Official Titan Pictures Post

Originally posted by Jehosephat
THorgod of thunder
As far as I know there are over 300 images that have been recorded and recived. One of the first images released was the one with what appeared as river deltas in a false orange color. This was one that was posted on CNN.

It is possible that they removed the false color image because it wasn't accurate

Surface temprature of titan is around -178°C (-289°F) great for methene baths

No, thats not the one i mean. That image still stayed... CNN reported that NASA had taken down an image that they put up immediatly on the NASA site. And that the ESA refused to put it up on their site.




Thor

Originally posted by Opus
Any one know what the ground temperature is where it landed ??

About -180 on the surface warming up from about -200 higher up in the atmosphere.

i'm also curious as to what ThorGodOfThunder is referring to, if anyone has any info, please tell us

ESA doesn't operate like NASA.. they keep a lot of their data close to the chest.. which is one reason most scientific efforts are targetted at NASA if they are non-government funded... ESA is a bunch of ****s to work with, talented, but arrogant as .... well you get the idea..

i truly kick myself for not taking a screen shot of it, but didnt see the reason to at the time...

I have to admit that I have never been one of these huge 'consipiracy theorists', not that I am saying there is anything wrong with folks thinking what they wish too, but man this has me curious beyound belief...







Thor

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
Im not sure but we did lose a bunch of information due to the fact that Cassini has to relay the information to earth. When Cassini is on the other side of Titan there was no way to pic up the data Huygens is sending out at that time.

Like someone mentioned before we can detect Huygens signal all the way from earth but its to weak to get any data out of it, its pretty much just a heart beat to prove its still alive and transmitting.

Alright a few questions. First, aren't our scientists working at NASA smart enough to set a 'transmit timer' or something so that Hyugens wouldn't transmit until Cassini was able to recieve the information? I doubt they would have it transmitting valuble data just into the void of space.

Second, what is the expected operational life of Hyugens.

Third, Was this a joing effort between NASA and the European Space Agency. I read on CNN that this was 'an amazing feat for the ESA'....I thought Cassini was a NASA project...any clarification would be much appreciated.

Cassini is a NASA project, but Huygens is an ESA project. The probe was designed to last for three hours at most, which it did. Cassini was oriented in such a way to take maximum advantage of that communication window. However, due to orbital geometry conditions beyond the control of NASA, if the probe had lasted very much longer than 3 hours, then the data would not have reached the orbiter.

In other words, Huygens is already deceased.

Originally posted by UnMature


Alright a few questions. First, aren't our scientists working at NASA smart enough to set a 'transmit timer' or something so that Hyugens wouldn't transmit until Cassini was able to recieve the information? I doubt they would have it transmitting valuble data just into the void of space.

Second, what is the expected operational life of Hyugens.

Third, Was this a joing effort between NASA and the European Space Agency. I read on CNN that this was 'an amazing feat for the ESA'....I thought Cassini was a NASA project...any clarification would be much appreciated.

Nasa made Cassini the thing that got to saturn the ESA is behind the probe Huygens . This overall mission was jointly developed by NASA, ESA and ASI. Not sure what the Italian space agency role was though.

As for the operational life of Hyugens its only a few hours due to battery life. No solar panels on this baby.

about a 'transmit timer' Hyugens is only going to be alive for a short peroid of time you dont really have the luxury to wait to transmitt. There might be other reasons why they went this way I dont know but thats how it works

Originally posted by zamphir66
Cassini is a NASA project, but Huygens is an ESA project. The probe was designed to last for three hours at most, which it did. Cassini was oriented in such a way to take maximum advantage of that communication window. However, due to orbital geometry conditions beyond the control of NASA, if the probe had lasted very much longer than 3 hours, then the data would not have reached the orbiter.

In other words, Huygens is already deceased.

Yeah, that's what I'd do. Spend billions on three hours. Use IBM laptop batteries, eh? Wrong frequency, eh? Dudes, you raw feed the data to a downlinked decoder with a high-resolution and very non-public algorithm. Then you 'release' sanitized images of... low-resolution... nothing. Photoshopped driveway rocks. ESA is looking at oceans of oil squirming with half-frozen squids right now. You can't, because that would down the price of oil. Don't think they'll spacebarge the stuff back home someday? Look at Venus.

Seriously, this stuff reminds me of the old British show UFO. Commander Straker is looking at some billion-dollar photos of the Alien homeworld returned from a defective spy satellite.

'What's wrong?' his assistant asks.

'There's no scale. This could be a city, or a bacterium. We have nothing. Nothing.'

[edit on 15-1-2005 by Chakotay]

Earlier today I was flipping through a variety of online articles about Titan when I saw one pic, taken from several kms above the surface, that showed part of a 'river basin' that had a few white circles on its banks. There were two circles, in particular, that were right next to each other.

