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Amateurs Beat Space Agencies To Titan Pictures

Posted by timothy on from the decentralized dept.

loconet writes "Nature.com is reporting that a group of enthusiastic amateurs managed to process raw images of Titan from the Huygens probe faster that any of the giant space agencies in charge of the mission. Terragen, a freeware program that converts the basic brightness data in aerial pictures into a topographical map, to generate the ground-level vista was used."

8 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Without quality control... by topham · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Without quality control it's usually possible to beat a company, or organization to the punch.

    (And doesn't mean it is necessarily inferior in quality either).

    But it is a little unfair.

  2. No surprise there... by chris09876 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm impressed with them..., but it's not a surprise really. With the raw data images being released as soon as they were made available, anyone who was interested enough could begin processing them immediately. I doubt NASA/ESA thought it was a race. But still, great job for them! They probably did it for a fraction of the cost that the big agencies needed to process the images ;-) So much beaurocracy..

    --
    I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
    1. Re:No surprise there... by TiredGamer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not quite right. Remember a lot of scientists' careers ride on the precision of processing here, whereas these amateur guys aren't going to lose face. There's a lot more here than pretty picture, and in science speed can lead to errors.

      --
      No penguins were harmed in the making of this post.
  3. I'll be impressed by kmhebert · · Score: 5, Funny

    When the amateurs can build a spaceship that can fly to Saturn!

    --
    Regular Meta Moderators are not more likely to get mod points.
    1. Re:I'll be impressed by chris_mahan · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, that, and land on Titan without crashing, and broadcast the signal back. Then I'll be impressed.

      I'll be even more impressed if they don't stick a "Fly Virgin" red and white sticker on it.

      --

      "Piter, too, is dead."

  4. Well... by Blue-Footed+Boobie · · Score: 5, Informative
    Terragen is awesome software, and amazingly the developers have kept the cost reasonable.

    I've been using it for some years now. It is surprisingly easy to load these grayscale images in a heigh-maps and get an accurate render. I'm kicking myself now for not thinking of doing the same thing!

    --
    DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
  5. Re:Open source space program, anyone? by brian.glanz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    'Distributed contributions' are turning many industries on their heads; think of music and more lately the creep into entertainment at large, for example, Napster on.

    Science, even space science, has not been exempt from these sweeping changes even as those guarding the capitalistic infrastructure are, frankly, more intelligent and capable than those guarding 'entertainment' have been. It ought not to be that I need pay US$thousands to simply read scientific articles in the Journal of _______. The Internet exists because scientists pushed ahead (in the military's wake) in the name of information sharing. In protecting their overpaid publishers' investors, fat Universities and other players minting on controlled access to knowledge, the scientists have to some extent let us all down.

    I'd very well expect more significant contributions from 'amateurs' and including the crowd here, were the general quest for knowledge less constrained by capitalism. We have all the tools at our fingertips, literally, to undo more of the corporatism we can refer to roughly as 'closed source'. It's up to the real players though, the scientists themselves, to do as they have done here. Way to go, ESA. Viva la revolucion.

    BG

  6. Re:Karma Whoring.... with pictures! by spac3manspiff · · Score: 5, Informative

    you mean
    http://anthony.liekens.net/huygens_static.html