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Space

Titan Photos and Sounds 466

Posted by michael from the take-me-to-your-leader dept.
ahsile writes "NASA and the ESA have released the first images from Titan. The ESA also has available sounds from the surface." Reader ZZip writes: "Apparently a bunch of enthusiasts has compiled the first mosaics from the raw data delivered by the Huygens probe. Meanwhile space.com has more coverage and pictures from NASA/ESA." Say a silent thank-you to the persistent troubleshooters of the world, without whom none of this would be possible.
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Titan Photos and Sounds More

Titan Photos and Sounds

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  • Wow, I believe... (Score:5, Funny)

    by thrill12 ( 711899 ) * on Saturday January 15, 2005 @01:51PM (#11374293) Journal
    this must [esa.int] be the best SID tune [prg.dtu.dk] I have ever heard !
    Even better than Pole Position II !

    • Re:Wow, I believe... (Score:5, Funny)

      by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @02:05PM (#11374403) Homepage
      They still haven't released the final sequence. [5u.com] They're still trying to figure out that one.

    • Re:Wow, I believe... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by g0dsp33d ( 849253 )
      What surprised me was what looked like river deltas [esa.int]. I thought Titan was way too far out for there to be water, unless its rivers of liquid gas?

      Its a shame the mission was only designed for a few hours. It would have been interesting to see more or explore, but that probably would have increased costs exponentially.

      • Re:Wow, I believe... (Score:3, Informative)

        by l2718 ( 514756 )

        Not everything liquid is water!

        "What surprised me was what looked like river deltas. I thought Titan was way too far out for there to be water, unless its rivers of liquid gas?"

        The general belief is that hydrocarbons (ethane and methane) comprise most of the atmosphere and possibly exist in liquid phase. This image and others (rounded ice "rocks" seem to imply erosion) seem to confirm the hope of liquids running on the surface.

      • It would have been cool to send some kind of rover to Titan, and perhaps with the data recieved can ask the government to fund something like Mars rover. Also, it would have been impossible before now to send a rover-like device without knowing how to navigate the landscape first or how the surface is in the first place. I can definately see more serious research and money going into this.
        • Unlike Mars the surface of Titan has not been mapped. The portion of the surface that was revealed is less than 1% and Titan has probably 1/2 of Earth land surface area (33million square miles). Any probe that we send to the surface is flying blind just as Huygens did. When we descended we did not know what surface features we were going to discover. Unless radar and ground telescopes technologies advances enough so that we could "pick" a landing site for the next lander/rover we can only hope that the
          • I can see it happening even sooner perhaps within the next dacade or sooner. This "prediction" may never some to pass, but with all to discover there despite the critics.

          • Re:Wow, I believe... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by crymeph0 ( 682581 )
            What about a blimp probe? Since Titan has a substantial atmosphere, it should be possible to send a blimp with cameras and such to float around and take measurements. With Titan's 200 MPH winds, you probably wouldn't be able to steer it too well, but if you gave it long enough battery life, you'd probably get a good look at most of the surface, right? Since it would be moving unpredictably, you'd need a mothership capable of listening for some sort of constant tone, then locking onto the blimp probe and
  • Anyone know why the volume seems to change every second on the acoustic descent pickup?

  • Freaky... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 15, 2005 @01:57PM (#11374334)
    I could have sworn on the descent I heard "I for one welcome our new Huygens overlords" in the static
  • Remember that Huygens was to sink beneath the waves rapidly, but as it sank, it would take pictures of the ocean? So much for the wisdom of the scientists!

    Are those lumps of ice as one suggested or are they rocks? They look more like rocks.

    Does Huygens have a bore? Imagine what would happen if they found silver, uranium, plutonium, platinium, etc. on Titan! The biggest "gold" rush ever!

    Cool!

    Billy

    • Re:So much for Titan being a sea! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ayaress ( 662020 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @02:02PM (#11374377) Journal
      They never said Titan was a sea. They said it *might* have sea(s), and that if it did, Huygens might land in it, but it also has a solid surface, and Huygens could just as well land on that instead. Plus, some of those pictures look very much like seashores. This [liekens.net] for example.
    • "Remember that Huygens was to sink beneath the waves rapidly, but as it sank, it would take pictures of the ocean? So much for the wisdom of the scientists!"

