Stereoscopic images of Titan's surface constructed

CozmsBrpng writes "If you can successfully view stereoscopic images then you can behold the surface of Titan in all its grainy 3D glory. And, in case you missed it, you can also listen to a human ear-friendly version of the descent radar and the winds in Titan's atmosphere courtesy of the DISR team at The University of Arizona."

Comments

For all it's worth

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I find it easier to print stereograms like these. Perhaps even re-position them really close to each other in GIMP before printing it out. they seem to be easier to "lock on" on paper than on screen. There's just no way I can see them on screen.

Re:Not Much use for Stereoscopic imaging

[Eadwacer]

Yea, but there's enough relief to see that the black "channels" don't follow it. On the first pic they look like some of them run cross-slope, and on the last pic it looks like they run on the ridgelines, as if we were looking at something bulging up from below.

Re:I don't mean to belittle the accomplishment

[Graymalkin]

You hit upon two very salient truths about the Huygens probe. The main imaging instrument on Huygens is the Descent Imager Spectral Radiometer (DISR). It contains only a single CCD. The various lens assemblies are connected to the main CCD by a series of optical fibers, each shines light on a different region of the CCD. The CCD is 512x520 pixels though about half of that is reserved as a storage section, the left over 256x520 pixel area is used for the imagers and spectrometers. The visual imagers of the DISR intrument are the High Resolution Imager (HRI), Medium Resolution Imager (MRI) and the Side Looking Imager (SLI). There's also two spectrometers, the Upward-Looking Visual Spectrometers (ULVS) and the Downward-Looking Visual Spectrometer (DLVS). Finally there's space reserves for the Solar Aureole camera which is used to measure sunlight streaming through the atmosphere to determine the size of particles within it.

The HRI is 160x254, the MRI is 176x254, and the SLI is 128x254 pixels each. Larger images have to be assembled as mosaics and even these aren't going to be large enough to compete with the megapixel images from the MERs. The Pancams and Navcams on the MERs are 1024x1024 each and have essentially a full range of motion so really nice panoramas are easy to create. The DISR is fixed on Huygen's chassis.

Bandwidth is also a tremendous issue with Huygens. The Huygens probe only hasd a 4800bps datalink to Cassini and has to transmit all of its images within two and a half hours. Even with its limited data rate Huygens was able to transmit 350 images back from Titan which is rather impressive.

So it is a combination of geometry, bandwidth, and limited technology. Also remember that despite these images being relatively stark in comparison to MER images they contain tons of very valuable information. When researches have had more time to process Huygens images they will get prettier. Until then they're going to remain relatively bland to laymans' eyes but terribly exciting to scientists.