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New Photos of Io

Posted by Hemos on from the pretty-eye-candy dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "NASA has just released new images of Io taken by Galileo during a flyby several days ago. The images are far better than anything taken of Io before, and an article on the flyby is on ABCnews.com. Apparently NASA wasn't sure if Galileo would survive the radiation it would experience from passing that close to Jupiter, and put off the photo-flyby as long as possible-but it worked, and they're hoping to get one more set of pictures. " The all important question, now, though, is how to make some of these my background image. *grin*

13 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The REAL energizer bunny by PD · · Score: 3

    If the Mars Observer was one of those old expensive probes, we'd be waiting 10 years for another probe to Mars. It was a huge deal when the Mars probe was lost in 1993(?). That was an expensive one.

    Instead, we've lost a probe, and some people wasted some good years of their lives working on the failed mission, but we've got several missions to mars waiting in the wings, or due to arrive at Mars in just a couple months. It's a better way to go.

    Even the poor people who spent all their time working on the failed Climate Orbiter mission might be able to salvage their time and research invested by joining other teams, or maybe starting up a brand new project right away. This is much better than letting their awesome talent go to waste.

    I also like the idea of spreading the instrument packages around to different spacecraft. If we'd lost Voyager 2, then we'd never have gotten a chance to look at Uranus or Neptune up close. It would have been safer to launch 3 or 4 tiny spacecraft instead, and expected 1 of those to fail. We'd have gotten 3 looks at Uranus and Neptune instead of just 1.

    --
    If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
  2. Cool by rde · · Score: 3

    I got these pictures earlier, and must confess that the closest pic was a bit of an anticlimax. This is my own fault, I suppose; I don't know what I was expecting.
    Cooler by far is the image with the rather cool title of MO3811ED8E20C261B.tif (the page is slashdotted at the moment, so I can't find a link. Sorry).
    9m per pixel? Wow. Congrats to all at NASA.

    1. Re:Cool by rde · · Score: 2

      I've stuck the picture (now a jpg, and considerably smaller) here. I hope NASA don't mind.

    2. Re:Cool by PD · · Score: 2

      Nasa probably won't mind at all. The nice thing about government publications is that they are not copyrighted in a lot of cases (military publicity shots of old bombers).

      In the case of the particular image you're referring to, JPL/Caltech has given permission for induhviduals to use the image for personal non-commercial use, but it's not clear if they retain copyright. If they do not retain copyright, then you can use the photo for whatever you like without asking their permission. If they do retain copyright, then you need to use the picture according to their policy, or ask permission. Check out the policy link on the IO photo page.


      --
      If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
  3. The color ones are even better by elfbabe · · Score: 3

    http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov/images/io/iocolor.html Some of these are in true color, and some of them aren't, but they're all a little more fun to look at than the black-and-white ones, no matter what the resolution.

  4. The REAL energizer bunny by wilkinsm · · Score: 2

    ...the voyager probes just keep going... and going... and going...

    I'm constantly amazed by the engineering of the early space probes. They must of been designed to be more rigid and stronger than diamonds.

    So when Jan of 2000 comes around, what are they going to make it do next? Deep space probe number 4?

    1. Re:The REAL energizer bunny by pq · · Score: 3
      And this is the real pity - with NASA's new "faster better cheaper" program, the missions do exactly what was in the initial mission, no more (though sometimes much less - look at the Climate Orbiter fiasco).

      So something like the Sojourner Rover died in a month (its minimal design goal was a week) - if this had been one of the older Cadillac-style overengineered no expense spared missions, it would still be chugging away and getting good science done, instead of having provided us with tantalising glimpses of stuff and then making us sit and twiddle our thumbs for two years.

      Of course, "faster better cheaper" means that a single failure is not catastrophic - so the loss of the previous Mars Polar mission was a total disaster (it was one of the big missions) and left us with nothing going towards Mars for years, while the Climate Orbiter failure is unfortunate, but only a six month to one year delay.

      Meanwhile, the last of the old dinosaurs speeds on towards Saturn - in spite of the stupid and misguided protests over its RTG power source. People in the planetary science community are praying that Cassini does an Energizer Bunny on them, because the next look at Saturn is at least another decade away...

      --
      "I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
  5. more pictures of IO by J.+Tang · · Score: 3

    Some other pictures of IO are at http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov/ima ges/io/ioimages.html.

  6. Space Odyssey by Alterac · · Score: 2

    If Heywood Floyd can do it, anybody can. He was doing stuff like that at 125 years of age or something. What we need now are some monoliths and a couple hallucinations.. grab a couple boxes of poptarts and let's have a big evolutionary party. Cinnamon poptarts, of course.

    --
    oooh, yeah. dig it.
  7. You can get these pics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Nasa has an Astronomy pic of the day site. There's one of Io in true color from July 3, 1999 passby: httP://photojournal.ipl.nasa.gove/cgi-bin/PIAGenCa talogPage.pl?PIA02308 Another great pic from the astonomy pic of the day which I have on my PC: a picture of the earth seen from MIR during the eclipse -- shows the shadow on the earth. It's from August 30, 1999 and it's in the archive. Personal use is fine with them. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990830.html

  8. ... by Signal+11 · · Score: 2
    Yes, but I want to know that the round object is doing a zero-g pull towards the satellite - and don't you tell me THAT was a JUST another weather balloon!

    It's the biggest coverup of all time! NASA knows about the existance of ET! They've been denying it all this time, but they can't forever!!! We're going to find out, and then your world's gonna END!

    Oh, gotta go... the intern's calling for me to take my meds again..



    --
  9. Color images from B&W cameras by Jeremi · · Score: 2

    They can and do make color images from black and white ones. We got color pictures from Mars by
    compositing red, green and blue filters over a black and white imager. It just takes more effort.

    I just had a sudden flashback to my old Amiga 1000's DigiView setup, with its cardboard color filter wheel. Those were the days! :^)

    --


    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  10. Background by MindStalker · · Score: 3

    Rob really needs to put a "Background" section in slashdot. As a referense to finding Robs fav background images of all time.