      Having a sea does not mean Titan has no land. Nasa hoped the probe would splash down into liquid but always knew that odds were that the landing would be on hard ground. Some of these pictures still suggest the possibility of a hydrocarbon sea.

    • Re:So much for Titan being a sea! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by christopherfinke ( 608750 ) <chris@efinke.com> on Saturday January 15, 2005 @02:04PM (#11374390) Homepage Journal
      Imagine what would happen if they found silver, uranium, plutonium, platinium, etc. on Titan! The biggest "gold" rush ever!
      Given the expense needed simply to travel to Titan (not to mention the expense needed to design a craft that is able to get there, obtain a meaningful amount of silver/uranium/plutonium, lift off, and travel back to Earth), I doubt that it would be the biggest "gold" rush ever.
      • Send an atomic explosive device that will blow it into Earth's orbit, and mine it from there.

    • Re:So much for Titan being a sea! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by flossie ( 135232 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @02:05PM (#11374399) Homepage
      Remember that Huygens was to sink beneath the waves rapidly, but as it sank, it would take pictures of the ocean? So much for the wisdom of the scientists!

      If Martians lobbed a probe at the Earth, they should also expect it to hit sea, considering that it covers 3/4 of the planet's surface. That doesn't stop some meteorites from landing on, er, land.

    • Remember that Huygens was to sink beneath the waves rapidly, but as it sank, it would take pictures of the ocean? So much for the wisdom of the scientists!

      They never said that. In fact, they designed the probe to float in case it did land in liquid. How would it send data back if it's sunken beneath the waves?
    • Are those lumps of ice as one suggested or are they rocks?

      At those temperatures water is a rock.

      Despite the low perceived quality of the images, I continue to be astonished by them. Titan is a place, unlike any we've seen before, waiting to be explored. How soon do we (NASA/ESA/anybody) go back?

      First new world humans (or their emissaries) have landed on since 1976. That's one for the history books!

      ...laura

      • First new world humans (or their emissaries) have landed on since 1976. That's one for the history books!

        History books for sure, but you must be forgetting asteroid Eros [wikipedia.org], landed on by NEAR [wikipedia.org] in 2001; and (depending on your definition of "land") Jupiter, whose atmosphere was visited by Galileo [wikipedia.org].

        One might add the "bombing" of Tempel 1 in a few months by Deep Impact [wikipedia.org]

    • Remember that Huygens was to sink beneath the waves rapidly, but as it sank, it would take pictures of the ocean? So much for the wisdom of the scientists!

      I don't know where you've got that bit of info but on the ESA/NASA sites it's claimed the thing would float.

      How could you transmit pics once it would be submerged?

  • River/coastline... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ayaress ( 662020 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @01:58PM (#11374345) Journal
    The captions on one of the sites talk about that, and this [liekens.net] certainly looks like it, but am I the only one who sees what looks like small craters in in the "water"? Kind of hard to describe their locations, but there's one near the top-right corner of the image I linked to. Even so, it definitely looks like liquid, especially with the rivers.

    • Re:River/coastline... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )
      but am I the only one who sees what looks like small craters in in the "water"?

      It may be dust particles or condensation in the cameras. When contrast is enhanced, such camera artifacts tend to really stick out.
      • Ah, now that you metion that, I think you're right. Down on the bottom-left of the mosaic, there are three pictures that overlap like a hand of playing cards. Two of them have an identical pair of "craters" in the same part of the frame. Now that I'm looking, I can see a couple other repeated patterns between frames. For example, the crater I mentioned in my first post is in the same part of the frame as a very simmilar mark near the mouth of the river delta in the center of the frame.

