A Movie of Triton Made From Voyager 2's Fly-by 25 Years Ago 34
schwit1 writes: Using restored images taken by Voyager 2 when it flew past Neptune's moon Triton 25 years ago, scientists have produced a new map and flyby movie of the moon. "The new Triton map has a resolution of 1,970 feet (600 meters) per pixel. The colors have been enhanced to bring out contrast but are a close approximation to Triton's natural colors. Voyager's "eyes" saw in colors slightly different from human eyes, and this map was produced using orange, green and blue filter images. ... Although Triton is a moon of a planet and Pluto is a dwarf planet, Triton serves as a preview of sorts for the upcoming Pluto encounter. Although both bodies originated in the outer solar system, Triton was captured by Neptune and has undergone a radically different thermal history than Pluto. Tidal heating has likely melted the interior of Triton, producing the volcanoes, fractures and other geological features that Voyager saw on that bitterly cold, icy surface. Pluto is unlikely to be a copy of Triton, but some of the same types of features may be present." Dr. Paul Schenk provides provides further information on his blog, and the movie can be viewed here.
I was two years old when this happened (Score:3, Interesting)
And now I'm working on New Horizons... What a trip.
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Might it be one of the most expensive movies ever?
Asks an ignorant troll...
Considering it was made with 25 year old footage, it was probably one of the cheapest movies ever made.
The U.S. spends $324 billion dollars a year on entertainment*. tThe cost of the Voyager II program ($865 million dollars*) over 40 years is equal to about 22 millon dollars per year. A drop in the bucket. The Pioneer and Voyager missions have spawned an entire cottage industry of "science-based edutainment shows" on TV like "Through the Wormhole" and "Cosmos". That program has
Re:Trying to keep up (Score:4, Funny)
So asking questions now equals trolling?
Sure. Sometimes.
How much does it cost to screw your mom? Is it true that she is a cheap whore?
(Note to mods: I am being instructive here.)
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So asking questions now equals trolling?
As Mr. Riggs said, yes sometimes.... The way you posed your questions implied that the money could have been better spent elsewhere and was a waste on this effort.
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My cynical expectation is that you will now reply belittling the rest of the project as well, simply because to do so supports your silly notion and therefore you're not "wrong."
Server overload... (Score:5, Funny)
Just have to wait another 25 years to see the movie...
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No surprise ending - the main character rides off to sunset over horizon.
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It's on Youtube too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
They could have filtered out the CbCr noise first, though. (NeatImage does this very effectively)
Shameless Plug (Score:3, Interesting)
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I gotta agree. I mean, we know that they just made a sphere and mapped the photos onto it as a texture, but I would have preferred them to use either no star map or whatever was visible in the real photos.
NASA doing crappy CGI just makes it harder to convince people of the real stuff.
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I was expecting a troll - got a hilarious troll-tolling site instead. Very nice :)
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It's fine, it was waaay easier to do my own voice over ...the final frontier...these are the voyages of the starship Enterprise...
Alternate site (Score:1)
space.com [space.com] also has the video. Although you have to put up with the ads, they seem to have more bandwidth than the original site does, which I'm still waiting on for the download.
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They have to in order to remove the "Copyright Google Maps" watermark.
Triton is different from other moons (Score:5, Informative)
The summary mentions that Triton used to be a dwarf planet, in its own orbit, but was captured by Neptune. The reason we believe this, is because Triton orbits in the wrong direction. No other large moon in the solar system has a retrograde orbit. If it formed from the same dust cloud as the planet it orbits, or formed from other orbiting debris (as Luna did after Earth's collision with Theia [wikipedia.org]), then it would orbit in the same direction. It is also one of the few moons with a detectable atmosphere (mostly nitrogen), and also one of only a few with geologic activity, including liquid nitrogen geysers. About a third of its mass is water, although all is believed to be frozen.
Neptune All Night (Score:1)
Available on YouTube [youtube.com].
How about a new trip to Triton (Score:2)
Or is that too waiting on a design competition for human settlement and colonization.
What's all that green stuff? (Score:2)
Link to the video on youtube... (Score:2)
Z not communo-zed (Score:1)
Yeah, America! That's in feet, not communist metric! Pixel res of 1970 feet per. What accuracy! Go suck a steak in cream, you metric surrender monkeys!
Amazing (Score:2)
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from a probe built in the mid 70s.