What has NASA been doing while all Eyes were on ISON...

Credit:

NASA, ESA, J.-Y. Li (Planetary Science Institute), and the Hubble Comet ISON Imaging Science Team

reply to post by daryllyn


Which is why they have billions of dollars of fancy photographic equipment up there and proclaim they will, say use one of them to take infared picture as it enters the sun, but no one ever sees all the photos....hmmm....they're pathological liars and work for agenda, and its not ours, but citizens are the employer group and as long as they don't start to create democracy that is effective, not crippled and ensures abuses don't occur, they will occur, and are designed to occur even.

angryhulk
Instead of pumping your gums about the difficulties on Mars can one of the above self proclaimed camera experts explain why NASA can't take a pretty picture of ISON please? Remember that's what this thread is about, the 'comet of a century'.

Define "pretty picture". And explain justification for NASA using their time and resources to take "pretty pictures" instead of doing science.

NASA May just be the biggest bunch of fools on the Planet.

Or we are?

wildespace

angryhulk
Instead of pumping your gums about the difficulties on Mars can one of the above self proclaimed camera experts explain why NASA can't take a pretty picture of ISON please? Remember that's what this thread is about, the 'comet of a century'.

Define "pretty picture". And explain justification for NASA using their time and resources to take "pretty pictures" instead of doing science.

You want me to define what a pretty picture is? Or are you just asking questions for the sake of asking questions like most people on this thread.

Explain justification... You mean justify (good grammar). Just pointing that out since your response was a deliberate attempt at getting under my skin. I can do that to.

Science - Observation plays an important part in 'science'. That is unless you don't think comets are important.

Unity_99
reply to post by daryllyn

 

Which is why they have billions of dollars of fancy photographic equipment up there and proclaim they will, say use one of them to take infared picture as it enters the sun, but no one ever sees all the photos....hmmm....they're pathological liars and work for agenda, and its not ours, but citizens are the employer group and as long as they don't start to create democracy that is effective, not crippled and ensures abuses don't occur, they will occur, and are designed to occur even.

I see all these claims that NASA are "liars" and have yet to see any proof of it. It is not their job to take pretty pictures to satisfy your curiosity. There were plenty of other images of ISON, nothing was hidden, there is no big ISON image hiding conspiracy. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I'm assuming you are referring to ISON not showing on SDO? They have addressed the subject on their blog, and they have many reasons they think it didn't show, but they haven't yet arrived at a solid conclusion at the time that they posted, and they are still looking into what happened.

angryhulk

wildespace

angryhulk
Instead of pumping your gums about the difficulties on Mars can one of the above self proclaimed camera experts explain why NASA can't take a pretty picture of ISON please? Remember that's what this thread is about, the 'comet of a century'.

Define "pretty picture". And explain justification for NASA using their time and resources to take "pretty pictures" instead of doing science.

Explain justification... You mean justify (good grammar). Just pointing that out since your response was a deliberate attempt at getting under my skin. I can do that to.

I always find it amusing when people taking a stab at someone's grammar, get it wrong themselves. It should have been "too". I can do that, too.

It's been explained why their image quality isn't as good as pictures we take here on earth, where we are not limited by temperatures, radiation, and the transfer of data, like they are in space.

daryllyn

angryhulk

wildespace

angryhulk
Instead of pumping your gums about the difficulties on Mars can one of the above self proclaimed camera experts explain why NASA can't take a pretty picture of ISON please? Remember that's what this thread is about, the 'comet of a century'.

Define "pretty picture". And explain justification for NASA using their time and resources to take "pretty pictures" instead of doing science.

Explain justification... You mean justify (good grammar). Just pointing that out since your response was a deliberate attempt at getting under my skin. I can do that to.

I always find it amusing when people taking a stab at someone's grammar, get it wrong themselves. It should have been "too". I can do that, too.

It's been explained why their image quality isn't as good as pictures we take here on earth, where we are not limited by temperatures, radiation, and the transfer of data, like they are in space.

edit on 12/8/2013 by daryllyn because: (no reason given)

I won't even edit my post I'll take that on the chin. Ha.

So that's the reason. Their cameras are in space.

angryhulk

boncho

angryhulk
Instead of pumping your gums about the difficulties on Mars can one of the above self proclaimed camera experts explain why NASA can't take a pretty picture of ISON please? Remember that's what this thread is about, the 'comet of a century'.

You would first have to show us the pictures you are making these claims about. And offer some information about them for a comparative analyses.