        Sharp eyes, I would h

    • Re:River/coastline... (Score:4, Informative)

      by wash23 ( 735420 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @02:17PM (#11374484)
      If you look at the caption for the photograph on that page, you'll see: "I have bumpmapped the image for clearer details: (the "craters" you might see are photographing artefacts that only seem to be craters)" Still it was a very good observation to notice those... and maybe there's something to it?

    • Re:River/coastline... (Score:3, Informative)

      by MoobY ( 207480 )
      Those "craters" you see are photgraphic artefacts, as is said in the caption of the web site.

  • Keep your photos (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kipsaysso ( 828105 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @02:00PM (#11374361) Homepage Journal
    Until I see a monolith!
    • No monolith, but this one [mirrordot.org] has what looks like an airstrip at the far left ...

    • Re:Keep your photos (Score:5, Funny)

      by yppiz ( 574466 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:27PM (#11374918) Homepage
      I see two monoliths! [esa.int]

      --Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu

    • Re:Keep your photos (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Xyrus ( 755017 )
      There are some strange things that appear at the landing site.

      If you take the better quality images and sticth them to gether into a animation, you'll notice that for the most part there are just some slight changes in jpeg artifacts.

      But if you watch, you will see some things flit down and then back up again. They're not artifacts of compression. It almost looks like some fat snow flakes (other than they fact they go up again.

      Not really going to know what they are until we get some better images.

      But the

  • Where is the sound.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mpn14tech ( 716482 )
    Where is the sound of it hitting the ground. I just heard air/methane rushing by. Seems there should been a crunch, bang, squish or something when it hit the surface.

  • We need high res pics (Score:4, Interesting)

    by billybob ( 18401 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @02:15PM (#11374465)
    I think the whole titan mission is fascinating, but they really need to release some higher quality pictures. The ones they've released are about as crappy (quality wise) as your average cell phone camera picture. We're getting like 320x240 pics with extreme JPEG compression artifacts. They had to have loaded something better than that on Huygens right? :)

    Unfortunately the sounds are really boring to the untrained ear. One is just hissing that constantly changes volume between loud and quiet, the other sounds like an old atari game.

    Well, here's hoping to the future. Please don't take this message as a troll, as this was a very successful mission and an engineering feat. I just want to see better results already :)

    • Re:We need high res pics (Score:5, Informative)

      by kalidasa ( 577403 ) * on Saturday January 15, 2005 @02:20PM (#11374505) Journal
      Keep the lighting conditions in mind: the Sun is MUCH dimmer out there, even without such a thick, cloudy atmosphere to dim it further. And no, maybe they didn't have a much better camera: there might be severe bandwidth and weight limitations involved.

    • Re:We need high res pics (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @02:28PM (#11374555) Journal
      I think the whole titan mission is fascinating, but they really need to release some higher quality pictures.

      Have some patience people. We are mostly seeing raw dumps with quicky contrast enhancement. It will take a while before it is put together and cleaned up.

      I would note that Huygens was not designed to be a high-resolution photographic mission. Many were not even sure if the surface would be visable when launched. Plus, such an atmospheric desent probe cannot have directional antennas (other than maybe "not down"), reducing the bandwidth. For example, the mars rovers only send high-res images when they are sitting still and focusing their narrow-angle directional antennas at specific locations in the sky for the receivers to pick up (either at earth dishes or in Mars orbit).
      • "Plus, such an atmospheric desent probe cannot have directional antennas (other than maybe "not down"), reducing the bandwidth."

        Right, but this is so frustrating!! It's what's placed constraints on data bandwidth since we've been sending probes to ...well anywhere.

        If we're ever to increase the science returns from these missions there must be a way around this somehow. Optical transmission is out of the question right away obviously because of the even higer limit on pointing accuracy and attenuation prb

    • Re:We need high res pics (Score:5, Informative)

      by pridkett ( 2666 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @02:31PM (#11374581) Homepage Journal
      I was a little saddened after seeing the pictures and getting all stoked for ultra-high-res pictures like what Spirit and Opportunity are sending back, but I don't think it's in the cards.

