Originally posted by sciencenewby
I have a few serious problems with nasa...
1. those pictures dont even look real.. they look like they are animated.
...and what exactly is your point-of-reference for what "real" high resolution detailed images of Saturn should look like?
2. our satelites above earth can zoom in and see people walking in detail... yet the satelites we send to saturn/mars etc give us this
crap?
If the U.S. has spy satellites that can see people in detail, they are not apt to sharing that highly classified technology with NASA and NASA
contractors.
The pictures you see on "Google Earth" that show people are not taken from satellites -- they are taken from airplanes. Most of the "detailed
close-up" pictures on Google Earth are taken from airplanes.
3. the argueabley MOST important information we need from saturn is high detail pics of titan.... where are they?
Titan is shrouded in a thick haze -- so there isn't much to look at from space using visible light. Although they have studied the clouds in visible
light, such as this image:
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...
HOWEVER, visible light is not the only tool for seeing things from orbit, and they DO have images of the surface. Cassini has used radar to penetrate
the clouds. Here are pictures showing radar images of surface features:
upload.wikimedia.org...
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...
photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov...
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...
But to answer your question about "where are the pictures of Titan", there are several pages of these radar images of Titan and its surface here:
Link.
I only posted a few -- there are many, many more images of the surface on that website. I suggest you go there and look.
Also, the ESA (The European Space Agency), working with NASA, landed a probe (called "Huygens") on the surface of Titan. The ESA probe was taken to
Titan by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Huygens took many pictures while on the way down and while on the surface:
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...
photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov...
photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov...
photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov...
These were also found in the link I posted above. There are a lot of images of Titan there if you look.
4. according to earlier testaments "titan" has an orange color. looks gray in these pictures?
Titan's air is predominantly made up of nitrogen with other hydrocarbon elements which give Titan its orange hue.
Many of the images in the OP are "raw images" in gray-scale. If you want to see color images of Titan, there are many of them in that link I posted
above.
One thing about color images though -- you will not see any color in the "raw" images from Saturn.
The reason for that is that ALL digital cameras (even yours) is basically "color blind". That is, the light-sensitive sensors that actually capture
the image can only capture shades of grey. Your digital camera captures the image through a series of filters that gives the image different shades
of gray based on the color wavelength of the light. A computer inside your camera then "translates" those different shades of gray as seen through
the different filters and returns a "color" image to you. All this takes only a second, so you never notice. By the way the "color" image you
see on your camera is not "real" color, but the best approximation of real color that your camera's computer can give you.
The camera in Cassini (and the Mars Rovers for that matter) works basically the same way to begin with. An image is taken through various filters
that filter different wavelengths of light. These wavelengths correspond to different colors. The image returned by these filters strikes the
photo-sensor part of the camera, which can only see differnt shades of grey -- but different for each wavelength/filter.
The difference here is that the shades-of gray images are not converted into color on the space probe, but rather those "raw" images are sent back
to earth in the shades of gray. Imaging scientists on Earth then later process the raw images into "approximate true color" images (or false color,
for that matter).
This is done because the raw gray-scale images separated into different wavelengths can actually contain much more information than a color image.
Different materials look different under various wavelengths, so scientists use these component-wavelength images to find out more than they can from
a color image.
Most of the images in the OP we recently taken (some are from a few days ago), so they probably have not got around to processing these raw images in
color yet. The funny thing is that you are complaining that these raw images are not color processed yet, while most conspiracy believers complain
that NASA seems to hold out on releasing raw images (which, by the way, isn't true either -- all raw images can be found on NASA's website.)
Here is a link to ALL images (not just Titan) -- Both "press releases" (the pretty ones with color) and the "raw images":
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...
Nasa in my opinion is doing one of the following
a. covering up the truth
b. isnt really exploring space
Again, I suggest you look on the internet. The photos you mentioned that you want to see are all there in the public domain.
[edit on 10/21/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]