Emm no, as essentially I'm repeating what the OP has already pointed out. Use his source?

I would assume it was a simple question I asked for anybody that has any knowledge in this field. I don't have a clue about cameras and that's that.

I think it's been explained for the most part. Consider this, NASA's various orbiting observatories are not specifically designed for comets. Although, comets do end up as a secondary goal:

Goals: The primary mission of the European Space Agency's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecrast is to study the solar atmosphere, helioseismology and solar wind, but it has also proved very useful for spotting comets.

*

There is an orbiter that is currently in hibernation waiting for a comet to pass:

Goals: The European Space Agency's Rosetta is the first mission designed to orbit and land on a comet. It consists of an orbiter and a lander -- called Philae. The two spacecraft carry 20 science instruments to make a detailed study of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for two years at it approaches our sun.

Accomplishments: After two successful asteroid encounters, Rosetta is in hibernation until January 2014. It is traveling towards its rendezvous with 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

*

So what the YouTube and space graphic isn't telling you, is that a lot of this stuff isn't even meant for what it's being used for. That's like complaining that your spoon isn't cutting your steak.

Deep Impact: Observed 493 million miles
SWIFT: Observed at 460 million miles
Spitzer: Observed at 310 million miles

The above three picked up the comet a long, long way out. Quite interesting. Surely not as close as any shiny pictures came from.

Hubble: Designed to look for things from a few to thousands of lightyears away, many of its instruments do not even give back information that would be understood by most people. Nevermind fancy pictures [of comets]. And as I stated in another post, some of the really beautiful pictures you've seen from Hubble looked like TV static before false colours were injected.

hubblesite.org...

(X) BRRISON: Planned to collect infrared and UV data, suffered a jamming anomaly with its telescope.

Curiousity: Observe a pass (mars)
Opportunity: Observe a pass (mars)
Messenger: Observe by Mercury

The above three are nothing more than an attempt to track something that was seen far far away. Very interesting for anyone who made calculations on its approach… But no shiny pictures.

SOHO: Studies the sun
STEREO: Studies the sun
SDO: Studies the sun

Why would systems designed to study the sun (some of them aimed directly at it) turn back pictures like a telescope designed for tracking comets? They wouldn't. They do however, give us the only glimpses of the comet making its approach to the sun, which is rather impressive because it can't be done with other equipment.

And for the finale, SHINY PICTURES!

Woo…



Taken by:

A network of telescopes and scientists aimed at finding and tracking comets. (Who woulda thunk?)

The International Scientific Optical Network (Russian: Международная научная оптическая сеть, Пулковская кооперация оптических наблюдателей) is an international project, currently consisting of about 30 telescopes at about 20 observatories in about ten countries (Russia, Ukraine (Andrushivka), Georgia (Abastumani), Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Moldova, Spain (Teide), Switzerland (Zimmerwald), Bolivia (Tarija), USA (Mayhill), Italy (Collepardo))[1] which have organized to detect, monitor and track objects in space. ISON is managed by the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences.[2][3] It was credited for the discovery of comets C/2010 X1 (Elenin)[4] and C/2012 S1 (ISON), the latter popularly known as Comet ISON.

Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON)

C/2012 S1, also known as Comet ISON or Comet Nevski–Novichonok, is a sungrazing comet discovered on 21 September 2012 by Vitali Nevski (Vitebsk, Belarus) and Artyom Novichonok (Kondopoga, Russia) The discovery was made using the 0.4-meter (16 in) reflector of the International Scientific Optical Network near Kislovodsk, Russia and the automated asteroid-discovery program CoLiTec. The discovery was announced by the Minor Planet Center on 24 September. Observations by SWIFT suggest that C/2012 S1's nucleus is around 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) in diameter.

ISON comes to perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) on 28 November 2013 and will pass approximately 1,100,000 km (680,000 mi) above the Sun's surface. If it survives perihelion it should become a splendid naked eye object perhaps rivalling C/2011 W3 Lovejoy in appearance. We simply don't know. All we can do is watch and wait!

How to make a shiny comet:

This:



Becomes this:



Now, they state that the one picture is actually 3 pictures, at a 60 second exposure, then stitched together after. This is very common in photography.

Anyone who has done some basic photography knows that what a picture looks like, has little resemblance to what things look like or most importantly what you can see with your eyes when using compiled images and/or long exposure times.

reply to post by angryhulk


It is more important that NASA's budget goes towards studying space objects, rather than just taking pretty pictures of them. We have amateur astronomers for that, who have unlimited time, equipment that gets better all the time, and willingness to spend days, weeks, and months produsing a great-looking image.