      The uplink from Huygens to Cassini was only 8kb (don't remember if it was bit or bytes, in any case, not a wide channel) and there was only about a 2 hour window to transfer to data before the batteries on Huygens went dead. I consider 2 hours pretty remarkable given the extreme conditions is going in to and the fact that the batteries have been waiting for seven years. The technology also dates to at least 1997, probably earlier (to provide time to check for reliability against radiation fun from space).

      Supposedly there are some 350 or so pictures, so at 32Kb a piece (at least what the ESA is putting up), I don't think we're going to see anything much higher.

    • Re:We need high res pics (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kalel666 ( 587116 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:37PM (#11374958)
      Every once in awhile, I am reminded how amazing and exciting it is to live at a time like this. Think about it, we're disappointed (and I agree, I would like to see higher res photos as well) about the quality of sounds and pictures FROM ANOTHER FREAKING PLANET! (moon, whatever).

      Seriously, how cool is it we can take that for granted? These images of an alien world, with detail, not some blurry photo from space, are easily available on our computers. I mean, about a hundred years ago, people were amazed by electric lights, and powered aviation had just started. From Kitty Hawk to Titan in a hundred years (+/-)? Unfuckingbelievable. Life is good.

  • Hi, Mom! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @02:17PM (#11374483) Homepage Journal
    I'd love to see NASA spend some of its new $billions running a planetary probe on the Earth, exactly like those to our neighbors, including the launch of a probe from Mars, or at least the Moon. The project would target the Earth from the same point of (simulated) ignorance with which we target pioneering probes to other planets, using the same decisionmaking systems to pick the trajectories and sites for exploration.

    We'd get a lot of interesting data about the Earth, a great product of our investments in space exploration. But we'd also get a way to interpret the results of those other missions, by comparing the "probe" picture of the Earth with our other pictures of the Earth, including firsthand experiences here at home. We'd get some insights into how the "outsider" biases of these probes differ from the "if I were there" experience we're all seeking, vicariously exploring these remote places through probes and networks. What would a hydrocarbons [nasa.gov] analysis tell us about Iraq, West Virginia, or Calcutta? Let's get some contextual reference. Such an investment could make our own experience at home into the key to reading all the explorations of the rest of our system.

    • Re:Hi, Mom! (Score:2, Informative)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )
      I'd love to see NASA spend some of its new $billions running a planetary probe on the Earth, exactly like those to our neighbors....we'd also get a way to interpret the results of those other missions, by comparing the "probe" picture of the Earth with our other pictures of the Earth, including firsthand experiences here at home.

      Do you mean testing the cameras on Earth targets? [space.com]

    • Re:Hi, Mom! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by sameyeam ( 587571 )
      Seems a bit silly. All the information that we'd collect could be collected other ways, far cheaper and with far better results.

      As for the interpretation of the results...the Huygens probe has an exact working copy still on earth. They were built side by side, just in case...and for help with interpretating the data that was returned by the probe that got the mission.

    • Re:Hi, Mom! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by deglr6328 ( 150198 )
      we did this. not with a probe though. with a flyby of galileo. guess who's idea it was.....yep [wikipedia.org](3/4ths down).

    • Re:Hi, Mom! (Score:3, Informative)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )
      You mean like the Mission to Planet Earth [nasa.gov]?

  • Why is it so light? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wcrowe ( 94389 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @02:29PM (#11374570)
    Perhaps it is a stupid question, by why do the pictures look so light? What I mean is, from that distance, I didn't think the Sun was very bright. Is the light in the photographs natural, or is it enhanced? Or, am I being influenced by sci-fi movies that portray the Sun as being so small way out there?

    • Re:Why is it so light? (Score:4, Informative)

      by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @02:47PM (#11374695)
      Are you telling me you are living in a world without exposure settings on cameras?
      You dont need daylight to create bright pictures, you know?
      They didnt know the exact luminosity, too, so they chose settings that would give pictures even if it was darker than it oviously was.
      Better to bright than too dark...

      • Re:Why is it so light? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Bastian ( 66383 )
        Better to bright than too dark...

