space (cosmic rays etc)?

What is the wavelength range of its sensitivity?

How do these compare with what we have now determined as the key range we need to 'see' on Titan?

How does it produce its paper end-product?

How well do you think this would work on Titan (temperature, pressure, gas composition of 'atmosphere', ...)?

How would you send the paper end-product back to Earth?

How much energy and mass would this (modified?) $5 Kodak camera require?

How do these compare with the Huygens cameras?

Since this is a one-shot deal, why do you feel that such a $5 camera would be more reliable than what Huygens has?

If you were the one making the final decision on which camera to include on Huygens, would you be prepared to take the responsibility if it didn't work?

 

[Nereid]

Yeah 7 years ago with a multi-million dollar budge! With a few million dollar back in '98 you think you could make something that atleast produces images with quality on par with a cheap-ass cell phone camera, and it doesn't even need to fit in a little cell phone.

Hey Entropy, pretend I'm from Missouri ... show me! Please pay particular attention to making me confident it will work, after 7 years in deep space, a descent through Titan's atmosphere (you are allowed to work with only what was known 8 years ago, with all its attendant uncertainty), and the (electrical) power and mass allocated (or less; for every 10% less on either, you get a gold star).

 

[Orion1]

Titan Terrain...

DARMSTADT, Germany -- A European space probe Friday sent back the first detailed pictures of the frozen surface of Saturn's moon Titan, showing stunning black and white images of what appeared to be hilly terrain riddled with channels or riverbeds carved by a liquid.

One picture, taken about 10 miles above the surface as the Huygens spacecraft descended by parachute to a safe landing after a seven-year voyage from Earth, showed snaking, dark lines cut into the light-colored surface.

Another image, taken about five miles above the surface, showed light and dark masses, which Tomasko said seemed to be shadows, indicating a varied terrain. The dark areas appeared to be flooded or to have been so at an earlier time.

A third image taken at the surface showed several large white chunks -- boulders or blocks of water ice -- in the foreground and a stretch of gray surface behind them.

Titan is the first moon other than the Earth's to be explored. Scientists believe its atmosphere is similar to that of the young Earth, and studying it could provide clues to how life arose here.

Titan is the first moon other than the Earth's to be explored. Scientists believe its atmosphere is similar to that of the young Earth, and studying it could provide clues to how life arose here.

Huygens was spun off from the Cassini mother ship on Dec. 24 before its descent to the surface of Titan. The mission is a joint effort among NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian space agency.

Scientists say they received more than three hours of data from Huygens's descent, and more than 10 minutes of data from the surface itself.

Reference:
http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=45296&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

 

[JesseM]

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/SEMC8Q71Y3E_0.html
First color view of Titan surface

I'm really drooling... I swear it...

This isn't precisely a color picture, according to http://www.planetary.org/news/2005/huygens_images_0115.html :

The middle one shows "the general impression of the color from the surface of Titan," according to Tomasko. "There is a slightly orange sky and orange general tone to the material. This is the view you would have if you were standing on Titan," he finished enthusiastically. The color was applied using data from the "spectral radiometer" component of the DISR instrument, which gathers information at a much lower resolution than the imager, so what you see is a wash of color over the black-and-white image.

It would be interesting to know how low-resolution the spectral radiometer was--could they distinguish between the shade of the sky and the shade of the ground, for example?

 

[JesseM]

Also, have a look at http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/test_images.htm from the same website).

The surface image will probably never be super-clear, because Huygens had three cameras, a downward-pointing one, a 45-degree-angle one, and a side-pointing one, and the downward-pointing camera was the highest-resolution while the side-pointing one was the lowest-resolution. On the other hand, they took a whole bunch of pictures of the same scene once Huygens landed, so maybe they can combine the information from all of them into a fairly sharp image.

Here's a sample of a picture made with the DISR cameras on earth, presumably after all the processing was done:

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/images/bashar/mosaic_2.jpg

This page also sort of addresses my question in the post above about the resolution of the color data:

By dividing the spectra recorded by the downward-looking visible spectrometer (DLVS) into three color bins (Red, Green and Blue) and comparing their intensities with that of a bin covering the same spectral region as that of the DISR imagers (HRI, MRI and SLI), a fairly decent colorization was implemented. Possessing the relatively low spatial resolution of the DLVS (4 by 4 degrees) the coloring of the DISR imagers looks impressionistic, but succeeds in capturing the various large surface units of the images, including the grass, the concrete and the bricks.

Here's an image "colorized" using this technique:

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/images/bashar/mosaic_c_1.jpg

 

[check]

The surface image will probably never be super-clear, because Huygens had three cameras, a downward-pointing one, a 45-degree-angle one, and a side-pointing one, and the downward-pointing camera was the highest-resolution while the side-pointing one was the lowest-resolution. On the other hand, they took a whole bunch of pictures of the same scene once Huygens landed, so maybe they can combine the information from all of them into a fairly sharp image.

Here's a stacked image I made from 99 surface images from an animation using registax http://img144.exs.cx/img144/7416/check15fj.jpg
I think the animation doubled the size of teh raw pictures though.

Anyway, I was wondering if (maybe someone who's familiar with Registax might know) how to actually increase resolution using the stacking technique, rather than just reducing noise? I think it's called 'superpixel' and I've seen it done with some Pathfinder images that increased the resolution by a factor of 3 I think.

