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Titan Photos and Sounds
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.
I think the whole titan mission is fascinating, but they really need to release some higher quality pictures.
Have some patience people. We are mostly seeing raw dumps with quicky contrast enhancement. It will take a while before it is put together and cleaned up.
I would note that Huygens was not designed to be a high-resolution photographic mission. Many were not even sure if the surface would be visable when launched. Plus, such an atmospheric desent probe cannot have directional antennas (other than maybe "not down"), reducing the bandwidth. For example, the mars rovers only send high-res images when they are sitting still and focusing their narrow-angle directional antennas at specific locations in the sky for the receivers to pick up (either at earth dishes or in Mars orbit).
Table-ized A.I.
I was a little saddened after seeing the pictures and getting all stoked for ultra-high-res pictures like what Spirit and Opportunity are sending back, but I don't think it's in the cards.
The uplink from Huygens to Cassini was only 8kb (don't remember if it was bit or bytes, in any case, not a wide channel) and there was only about a 2 hour window to transfer to data before the batteries on Huygens went dead. I consider 2 hours pretty remarkable given the extreme conditions is going in to and the fact that the batteries have been waiting for seven years. The technology also dates to at least 1997, probably earlier (to provide time to check for reliability against radiation fun from space).
Supposedly there are some 350 or so pictures, so at 32Kb a piece (at least what the ESA is putting up), I don't think we're going to see anything much higher.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
So, why do we keep sending only B&W cameras on these things?
Because that's just how cameras (even film) work. Your $100 webcam only senses brightness, not color, just like the cameras on Huygens and the Mars rovers. With the rovers, they have filters which only allow certain frequencies (colors) to hit the sensor, just like your digicam/webcam/film camera. The difference is the filters on the consumer camera are fixed on the CCD (or film), while NASA's are in front of the lens, so you can mix and match.
If your goal is *only* to make pretty pictures, sure, send up a digicam. If your goal is science, you use interchangeable filters, or just a single, fixed filter across all pixels.
This is not only better science, but also higher resolution. Your digicam (say, 4MP), has 2million green pixels, 1 million red, and 1 million blue (in one common configuration, there are other mixes and colors), and the raw image is processed to simulate 4 million RGB pixels. But using a 4MP sensor with filters over the lens, you get all 4 million pixels at the selected wavelength. This provides more information, and science is all about information.