        Not true! Due to the way humans percieve light and dark, the point at which we cease to see detail in light areas in an image is generally about the point where the image (whether a standard photo or a digital one) ceases to be able to encode any more information. On the other hand, when something looks black to us, you can frequently much with the exposure (or brightness, if digital) and contrast to bring out a surprising amount of detail.

        This effect is actually even w

    • Re:Why is it so light? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by vadim_t ( 324782 )
      Well, from Celestia at least the Sun indeed looks tiny when looking from Titan.

      I imagine that the camera they use adapts the exposition time as needed.

    • moonlight photography (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jeif1k ( 809151 )
      It's all in the exposure. Here [brokentripod.com] are some examples from photographs on Earth taken in similar light levels. If there is no artificial light to mess things up and if the exposure settings are not deliberately set to give the impression of moonlight, moonlight photographs look close to daylight photographs.

      That's another reason you are probably not going to see much that's high resolution: they probably have big pixels in the camera to get their low-light shots in a reasonable amount of time.

  • Missing Channel? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mikers ( 137971 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @02:31PM (#11374582)
    While reading various coverage of the Huygens descent to Titan, they were talking about one of the two channels not working correctly (Jan 14, 08:57PST) [planetary.org].

    Is this because they applied the fix discussed in the "persistent troubleshooter" link to only one of the two channels? Leaving the other channel as it was originally (that is, broken?)

    Can't help but wonder.

    • Re:Missing Channel? (Score:5, Informative)

      by deglr6328 ( 150198 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:18PM (#11374865)
      No, not because of him. It appears (though no one wants to say anything really substantiative) that someone forgot to send a command to cassini to turn on the reciever for one of the channels. ESA is accepting full responsibility though since it was them who were supposed to give the command to NASA to send up I think.
  • thought i was playing Super Mario World for a second when i played the radar sound.

  • Resolution lower than Venera 14's? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by art6217 ( 757847 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @02:37PM (#11374624)
    It is amazing that the whole multi-stage - three parachutes amongst other - landing was a success and the images are very interesting, but why the images seem to be ever more blurry than these of the Venera 14 from 1982 [ucl.ac.uk]?
  • I've got some [schnarff.com] mirrors [kirknet.net] of raw images.

  • What is that huge black... (Score:4, Funny)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:01PM (#11374807) Homepage Journal
    Wait.. its full of stars.....

  • take a beating (Score:5, Informative)

    by MoobY ( 207480 ) <`ten.snekeil' `ta' `ynohtna'> on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:22PM (#11374887) Homepage
    Thanks to all slashdotters to help test whether our box is capable of coping with the /. effect.

    I hope you all like the pictures we created and published before ESA came out with theirs.

    Much kudos to ESA, NASA and uni of Arizona for having those pictures out for the world to enjoy

  • I think this song... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Biomechanical ( 829805 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:42PM (#11374989) Homepage

    is somewhat appropriate.

    To Ganymede and Titan

    Yes, sir, I've been around
    But there ain't no place
    In the whole of Space
    Like that good ol' toddlin' town

    Oh! Lunar City Seven
    You're my idea of heaven
    Out of ten, you score eleven
    You good ol' artificial terra-formed settlement, you, yeah

    Oh! Lunar City Seven
    Lunar Cities One through Six
    They always get me down
    But Lunar City Seven
    You're my home town

    Not quite singing praise on Titan but it's what came to mind when I saw the article. :)

  • KRAFTWERK (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kevcol ( 3467 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @03:57PM (#11375067) Homepage
    Holy crap! The Radar echos from Titan's surface [esa.int] sounds like an outtake from Kraftwerk's Radioactivity [wikipedia.org] album.

  • Isn't it about time someone said (Score:5, Insightful)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @04:00PM (#11375087)
    This is the second most amazing achievement yet of the space program. An immensely long mission, depending on cooperation of multiple groups and agencies, with almost unimaginable complexity has succeeded almost perfectly. (The Mars Rovers are also an amazing achievement, but using more modern technology on a shorter mission to a much nearer object.) Within 24 hours of the transmission the photos can be seen by people all over the world, in a way unimaginable when the first Lunar landings took place.

