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

Re:Not Much use for Stereoscopic imaging

[toxic666]

I have used stereo enough that I don't need the painful little glasses anymore. The secret is knowing how to look at then while focusing at "infinity". Takes some practice. Learned it while studying geology, specifically geomorphology (the science of geology and landforms).

Printed at full 8.5" x 11" size and they are fascinating. I was stunned by the dendritic erosion patterns and flat basins. And there is plenty of relief if you know how to look at them, it just takes a trained eye.

But this ain't "geo"morphology. Hell, water is a rock-forming mineral thereabouts. I will enjoy looking them over, though. Wish I had the raw data from the probe available to go along with the pics.

Re:Interesting, but not Inspiring

[Quantum Fizz]

In a way I think what was most inspiring about Titan was the great unknown. We didn't know if there was a solid surface, liquid oceans of hydrocarbons, obvious forms of life, etc. It was really a huge deal, getting the probe onto the surface, with the ability to survive a variety of scenarios (liquid ocean, solid land, muddy tarpits, etc).

After the probe landed, and we saw a seeming barren rocky surface, the mission suddenly isn't as sexy anymore. To many in the general public, it's yet another rocky barren landscape, not much different from the moon, Mars, etc. Of course to the planetary scientists there's loads of amazing things to study. But to the average Joe, there unfortunately wasn't anything groundbreaking to instill a sense of awe.

I don't mean to belittle the accomplishment

[moultano]

I don't mean to belittle the accomplishment of getting the probe to titan, but as a lay person, none of the images that have come back have been all that impressive. What is the technical reason for this? Is it a bandwidth issue? Or were these launched long enough ago that this quality of images was state of the art for spacecraft?

Re:For all it's worth

[MillionthMonkey]

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.

If you're editing them in GIMP or Photoshop, try reversing their order, so you look at them crosseyed. I usually start by holding a finger in front to get them to coincide.

I can do both, but I find the crosseyed method a bit easier than the parallel method- the images can be further apart and your eyes can cross much more easily than they can diverge. The "parallel" viewing method may actually require eye directions that are slightly outside parallel. If your intraocular separation is not as large as the separation between the images on the screen, you'll run into problems with divergence. Unless you are a lizard, or you've had a stroke, your brain will fight very hard to avoid divergent eye directions.

When I'm on vacation I sometimes take shots like this. Take a picture of a canyon or something, move some small distance to the right, and take the same picture again. Sometimes it works. When I'm in very dull meetings, I sometimes pass the time by doodling stereograms freehand. Sometimes they actually work too.

Bad setereo image??

[darkonc]

I don't think that these images are all that good for stereo for a couple of reasons:

• These pairs seem to be taken with different filters. This would, at least, explain why the two images seem to emphasize different details.
• divergent stereo??? divergent stereo is WAY harder to do than cross-eyed stereo. Many people can't do divergent without mechanical aids (especially with larger images). My mothe, who'se an optometrist thinks that it's almost impossible (compared to cross-eyed stereo)
• I'm not ssure if they're corrrectly rotated. For stereo images like this, the horizontal line should be coplanar to the location of the two lenses used to take the picture. I'm guessing that the pictures were just chosen for the leftmost and the rightmost, but no matching rotation was done.

  If anybody knows the layout of the peobe well enough to draw the line which would be coplanar to the two lenses, I'd be happy to rotate the images (and swap them, too, if need be)

(Just an FYI: I used to own a stereo camera (stereo realist) I've still got a thousand or so images in my archive. Since losing the camera, I've also done my own setero pairs 'the hard way', so I've gotten reasonably good at doing this)

JiggleVision some of these?

[andrewbutts]

Jigglevision is a simple technique that makes it easy for even cyclopses to percieve depth in pairs of stereo images. No headaches or eye strain or anything.

stereo blindness is quite common

[mpesce]

About 10% of the population is stereo-blind, and most stereo-blind folks don't even know it. It's not really a serious disability - except in cases like this.

Re:stereo blindness is quite common

[jc42]

I can vouch for the parent; my fiancee has virtually no stereo perception and functions just fine, even driving.

Nothing surprising there. Human eyes are too close together for stereo vision to be useful past 3 or 4 meters. Past that difference, your brain generates the 3-D effect, mostly be comparing small changes over time ("sequential stero"). Driving is a good example: Close things move faster than things farther away, and things grow as you approach them. You learn to infer distances at a very early age.

Stereo vision is mostly useful when interacting with things nearby. For example, when you're trying to pick something up. Not coincidentally, your stereo vision is best at about the distance of your hands.

But at the distances involved when driving, humans really don't have stereo vision. Maybe if our eyes were on ends of long stalks, if would work, but not when they are only a few cm apart.

Re:Not Much use for Stereoscopic imaging

[Bush Pig]

I think he's talking about folding pocket stereoscopes, one brand of which was "Cassella". I used to use them, and larger deskbound equivalents, as well as precise stereoplotters, when I was an army cartographer. Cassellas were used by phot interpreters during WW2, if not even earlier.

I was actually quite interested to find that I could see the stereo images without a viewer (as I'd never been able to before).

Re:I prefer wiggle images

[LiNKz]

http://upload.daunity.org/titan/

Re:Here are JiggleVision versions of those images

[andrewbutts]

Wow sorry, these links actually work.
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stereograms

[Anonymous Coward]

Stereograms, like these are a lot easier to see, even if you wear glasses or lenses.