Consider all those spacecraft out there that have been observing ISON. The images they produced might not be considered "pretty" by the general public, but they are scientifically valuable. A low-res grainy image of ISON is more valuable than a pretty picture if it offers information about chemical composition, rates of dust and water production, various emissions, etc. Despite looking decidedly unimpressive, MRO's images of ISON have allowed astronomers to better estimate the comet's size.

I could go on and on, but as this thread shows, the average joe is only interested in "pretty pictures" and is ignorant of the real work done by the astronomers.

boncho

angryhulk

boncho

angryhulk
Instead of pumping your gums about the difficulties on Mars can one of the above self proclaimed camera experts explain why NASA can't take a pretty picture of ISON please? Remember that's what this thread is about, the 'comet of a century'.

You would first have to show us the pictures you are making these claims about. And offer some information about them for a comparative analyses.

Emm no, as essentially I'm repeating what the OP has already pointed out. Use his source?

I would assume it was a simple question I asked for anybody that has any knowledge in this field. I don't have a clue about cameras and that's that.

I think it's been explained for the most part. Consider this, NASA's various orbiting observatories are not specifically designed for comets. Although, comets do end up as a secondary goal:

Goals: The primary mission of the European Space Agency's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecrast is to study the solar atmosphere, helioseismology and solar wind, but it has also proved very useful for spotting comets.

*

There is an orbiter that is currently in hibernation waiting for a comet to pass:

Goals: The European Space Agency's Rosetta is the first mission designed to orbit and land on a comet. It consists of an orbiter and a lander -- called Philae. The two spacecraft carry 20 science instruments to make a detailed study of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for two years at it approaches our sun.

Accomplishments: After two successful asteroid encounters, Rosetta is in hibernation until January 2014. It is traveling towards its rendezvous with 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

*

So what the YouTube and space graphic isn't telling you, is that a lot of this stuff isn't even meant for what it's being used for. That's like complaining that your spoon isn't cutting your steak.

Deep Impact: Observed 493 million miles
SWIFT: Observed at 460 million miles
Spitzer: Observed at 310 million miles

The above three picked up the comet a long, long way out. Quite interesting. Surely not as close as any shiny pictures came from.

Hubble: Designed to look for things from a few to thousands of lightyears away, many of its instruments do not even give back information that would be understood by most people. Nevermind fancy pictures.

hubblesite.org...

(X) BRRISON: Planned to collect infrared and UV data, suffered a jamming anomaly with its telescope.

Curiousity: Observe a pass (mars)
Opportunity: Observe a pass (mars)
Messenger: Observe by Mercury

The above three are nothing more than an attempt to track something that was seen far far away. Very interesting for anyone who made calculations on its approach… But no shiny pictures.

SOHO: Studies the sun
STEREO: Studies the sun
SDO: Studies the sun

Why would systems designed to study the sun (some of them aimed directly at them) turn back pictures like a telescope? They wouldn't. They do however, give us the only glimpses of the comet making its approach to the sun, which is rather impressive because it can't be done with other equipment.

And for the finale, SHINY PICTURES!

Woo…

Taken by:

A network of telescopes and scientists aimed at finding and tracking comets. (Who woulda thunk?)

The International Scientific Optical Network (Russian: Международная научная оптическая сеть, Пулковская кооперация оптических наблюдателей) is an international project, currently consisting of about 30 telescopes at about 20 observatories in about ten countries (Russia, Ukraine (Andrushivka), Georgia (Abastumani), Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Moldova, Spain (Teide), Switzerland (Zimmerwald), Bolivia (Tarija), USA (Mayhill), Italy (Collepardo))[1] which have organized to detect, monitor and track objects in space. ISON is managed by the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences.[2][3] It was credited for the discovery of comets C/2010 X1 (Elenin)[4] and C/2012 S1 (ISON), the latter popularly known as Comet ISON.

Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON)

C/2012 S1, also known as Comet ISON or Comet Nevski–Novichonok, is a sungrazing comet discovered on 21 September 2012 by Vitali Nevski (Vitebsk, Belarus) and Artyom Novichonok (Kondopoga, Russia) The discovery was made using the 0.4-meter (16 in) reflector of the International Scientific Optical Network near Kislovodsk, Russia and the automated asteroid-discovery program CoLiTec. The discovery was announced by the Minor Planet Center on 24 September. Observations by SWIFT suggest that C/2012 S1's nucleus is around 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) in diameter.

