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First Images From 50-km Enceladus Flyby
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Aug 13, 2008 02:29 AM
from the over-the-shoulder-spinning dept.
from the over-the-shoulder-spinning dept.
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."
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Cassini To "Skeet-Shoot" Enceladus 41 comments
CheshireCatCO writes "When Cassini makes its closest approach (50 km) during the flyby of the moon Enceladus next Monday 11 August, the spacecraft will be zipping by too quickly to turn and image in the usual way. So the Cassini team will be trying something new: a 'skeet-shoot' of the surface. The spacecraft will start to spin before the closest approach to the south pole so that when the best resolution is possible, the moon will drift through the field of view slowly enough to acquire unsmeared images. Of interest are the eruption-sites on the surface that give rise to the plume extending thousands of kilometers into space and producing Saturn's E ring. This flyby will be optimized for the imaging instruments (ISS, VIMS, CIRS, and UVS) in contrast with the March flyby, which was designed for the fields-and-particles instruments."
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Cassini Finds Source of Icy Jets On Enceladus 37 comments
Not long ago, we discussed Cassini's mission to "skeet-shoot" Saturn's moon Enceladus in order to take high-resolution pictures as close to the surface as possible. Well, NASA scientists found what they were looking for. A newly released mosaic shows 300-meter-deep fractures in Enceladus' surface which are the source of enormous icy plumes that periodically erupt into space, reaching hundreds of kilometers from the moon's surface. Another picture shows one of the fractures in closer detail.
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Actually huge amount of terrain (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Actually huge amount of terrain (Score:4, Informative)
That'll actually take a little while, but we're working on it. The shadows should help interpret the topography, but it's a non-trivial analysis.
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Re:Actually huge amount of terrain (Score:5, Informative)
See Emily Lakdawalla's pre-encounter blog piece for the Planetary Society [planetary.org], and follow-ups as the data's arriving.
They flew over the south pole at a range of 30km at 50,000 relative speeds. The relative movement was so fast that they had to turn the entire s/c to point backwards before closest approach. There are some superb ("amateur") animations on the UMSF thread. [unmannedspaceflight.com] (large, though, 60Mb or so each.) The realtime simulation is really mind-blowing. Just watch Enceladus scudding through the FoV of the ISS camera just after c/a. Superb, superb work by the Cassini team (as always!) This is certainly one of the biggest set-piece events of the entire mission after orbit insertion, others being Huygens, the first Titan flyby (that data took a lot of time to interpret, indeed the radar data is still being puzzled over as each narrow swath appears after another flyby - it's hard to do imaging through that pesky yet oh-so-interesting methane atmosphere) and the Iapetus encounter.
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Re:Actually huge amount of terrain (Score:5, Informative)
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/events/enceladus20080811/index.cfm [nasa.gov]
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these pictures actually have quite alot of land below
So, where are the impact craters?
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There are none (or few, anyway) in the South Polar region of Enceladus. That's what makes it interesting, the terrain appears to be quite young.
A pity (Score:4, Funny)
I see no towns and roads...
Re:A pity (Score:5, Funny)
Patience dude, Google Street View hasn't even finished Mars yet!
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Re:A pity (Score:4, Funny)
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Frozen Fish! (Score:2)
science and perspective, and what a pity (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:science and perspective, and what a pity (Score:4, Funny)
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For comparison, this is slightly less than 1/330th the budget to-date for the American war effort in Iraq.
However, let the record show that the photographs revealed *NO* al-Qaeda bases on Enceladus. Had there been, just imagine the cost of getting Space Marines up there to clear the place out.
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depends, if it was where Bin Laden actually was hiding the Bush admin would have to cover it up and ignore it to continue having a bogeyman for their agenda
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the war on A.Q. in Afghanistan was mostly put on hold for the Iraq war, it's been a half-assed effort until recently
you assume I am pro-Obama? maybe the way you assume the truth is being told to you in our "war on terror"?
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Whenever I see an AC respond to an AC, I can't help but wonder if they're not both the same person. Obviously, they're not trying to get Karma or the reply would be under the account.
But consider: a normal troll post would be modded down and off the radar. However, a +5 reply to a troll post shows up, and so everyone clicks up to read the original trolling post. Right?
Am I just paranoid? Should I tighten the straps on my tinfoil hat?
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While I agree that spending a lot of money (the equivalent of the Iraq war budget) would indeed buy enough food and even infrastructure to feed everyone in the world, the major cost that such estimates don't mention is invading all the countries that are deliberately starving their citizens.
Would Saddam have let anyone feed his people while he was in power? Never - we'd have had to invade! No good deed goes unpunished, and I think the mire we're stuck in now is our reward for not thinking just a bit farth
Re:A pity (Score:5, Funny)
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/12/2036254 [slashdot.org]
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Typical fucking Americans.
You, umm, do realize Cassini is a joint project between NASA and ESA, the European Space Agency... If you are going to troll, at least TRY to get your facts straight... oh, wait...
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Actually Cassini is a joint project between NASA, ESA and ASI, the Italian space agency which contributed the high gain antenna (the big parabolic one you see in Cassini pictures).
Obviously Italy partecipates to ESA but keeps funding its own agency. The other major European countries do the same.
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Think about how many bibles you could have sent to Iraq with that Cassini money!
Spreading the good news is more important than peeping dead space rocks.
Isn't it?
NASA site and images (Score:5, Informative)
This is the NASA page for the raw images from the flyby.
Re:NASA site and images (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:NASA site and images (Score:5, Informative)
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Already Slashdotted? (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, that's a lot of pixels (Score:4, Insightful)
For comparison, when the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter [wikipedia.org] 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?
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Whats up with the red pixels along the left of the image? Looks like some sort of watermark.
As someone who works daily with Cassini data (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As someone who works daily with Cassini data (Score:4, Insightful)
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Cassini is an international mission as well. Except that in this case, our international partners aren't backing out of their obligations and making us foot the bill.
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Yep. Science and engineering proceeds forward - even in the absence of pretty pictures.
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As the devil's advocate, the first example that comes to mind: Material physics labs.
Note: I support unmanned exploration of the solar system and wish it to be expanded.
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As the devil's advocate, the first example that comes to mind: Material physics labs.
You can do that with telepresence.
If we had invested the money we wasted on manned space flight in robotics, we'd have a large part of the solar system explored already.
And any future manned mission will require extensive robotic support anyway. For example, even a Mars mission will require robotic landers that prepare habitats and collect fuel.
Spending money on sending people into space with the primitive technologies we
*rim shot* (Score:2)
the moving camera calcs "panned" out - I get it.
(and yes, I know "panned out" is a reference to gold prospecting. calm down.)
Yummy. (Score:3, Funny)
Looks like... (Score:4, Funny)
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OK, how many of us didn't get that at first because we pronounce it en-SEL-ah-dus.
Cliff dwellings? (Score:2)
So, does this count (Score:4, Funny)
as a drive-by shooting?
Re:Why is this free? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Re:Why is this free? (Score:5, Informative)
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 [esa.int]
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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.
Re:Why is this free? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Why is this free? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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. [wikipedia.org]
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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.
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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.
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http://xkcd.com/307/ [xkcd.com]
(Which is itself practically becoming a meme, now.)