Slashdot Mirror
First Images From 50-km Enceladus Flyby
CheshireCatCO writes "The first pictures from yesterday's flyby of Enceladus are now public. At closest approach, Cassini was set spinning to cancel out the apparent motion of Enceladus so as to capture unsmeared images during the 40,000-mph flyby. Although it wasn't clear that this would work (errors in pointing could easily have made the cameras miss their targets), the maneuver panned out beautifully, producing spectacular images of the surface. Images show the 'tiger stripes' at the south pole, including at least one location that has been identified as a source of a jet, as well as considerable vertical relief, easily visible thanks to the low sun-angle near the south pole at present. Processed, enhanced images should follow shortly."
At first glance I thought these pics would be better if they were further back to get an idea of scale.
Then noticed that the pictures are marked anywhere from 33 to 98 feet PER PIXEL. these pictures actually have quite alot of land below, and I think it's just the nature of the resolution and shot that make it look like its a much smaller scale.
I'm glad there are scientists that study this that can make out alot more than I... but very happy this worked none-the-ess.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
I see no towns and roads...
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/raw-images-list1.html
This is the NASA page for the raw images from the flyby.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
The Ciclops site seems to be unresponsive already. Nasa's coverage can be found here http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/events/enceladus20080811/index.cfm
For comparison, when the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter took photos of the Martian moon Phobos, it did so at a 6.8m=1 pixel scale, which came out to a 3,374 by 3,300 pixel image for one side. If a scale of 20.2m=1 pixel on average is assumed on average for these, then a picture of the whole thing like would be about 22,074 by 22,074 pixels, or 487 megapixels. That's assuming they didn't even do the same locations twice from different angles or something.
Does this mean I'll be able to switch from Phobos to Enceladus as my desktop background soon?
How many billion dollars did we spend to get one or two postcard photos?
About 1.7. If someone has more exact, up-to-date Cassini budget figures, let us know. For comparison, this is slightly less than 1/330th the budget to-date for the American war effort in Iraq. With a tenth of the war budget, we could send 3 or more likely 4 Cassini-class missions to every major planetary body in the solar system, and have the other 90% of the war budget to spend on eliminating world hunger 12 to 13 times over (I'm using the conservative estimate here and rounding down). Or whatever.
But that's not the point. These images are not "postcards"; they are scientific-quality imagery; I believe CheshireCatCO elaborated on this somewhere else, perhaps even in the other slashdot story he linked in this very summary. $2 billion for postcards is unreasonable, but not so unreasonable for doing science in-situ at Saturn.
Typical fucking Americans.
Spirited attempt to round out your troll, but you already betrayed yourself an American yourself with that little "we're even spending bit.
I read slashdot often but reply seldom enough I just do it anonymously. Jerks like you give anonymous posters a bad name and undermine the viability of communicating via the anonymity mechanism. I want to state for the record and for the readership that not all slashdot ACs are insufferable trolls, and that some valuable contributions are made by drive-by or lurking participants piecemeal, anonymously. I try to lead by example; feeding an obvious and unabashed troll will do no good of course, but offering useful commentary to others will.
Anyway, I suspect that your post will receive its richly deserved troll or flaimbait moderation in due time.
(although not on the imaging/planetary science side of things), it's important to note how incredibly successful Cassini-Huygens has been. Projects such as Cassini are where the 'space' budget needs to be spent, not on trinkets like the International Space Station.
-irb
The last picture has a large fissure across the center with a small sharply defined fissure barnching off and pointing NNE. At the end of the branch there is a giant fish head frozen in the ice.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Does anyone else think they saw a few that look like the head of a cartoon character ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Thats no moon, its a space station...
If you don't know what the answer IS, how do you know what it isn't?
What if science is actually a sentient entity which yearns for freedom even as do some of its followers?
What if America really is...nah, that one's just silly.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Dude, Enceladus is actually property of the British Crown. One of the conditions of allowing you Yanks up there to take a look is that the pictures are distributed for free.
Most space programs are internationally funded and carried out by universities of more than one country these days. Of course the data should be made available.
Yes they do
America, Home of the Brave.
First of, this is an international project and secondly how could this possibly of 'National Interest'?
Or do you see a bright future for importing ice from there to lower the cost of your AC?
The advantage of widely publishing these photo's and further information gathered should be self-evident, the pictures are maybe amazing but it's the science work based on them that'll have a lasting value.
And the more people and organisations work on this the greater the returns will be.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
...what priceless data? Sure, it cost a ton of money to obtain these absolutely incredible images... but what data?
Also, who's to say that this is 100% of the data that NASA received? Personally, knowing the way the Gov agencies work, these images represent the 'icing' on the cake of data received. The critical information is probably retained.
As for you answers that you don't want to hear: Well that's just to bad. Post a question in a public internet venue, and you are subject to any answers that get posted, stupid or otherwise.
America IS #1, we have the big foam hands indicating as such. And Science doesn't want to be free, but discoveries that affect us as the Human Race *SHOULD* be free.
Mal: "So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave."
the moving camera calcs "panned" out - I get it.
(and yes, I know "panned out" is a reference to gold prospecting. calm down.)
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
If you see fireworks in the photos, they are probably photoshopped.
Where are the fucking geysers
Enchiladas flyby. A dream come true. Oh wait...
This is sad. You have an article with the phrase "vertical relief" in it and you can't come up with anything even remotely humorous? For shame, AC... for shame.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
that's the whole Enceladus..
[Slashdot Comments We Liked]
It's precisely because it was funded by taxpayer dollars that it's being given away for free.
There are bucketloads of data that are not being released to the public - releasing photos of any quality is just plain good PR and the value of a normal light photo is almost inconsequential. Making your American Taxpayer jump through hoops to get hold of these photos would be counterproductive. Given your apparent overreaction (they're not releasing designs for fusion reactors after all) you appear to attach far greater importance to these pictures than they intrinsically possess.
And if you think that US research is done totally in isolation, well guess again.
I see cliff dwellings in this picture.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
You obviously do not have even a remote clue of how science works dude. First of all, Cassini is very far from being a purely american mission. Parts have been built all around the world. You want to keep the data for the US? Right. Just realise, that it would have costed much more to the US tax payer and the there would be less scientific results. Almost all space missions are international collaborations nowaday.
And your sentence "At the least, the data should be kept for national interest reasons, with it only available to projects that advance the government's interest." just makes me puke, sorry. What would be the "national interest reasons"? If so, do not publish any scientific paper, imagine, it could be read my russians or chinese (who also write scientific papers read by americans, amazing isn't it?). And since when should planetory exploration serve "government's interest"? What for?
Oh, i happen to be a researcher, i have worked on several continents and i use daily data gathered by international space missions. You know what, US scientists are drooling over Herschel right now. And guess what, they can be part of the teams who will analyse the data. But if we follow you, any data should be denied to US researcher to preserve european national interests, right?
as a drive-by shooting?
In image #3 you can definitely see the same face one mars sticking out of the canyon.
Images are definitely data. Analysis of these has already begun and it's already getting interesting. That said, the raws on the JPL site and the versions CICLOPS releases are never the full-quality, science-grade data. That's released to the Planetary Data System a nine-months to a year later, though.
You forgot one important piece:
Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.
I can guarantee you that any other nation's research programmes would not do this....
"programmes"? That isn't the US spelling!
Has anyone considered that this was meant to be an honest question from a non-US citizen and not a troll?
back home, where I used to shoot womp rats...
Impetuous! Homeric!
So what is an Enceladus?
Looks like a Sobel operator output..
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.