ISON comes to perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) on 28 November 2013 and will pass approximately 1,100,000 km (680,000 mi) above the Sun's surface. If it survives perihelion it should become a splendid naked eye object perhaps rivalling C/2011 W3 Lovejoy in appearance. We simply don't know. All we can do is watch and wait!

How to make a shiny comet:

This:

Becomes this:

Now, they state that the one picture is actually 3 pictures, at a 60 second exposure, then stitched together after. This is very common in photography.

Anyone who has done some basic photography knows that what a picture looks like, has little resemblance to what things look like or most importantly what you can see with your eyes when using compiled images and/or long exposure times.

OK fair enough. I guess I can buy into what your saying. So essentially the comments above referring to issues with temperature and radiation are just nonsense as there are actually functioning cameras floating around up there, just not for that purpose?

Anyway, appreciate the effort you put into that post.

reply to post by angryhulk

OK fair enough. I guess I can buy into what your saying. So essentially the comments above referring to issues with temperature and radiation are just nonsense as there are actually functioning cameras floating around up there, just not for that purpose?

Anyway, appreciate the effort you put into that post.

Yes but it all ties into one big problem for people designing systems. If I need a instrument that only registers something very faint-very specific, there are concerns with that specific instrument. If I need an instrument that needs to look directly at the sun, there are equally complicated problems that will arise.

So basically each instrument is designed and calibrated to a specific purpose, and although they are used for various things outside their missions at certain times, they do not always produce the best observation possible, as designing and deploying each observatory to accomplish all the accumulated tasks would be impossible.

Just because you can take a picture at your kids birthday and it looks good, or point your camera up into the sky on with long exposure and compile 10 of those shots with long exposure to make a pretty image, does not mean that it is possible to do in space, nor that it is any concern of scientists that are collecting data.

Most of the data they analyze would be entirely uninteresting to the average observer. NASA has made a great effort through social media and other means to promote what they are doing, because of this confusion. And in some cases they spend a little time making "pretty pictures", but if anything, that would/should be considered a waste of money (if the goal is just to make something pleasing to the eye).

reply to post by daryllyn


as well.

"It should have been "too". I can do that, as well."

Char-Lee
reply to post by TheDon

 

Interesting that photos from INSIDE the earths atmosphere can be better or equal to those we are shown recorded from out in space.

It's easier to upgrade Earth optics than it is to get the money to upgrade a space telescope. Amateur astronomers have a whole range of digital accessories and software to use. In the past they had to make do with a regular telescope and grainy photographic film and atmospheric heat refraction (like the way a radiator makes the air above seem to shimmer). Research observatories got around that through the use of lasers to map out the distortion, but those systems cost millions and could only be fixed to a few telescopes.

Now amateur astronomers have motorized tracking telescopes, high resolution high sensitivity CCD sensors with short exposure times, giving them the option of "lucky-shot" photography. There's always the chance that for one moment, there is no heat distortion, so they get that "lucky shot", one out of ten times. Then they can use regular desktop PC's to do image enhancement.

reply to post by boncho


so your saying that a budget for exploration,,of 3.9 BILLION $,, just ain't getting it done,, not because of the money,, cause it's just so hard and complicated????

BobAthome
reply to post by daryllyn

 

as well.

"It should have been "too". I can do that, as well."

"I can do that, too." was the correction of his sentence, not a statement I was making myself.

Do you have anything constructive and on topic to add to the conversation?

reply to post by stormcell


once again,, u mean 3.9 billion $ aint enough??

really?

cause it cost a million too upgrade?

reply to post by daryllyn


no

BobAthome
reply to post by boncho

 

so your saying that a budget for exploration,,of 3.9 BILLION $,, just ain't getting it done,, not because of the money,, cause it's just so hard and complicated????

If your definition of exploration is simply a matter of how many pretty pictures are being taken, then yes.

If you are instead considering the actual discoveries by NASA, then no. They are pretty good at it. But, I would still personally rather send them tax dollars than various other agencies.

www.nasa.gov...

www.space.com...

www.telegraph.co.uk...

www.huffingtonpost.com...

list25.com...

www.theatlantic.com...

www.theguardian.com...

reply to post by daryllyn


That's true BUT they are the world leaders in space travel, technology and innovation. They are meant to be scientific and curious by nature.

Every possible technological device should have been pointed at ISON (unless there was something more... unique flying by) because the questions it could pose..

The amount of photographic evidence we have seen doesn't appear to me, to be NASA's greatest efforts.