Incredible New Gif Shows Cosmic 'Snow' On the Surface of a Comet (gizmodo.com) 89
Press2ToContinue shares a report from Gizmodo: What you're looking at is the surface of the comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which is orbited by the European Space Agency's Rosetta probe. The photo comes from Rosetta's OSIRIS, or Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System. The raw data was collected on June 1, 2016, and posted publicly on March 22 of this year. Twitter user landru79 processed the gif from this data release and shared it yesterday. In the foreground is the comet's surface (still several kilometers away from the probe), and three kinds of specks. The stars in the background belong to the constellation Canis Major, according to ESA senior advisor Mark McCaughrean. Some of the foreground stuff could be streaks from high-energy particles striking the cameraâ"it's a charge-coupled device (CCD), so even invisible particles can leave streaks in the results. And some could be dust from the comet itself.
Probably no high energy marticles (Score:1)
New Gif? (Score:3, Insightful)
New Gif?
Who cares about the image format in such a context?
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In TFA, they cite "gif" without any ideas what it means and it just went up the chain as is.
For your png input, it must be that twitter converted it to png from the gif mentioned in TFA.
If I didn't know gif format, I would have thought that "Gif" meant "Gallactical Input Facilities".
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Although I would still question the use of terminology, the point is that it's animated.
Re:New Gif? (Score:5, Insightful)
New Gif?
Who cares about the image format in such a context?
The only thing GIF is used for these days is animations on the web, so... yes it's useful information.
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GIF is not really lossless since it's 8-bit and so can only display 256 colours at a time.
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GIF is not really lossless since it's 8-bit and so can only display 256 colours at a time.
It's also very possible a png has been compressed.
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I've seen a lot of PNG images with JPEG compression artifacts. That's what happens when non-technical users start using computers.
Programs need a big fucking warning window when trying to export JPEG to any other format to tell morons that it will NOT increase the quality and will only make the file bigger.
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Then those people/spec documents need to explain why PNG is required, otherwise it's pointless.
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Wouldn't it have made more sense to say "animation", given that is the important bit of information that you otherwise have to infer from it being a GIF?
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Nowadays gif means 'short animation', much more than a particular format. Slashdot seems to be full of cranky Statlers and Waldorfs this days.
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Words mean... whatever people decide they mean. Unless you are on a technical enviroment. Or an asshole environment. If someone on the street talks about a gif he saw, and you later find out it was really a PNG, please, please, shut up.
Re:New Gif? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hey man, have you seen the new Star Wars GIF now playing in the theatres?
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No, they don't. But they get used in not technical environments, and their meaning just changes. That's a fact on language and live.
Someone who sends me to fuck myself is an asshole, no mother what you fucking bully say. And so are you.
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Yeah, yeah. Thats why reddit has r/animatedgifs and not r/gifs for posting animations. OH WAIT!
But it doesn't matter. The word belongs to YOU and who dares do with it what people do with every word? OWN it and change its meaning over time.
So if someone says "I saw a ridiculous gif today", she is an idiot. Because she doesn't know 'the difference'.
No.
I'm sorry.
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And most of the "snow" is just background stars, are they not?
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Re:New Gif? (Score:4, Informative)
You do see stars in Apollo photos. Just not when the camera is set to properly expose the sunlit lunar surface, which causes the stars to be vastly underexposed. Looking at the data for one of the images [esa.int], it's a 12.5 second exposure. The scene is indirectly illuminated, you can see what appears to be an overexposed, sunlit highlight in the last frame of the animation.
The "falling" stuff is the starfield, they're all moving in unison. Read the comments at the original source - the images capture NGC2362 (Mag 4.1) and MGC2354 (Mag 6.1).
The stuff moving in semi-random directions (but mostly toward the upper left, it appears) is the "snow." That includes the streaks. In order for a cosmic ray to produce a streak, it would have to be traveling along the plane of the image sensor (or strong enough to effect an entire sensor row/column).
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Looking at the data for one of the images [esa.int], it's a 12.5 second exposure.
In that case, a portion of the point-y objects are indeed stars. Just not all of them. And some streaks might be cosmic rays but those don't move.
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Why would a GIF reduce the resolution and colours? I thought it would just make the file much larger.
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I had no idea! I always thought GIFs were zip compressed BMPs, with a few extra stupid features added like animation.
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If you take high-fidelity video material and reduce the number of colors, resolution, and frame rate, down to the complete 30 year old crap that is GIF, before you re-post it on the internet, then you are most likely stupid.
Or a Facebook user ... Oh wait!
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If you take high-fidelity video material
They didn't. Your post is invalid.
Wrong too, but invalid even if it were right.
LOL Gizmodo (Score:1)
UHH a GIF!
Gizmodo sucks.
Direct link? (Score:4)
Anyone got a direct link to the GIF?
Stupid Twitter is unusable with w3m.
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"new gif" https://imgur.com/a/0GVpB2s [imgur.com]
"newer star-field stabilized gif" https://imgur.com/p05aEhm [imgur.com]
"article" https://www.livescience.com/62... [livescience.com]
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Thank you, but imgur.com doesn't work either. I could use a link to the GIF file itself.
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https://i.imgur.com/O0Aahi5.gi... [imgur.com]
https://i.imgur.com/p05aEhm.gi... [imgur.com]
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Perfect, thank you! You did what the Slashdot editors should have done.
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Hilariously, those don't work for me. But these do:
https://i.imgur.com/O0Aahi5.gif?noredirect [imgur.com]
https://i.imgur.com/p05aEhm.gif?noredirect [imgur.com]
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YouTube link. [youtube.com]
Welcome (Score:2)
I for one welcome our new speck overloards. May your reign be wipe free.
The truth behind the video... (Score:5, Informative)
It's bloody damn COOL (Score:2)
Which is the main point nobody seems to care about.
Your comment on the time lapse is quite relevant though, as opposed to all the posts about GIF format.
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That Live Science link has a stabilized version of the video, this visually separates the snow from the background stars and gives a much better view of what's happening.
Funny (Score:2)
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If the earth is flat, those Mt Everest climbers will surely be red-faced.
Reminds me of the US Northeast this spring (Score:2)
Watch out where the huskies go ... (Score:2)
n/t
Imagine it's from a movie (Score:3)
It *is* crazy cool considering it is real though.
Guys,guys....stop. Think about it. (Score:1)
i'm getting old, and I am REALLY excited at the things I never thought I'd live to see, now become real.
I don't want to die and miss the next 100 years. Damn!!