Imagining Titan

Neil Halelamien writes "Recently the Planetary Society released the winning entries of their Huygens Art Contest. The contest challenged contestants to create artwork depicting what they imagine the ESA's Huygens probe will find when it descends to Titan's surface. 435 people from 35 countries entered the contest, and several of the winning images look like they would make great desktop backgrounds. The Huygens encounter with Titan is due for January 14 (Friday), but it looks like there isn't any live coverage planned of this exciting event."

Comments

Orientation of Saturn

[oni]

Judging by the orientation of Saturn's rings, all of those images show the probe landing near one of Titan's poles. I thought it was going to land closer to the equator - in that case, Saturn's rings would be straight up and down.

Re:Orientation of Saturn

[Ayaress]

I'm guessing the people who made those pictures are artists first and scientists second. Most of the pictures you see from NASA or in books of Saturn show the rings oriented nearly horizontal and tilted slightly towards the point of view. It isn't suprising that art depicting Saturn would do much the same. If you wanted to hit them up for scientific realism, Saturn shouldn't be visible in the pictures anyway, since as others have posted, the probe is going to enter on the far side of Titan from Saturn, and the atmosphere would obsucre it anyway.

Re:If we're very, very lucky...

[pedroloco]

The Huygens probe's landing site will be near 10.9 S, 169 E (191 W). (There is uncertainty as to the exact landing site since atmospheric winds that could blow the probe around are not well known.) This is on the side of Titan facing away from Saturn, so there will be no poetic images (or any other kind of image) taken of Saturn by Huygens.

Click here for information about the cameras.

Home Schooled

[Bob_Robertson]

The grand prize winner is home-schooled. Another demonstration of what getting out of the government prison camps can do.

Brava, Miss Tylor. And many thanks to the rest of the entrants, I have a couple new wallpapers!

Bob-

that bit @ the end was wrong..

[npfscayle]

"The Huygens encounter with Titan is due for January 14 (Friday), but it looks like there isn't any live coverage planned of this exciting event."

Ummm..wrong... Try the Discovery Science channel on 1/14/05 @ 9pm EST

.....mod this up yours.....

Live coverage on NASA TV on Friday

[FleaPlus]

Hi, I'm the person who made the submission. Since making the submission, it's come to my attention that there will indeed be at least some sort of live coverage on NASA TV -- I suspect the article I linked to may be in error.

From the NASA TV schedule:

January 14, Friday
3 a.m. - 3:30 a.m. - Live Coverage and Commentary "Cassini Turns Towards Titan - Interruption of Radio Contact" - JPL/ESA
5 a.m. - 6 a.m. - Live Coverage and Commentary "The Huygens Probe Enters the Atmosphere of Titan" - JPL/ESA
7:30 a.m. - 8 a.m. - ESA News Briefing "Mission Status" - JPL/ESA
8:30 a.m. - 9:15 a.m. - ESA Commentary on Huygens Probe Mission - JPL/ESA (Mission Coverage)
10 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. - ESA Commentary "Cassini Turns Back to Earth - Data Transmission Begins" - JPL/ESA
11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. - Huygens Probe News Briefing (will confirm if we are receiving data from Huygens via relay by Cassini)
1 p.m. - NASA Update with Sean O'Keefe - KSC
5 p.m. - 6 p.m. - ESA Commentary and "Presentation of First Triplet Image of/data from Titan" - JPL/ESA