    And all some people can do is bitch about the resolution of the photographs. That's the trouble with science and engineering nowadays: people do utterly amazing stuff and the general public doesn't know it's amazing any more.

    Well, I'm going to admit it: when this 54 year old scientist turned systems implementer first read that Huyghens/Cassini had fulfilled its mission, there were tears in my eyes. This is a great human achievement. Don't let the ignorant knock it.

    • Re:Isn't it about time someone said (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mikeb39 ( 670045 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @04:49PM (#11375362) Homepage
      Aye... Where has the amazement gone?

      When I first saw the pics on Space.com, my jaw just dropped. It wasn't because of the quality, but because of the fact that we as a species were able to send a probe down onto the surface of another planet, take pictures, then have them back here and on the internet not much later. Just think about the scale of that! Achievements like this reaffirm my belief that the human race will indeed be able to pull through any hardships we will face in the days to come.

      And on a slight tangent... I truly believe that those amoung us who still shout to "stop wasting money on space, we still have poverty here to cure/we are already messed up enough already on Earth/there is still stuff in our oceans we haven't seen yet" are the most misled and dangerous. Why dangerous? Because they are the ones who will support (or be) the politicians who will always stand in the way of our exploration on the universe. They cannot see beyond their own lifetimes (and do not care too), cannot realize that the future of our species lies not here, but out there. Our destiny does not lie here, and we must make haste to spread our seed amoung the stars, learning and understanding our universe and our purpose in it.

  • Amazing level of system redundancy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by some1somewhere ( 642060 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @04:37PM (#11375294)
    Has anyone else noticed the amazing level of redundancy the whole system has?

    Upon reading the article at:
    http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/huygens_ image s_050114.html

    you can see some facinating information that perhaps other projects (both space and non-space) can learn from.

    For example:
    -------------
    Huygens was originally expected to send more than 700 pictures taken during its 2.5-hour descent to the Titan surface, but one of the two communications channels on the satellite apparently malfunctioned, cutting by about half the number of images received by NASA's orbiting Cassini satellite and relayed to mission control here.
    ------------

    So that means they actually had redundant comms that were obviously able to operate independently. I can think of one space project that failed because of NOT having this.

    ------------
    Huygens has also been sending limited data directly to Earth, where it has been picked up by a network of telescopes. The detailed data about what it found on its way through Titan's thick atmosphere has been sent to NASA's Cassini orbiter overhead.
    -------------

    So they had a backup plan, if Cassini failed to relay data back to Earth, Huygens would still be able to directly send limited data, so even in a worst case scenario where Cassini completely ignored Huygens, not all would be lost. This is great forward thinking by the designers.

    I know this was not cheap to launch, and Nasa's new mantra is "cheap and often", but I can see almost everyone rather having a project take that extra bit of time and looking into the details (especially backup systems and what to do when things go wrong) rather than rushing projects out the door with no/little backup and redundancy in place.

  • I love techno! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by morriscat69 ( 807260 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @04:49PM (#11375358)
    And sending a probe a few billion miles out to get a sound sample from an icy moon DEFINATLY counts as hard techno.

  • Amazing ... but what happened to the sea? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Evil Pete ( 73279 ) on Saturday January 15, 2005 @06:38PM (#11375915) Homepage

    Yep, wonderful photos. A tribute to all of those who laboured for god knows how long to pull this off. And Titan shows itself to be as interesting as people had hoped. Obvious evidence of rivers and seas (and presumably rain etc). No evidence of the liberation of liquid (methane?) as water is from permafrost on Mars ... suggests true rain. BUT. In the composite mosaics you can sea this wonderful sea with river systems and deltas and islands ... and craters. Zoom in (yeah well image zoom in Firefox) and you sea that the sea floor is covered in 'small' craters, obviously the sea has disappeared. And yet there seems to be less evidence (from my pitiful survey) of craters in the 'land' area. Does this mean that wind erosion and rivers still run, but not enough to fill the sea ... and what happened to all the um ... liquid ?

    Lots of questions. Can't wait.

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