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Titan Photos and Sounds

Posted by michael on from the take-me-to-your-leader dept.

ahsile writes "NASA and the ESA have released the first images from Titan. The ESA also has available sounds from the surface." Reader ZZip writes: "Apparently a bunch of enthusiasts has compiled the first mosaics from the raw data delivered by the Huygens probe. Meanwhile space.com has more coverage and pictures from NASA/ESA." Say a silent thank-you to the persistent troubleshooters of the world, without whom none of this would be possible.

2 of 466 comments (clear)

  1. Another waste of time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    These latest probes are very disappointing. Do we really need to spend time taking close up pictures of planetary bodies that we know once contained liquid oceans of some type?

    They don't answer the question "Does or did life exist there?" In the Mars probes example: why did we bother sending a probe to determine that there was liquid on Mars by taking pictures? Anyone who was reasonable knew that from space and ground based observations of Mars. Even now that we "know" that Mars contained water (in Mars' case), the question is "So what?" It doesn't mean there was every any life there, and that is the end goal.

    Sending a probe to a planet without giving it the ability to detect whether life existed or not is a waste of time. That is a truly hard problem to solve I know, but that should be the ultimate mission of the probe teams at ESA/NASA. Is/Was there life on Mars or Titan? We still have no clue, and are not any closer to finding out. Sending back pictures of yet another apparently dead planet with rocks doesn't interest anyone anymore. We need real answers.

  2. Re:We need high res pics by cheekyboy · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Well, if they had ability to upload new codecs/code they could have used JPEG2000, but even so they still could have made their own wavelet codecs, they did spend 3.3billion right. It doesnt matter that its really dark out there, a flash can help or longer exposure too, its not hard to make photos of dark areas if you have 3.3 billion $

    Next time they should send 5 probes to land it various locations. Oh and perhaps some more battery power or a wind powered generator or something.

    --
    Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.