I wanted to ask ATS about this at the time... but couldn't do to my real-world schedule. Now, however, I can't find that shot. Does anyone else know what I am talking about (and, no, this wasn't the now famous shot that has the island that looks like manhatten in it)?

Though the most rational explanation for the circles is that they are craters left over from meteorite strikes... haven't these photos proven that Titan is geologically active (rivers, waves, wind, etc)? Shouldn't any craters have been evened out?

OIMD...I think this is the one you are referring to:

Originally posted by onlyinmydreams


Earlier today I was flipping through a variety of online articles about Titan when I saw one pic, taken from several kms above the surface, that showed part of a 'river basin' that had a few white circles on its banks. There were two circles, in particular, that were right next to each other.

I wanted to ask ATS about this at the time... but couldn't do to my real-world schedule. Now, however, I can't find that shot. Does anyone else know what I am talking about (and, no, this wasn't the now famous shot that has the island that looks like manhatten in it)?

Though the most rational explanation for the circles is that they are craters left over from meteorite strikes... haven't these photos proven that Titan is geologically active (rivers, waves, wind, etc)? Shouldn't any craters have been evened out?

They are most likeley just picture artifacts. Some of the Cassini pictures of the other moons also contain unusual circular features as well untill they are processed.

Anyone seen the missing NASA photo?

[edit on 15-1-2005 by Athenian]

Originally posted by ThorGodOfThunder
"One image that NASA posted on its site was taken down immediatly. And the ESA (i think thats what they are abbreviated as) refuses to post the image on their website"

I was in ventrilo talking to several of my friends, working on one of our game servers, etc... so a bit of time passed since i first read it, I would guess maybe 20 minutes or so. I told one member about that weird statement, and that I was curious as to what they actually found.

Well to make a long story short, I went back to CNN.com, and that same preview for the article was there, but was missing all the verbage about the "missing image"
So, my question is, has anyone heared about this "missing image" and what the hell it was....
Thor

My brother asked me the same question. He also saw something on CNN about a Nasa picture that was taken down. That's why I'm searching for anyone who saw the image, but this is the only mention of it. Even if NASA didn't find life, they're inviting conspiracy theories by posting images then removing them

Val,
Thanks for the input... but, unfortunately, that's not the one I was thinking of. The one you just posted is the "now famous" pic that I was saying the one in question isn't. The one I saw was posted on an article that had panoramic shots. The image was taken at a spot in the air that looked like it was 'upstream' from the 'river delta' in the shot you just pointed out.

I went through my cookies but it looked like all the photos in the articles I looked through today had been replaced with newer images (I'm not implying a conspiracy with this part... newsrooms always edit their articles as the day goes on and frequently switch to the most recently released pics).

Anyways... they may very well have been picture artifacts like someone suggested, but it seemed like all of them were the same color.

sounds like it might be the one OIMD is mentioning, not sure just guessing here, but if it was gone right after he went back, and its no where else, that could be it...

Man, this is bugging me.....







Thor

Originally posted by Chakotay
Anybody independently processing the raw feeds?

Here's a raw image dump. It isn't raw data, but any missing images should be in here.

Originally posted by Chakotay

Originally posted by Chakotay
Anybody independently processing the raw feeds?

Here's a raw image dump. It isn't raw data, but any missing images should be in here.

To the first officer of the starship voyager,
Thanks for the link. I amde it up to page 23 before I realized that I was running behind time in the real world. So far I haven't found the pic... but, to be honest, given the number of pics on that site I don't know if I'll ever be able to sort it out again. The pic I saw was also processed... it was in color and any digital scratch marks had been removed... whereas all of the pics on the site you offered are the original, raw shots (which, again, I thank you for).

In retrospect... considering that there are obvious blotches on many of these shots, I can't be sure that I saw anything.

Before I log off, though... I want to make it clear that the 'circles' I saw were from a pic posted online TODAY (saturday). They, therefore, could not have been this mystery pic that was reported on CNN. It sounds like this mystery pic was shown and pulled back on the first day of the landing (Friday in my time zone).

OIMD

Hehe..lotsve Voyager fans here!! I liked the EMH doctor the most...

Getting back to the missing pic...so its a birds eye view..i.e photo taken from the air right??
Okay Thor, lets try n work this out, what pics did u see before the missing one and which ones did you see after....??...
Maybe we can get a better idea of it that way..
Also you say it was upstream to the "1st pic"..upstream in what sense
(North , NW or NE) ??
Finally if it was a birdseye shot from the air and not a panoramic ground shot then maybe you could reproduce it for us in paint or something?

Do you remember anything odd about the details of that pic??
Any 'organised' structures which show signs of symmetry?

Waiting impatiently for answers....

my question is why are all the pictures in such a bad quality? They look like they were taken with a telephone camera. Certainly at this day and age they couldve
upped the resolution by a few million pixels?

...mmmmm, what missing picture?