 

[check]

From http://anthony.liekens.net/index.php/Main/Huygens
Revised panorama (totally awesome) http://anthony.liekens.net/titan/titan_panorama.jpg
Polar view (awesome) http://anthony.liekens.net/titan/titan_panorama_polar.jpg
http://anthony.liekens.net/titan/shoreline.jpg
------>http://spacescience.ca/titan/Titan_huygens_landing_site_mosaic_big.jpg

 

[remcook]

Another waste of a space mission, pictures of rocks wow, i hope
this is the last, and maybe the time money can be spent on whats
really going on out their.

just a reminder, Huygens is an ATMOSPHERIC probe. The primary goal is to learn about the atmosphere. Unfortunately, atmosphere is not as suitable for taking pictures as surfaces, so the pictures may look a little dissappointing. However, the main value of this particular mission is not in its ability to take pictures (like it is for MER, which are geologic probes) but taking data from the atmosphere: the detailed composition of the air, isotopes, compositions and number of aerosols, clouds, temperature, you name it: all was measured by Huygens. This will take a while to process though, but will be very usefull.

 

[marcus]

one more link
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html

(I didnt see this in the last couple of pages of this thread, maybe it was posted earlier. It has many of the same pictures and information that folks have already mentioned.)

 

[Nereid]

Goop, slush, Titanic ooze-quicksand, ... a hint of a small rise (solid?) in the distance; no liquid.

Well, I got it partly right: "We know that two of the instruments recorded the impact and from those signatures it is looking like we landed in a surface that was neither hard solid nor liquid - something in between.[/color]" (http://www.pparc.ac.uk/Nw/huygens_results.asp)

 

[Janitor]

There is talk on the Internet of a "shoreline" in the descent images. Are the images sharp enough to determine if the lake is liquid? Or are there craters that would allow us to estimate how many hundreds of millions of years too late we are to catch the lake before it froze solid?

That the smoother regions tend to be darker may be an indication that the lake is not frozen, I suppose. Winds would deposit the lighter colored highland material onto a frozen surface, leaving a more uniform coloration. The frozen surface could be completely hidden in a few centuries, if Titan's atmosphere can transport dust with about the same efficiency as Earth's atmosphere can.

 

[cronxeh]

man.. why can't in my freaking lifetime a probe descent 1.2 billion km away from Earth and land on a huge alien city sort of a Times Square and take picture of aliens looking at it after it lands in the middle of a street

 

[Chronos]

Science = why, Engineering = how.

 

[Phobos]

For all those not impressed with Huygen's photos - - give them a little more time to process all the images. So far, we're mainly seeing the raw stuff.

 

[meteor]

Huge mosaic and all the raw images
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/index.html

This false color image seems the coast of Spain
http://uplink.space.com/attachments//129268-triplet.700.colorized.jpg

 

[japam]

data speed

BTW, do you know the data transfer speed between Huygens and Cassini?[/QUOTE]

s3nno6, acccording to http://www.planetary.org tha data transfer speed is 480 bits per second

 

[JesseM]

s3nno6, acccording to http://www.planetary.org tha data transfer speed is 480 bits per second

for comparison, what is the Mars rover data transfer speed?

 

[Entropy]

s3nno6, acccording to http://www.planetary.org tha data transfer speed is 480 bits per second

Damn! And I thought dial up was bad.

 

[Chronos]

That doesn't sound that bad. It's about the same speed as my dial-up connection.

 

[Entropy]

Are you sure? 56k, isn't that 56,000 bits per second?

 

[JesseM]

According to http://www.planetary.org/sounds/huygens.html says they're able to get a much higher bandwidth from the Mars rovers:

Engineers on the $820 million mission increased the rover Spirit's maximum data rate to 256,000 bits per second, using NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter as a martian relay satellite.

 

[meteor]

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMHB881Y3E_index_0.html

"The first scientific assessments of Huygens' data were presented during a press conference at ESA head office in Paris on 21 January."

"Geological evidence for precipitation, erosion, mechanical abrasion and other fluvial activity says that the physical processes shaping Titan are much the same as those shaping Earth."

"Images have shown a complex network of narrow drainage channels running from brighter highlands to lower, flatter, dark regions. These channels merge into river systems running into lakebeds featuring offshore 'islands' and 'shoals' remarkably similar to those on Earth"

"In addition, DISR surface images show small rounded pebbles in a dry riverbed. Spectra measurements (colour) are consistent with a composition of dirty water ice rather than silicate rocks."

"Huygens' data provide strong evidence for liquids flowing on Titan. However, the fluid involved is methane"

"Titan's rivers and lakes appear dry at the moment, but rain may have occurred not long ago."


So, no recommendable to go fishing to those rivers...if you don't like the taste of methane

 

[Orion1]

Titan Titration...

Saturn's largest moon apparently is lashed regularly by rain made of liquid methane, forming pools, cutting river beds and eroding rocks in much the same way that forces have shaped the Earth

Black-and-white photos from the Huygens probe show a rugged terrain of ridges, peaks, dark vein-like channels and apparently dry lakebeds on the moon 744 million miles away.

On Earth, methane is a flammable gas. On Titan, it is a liquid because of the intense pressure and cold -- 274 degrees below zero.

A sensor about the size of a police officer's nightstick on the front of Huygens probed beneath the moon's crust and found a material with the consistency of loose sand.

Channels on the surface are evidence of methane rain. There are also what appear to be river systems and deltas, frozen protrusions riddled by channels, apparent dried-out pools where liquid has perhaps drained away, and stones -- probably ice pebbles -- that seem to have been rounded by erosion.

The river beds are darkened by what seem to be particles of smog that fall out of Titan's atmosphere, coating the terrain. The dirt apparently gets washed off the ridges by the methane rain to collect in the river channels.

Scientists believe the dark smog particles are formed by Titan's methane breaking up in the atmosphere.

Lebreton, the mission manager, said a next possible step in Titan exploration would be to send mobile probes, perhaps balloons to float around before landing.

Reference:
http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=45812&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0