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Again we se pictures of one dry planet, with some cracks on surface. No lakes no oceans. Pictures quality remind mi about Viking missions, I think my phone camera would do much better. Despite that many peoples talking about unreal images, I say look at Viking mission from 1974 and you will se also stones but better image quality. What is unreal if we can se stones and rocks on planet with solid surface. ESA again hiding pictures from public, can’t really understand why.
:band:
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Have a good look at the pictures.
The first picture is a panoramic of the area the probe is to land. Did you see that mountain is that not clouds or fog over it. The first picture taken on the surface shows rounded rocks. Now those could have been done by wind but what is more likely is that it was by fluid and we may have landed in a dry river bed where flash floods occasionly but often occur. Only one paler rock is angular and that could well be water ice, no dont give up yet its far too early and if anything its more interesting than what we thought.
Other Data has been gained like the radar scanning as the probe went down showed what could well be heavily laden with liquid clouds. And the first instrument a probe detected some form of crust possibly sand or clay soils or possibly ice covered snow as Huygens landed. We expected that Titan would be a world that could be like what Earth was like before life really started, We may have found a world where the basics of life HAS started. Frankly its far too early but a lot more exciting than planned.
Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.
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Give them time to clean up and enhance the pictures! The light level the camera is using is about 1/200th that of full sunlight on Earth. The hazy sky diffuses the light; there are no shadows, like on Mars. So the pictures will look fuzzy and it will be hard to interpret them. They need to put together panoramas, also, so each object can be interpreted in the larger context.
It sounds like ESA isn't following standard JPL procedure and releasing everything, which is too bad. But everything is on the Lyle site anyway, unenhanced.
http://mars.lyle.org/titan/]http://mars.lyle.org/titan/
Each triplet is a single picture, I gather. There are 37 x 7 = 259 pictures.
Titan has quite a story to tell. The "rocks" are rounded; they've suffered erosion. But the erosion might be 4 billion years old. I think this is unlikely; if the erosion on Titan stopped then, the surface would be cratered. The crater density is the key piece of context for dating the heaviness of the erosion today.
I wouldn't be disappointed by what you see. What did you expect, that Huygens would land in the Titan equivalent of Los Angeles? This is a dynamic world. It's probably lifeless; organic compounds form and react way too slowly at Titan temperatures for carbon-based life to function. We think. But it is a far more exciting and dynamic place than Saturn's other moons. After Mars (and maybe the interior of Europa and Ganymede) it's the cat's meow.
-- RobS
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LO
Go to these http://www.futura-sciences.com/communiq … .php]pages
to get some more Titan pictures
It sounds like ESA isn't following standard JPL procedure and releasing everything, which is too bad.
Froggies are in the lead at ESA, so, this is the french mess, mon ami
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Ha ha!
1.Image quality
I watch ESA press conference yesterday but nothing new. Only two new fogged images in samme low tech style. And they did worked all night but still don't know if it is something liquid on surface. I have big trouble to download on my 2Mbit DSL connections those big high resolutions images (50kb) from ESA. They are just perfect as wallpapers. What to say 3$ billion spend and get 50kb high resolutions photo. If ESA continue like this they will bit image quality from Viking mission very soon. There is no excuse to produce Viking-era images in a probe that was produced in 1997. Go a billion miles + and get 3MB in imaging upload? You gotta be kidding! Shame on you, ESA. Your imaging staff deserves to be on the unemployment line! fly across the solar system and throw back a miserable handful of pixels is INEXCUSABLE.
2. Scientific value
Now either this is just not a great scientific achievement but a great scientific gaffe by the pompous ESA on display in that televised PR traincrash last night OR we're looking at landscapes that exist only in Bryce and bad ones at that!
It's really difficult for people such as the pompous ESA who have dedicated their life to science to admit that they MESSED UP! I have yet to see the "quality" of the data they will be able to obtain from the probe, but if the miserable excuse for images they have produced is any indication, then the $3 billion would have been much better spent housing people who had their homes washed away by the Indian Ocean.
I assure you that it will be years from now and we will still be arguing whether the dark areas are liquid or floodplain.
3. What I expected
Better image quality
Probe will be alive for minimum one week and transmit data
Probe will take pictures in different direction when landed
Probe will examine ground
Probe will be so “advanced” that we can immediately say here are oceans or not.
4.Comedy
Yesterday ESA release one blurred unfocused panorama image and all journalist oohed and aahed and applauded at the panorama ESA put together. Only one thing was strange nobody couldnot se anything on that image.
The emperor has no clothes.
Let me get this straight... $3 billion and we get 3 MB of jpgs out of it? This is it. There are no hires. Just this motley collection of fogged out and blacked out shots interspersed with 1960s vintage digital photography.
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I know you're just being a typical cultural vandal and/or troll - but your technical questions are answerable.
This camera had to survive -200 degrees temperatures, 7 years in space, and was designed in the early '90s. That it exists at all is an astonishing achievment.
The only feasable power supply for Huygens was batteries. an RTG could have given it a longer life - but would have made it too heavy to launch. Given that it had to spend 3 weeks in a coast - it's great that we got as much surface science as we did.
The probe was NOT built in 1997 - it was built at around 1992-1995.
Dont for one SECOND try and pull the conspiracy story on this one. theres THOUSANDS of engineers from europes - and THOUSANDS of engineers from america who worked on this - there is no way in HELL that a conspiracy could be consructed with that infrastrucutre - it's an impossibility. The fact that you suggest it alone suggests how much of a troll you really are.
It was fundamentally an atmoshperic probe. The orig. plan expected THREE MINTUES of surface operations - never long enough to move a camera around once on the surface
The data link from Huygens to Cassini was 8kbps - and over a 3 hour misison, that allows a grand total of 10.8 Mbyts of data - which has to include data from EVERY instrument. That approx 1/3rd of it is imagery is more than should be expected. The level of light at Titan is 1/64th that hear on earth by virtue of the distance it is from the sun. Consider the haze and cloud of titan - you can take that to about 1% of the light here on earth - essentially less than a moon-light evening. In 1992 -the technology was not around to have a digital imager work in those light conditions - but the made one - and it worked, 13 years later. If you're unwilling or unable to understand the difficulties in doing it - I suggest you just refrain from looking like a moron and shut up.
Huygens did NOT cost $3B. It cost approx 300M Euros - of EUROPEAN tax payers money - not american money. In a twist of fate - the cameras which you so happily slag off were built buy the Uni of Arizona.
The lander WAS able to determine immediately what it landed in or on. It landed on something equiv. to a wet clay. It did not land on an ocean, there was instrumentation on board to measure the tilt, and to tech echo soundings if it did.
Essentially - you're being an idiot - but I've taken the time to try and explain the specifics of some questions you ask.
This is the first lander on a moon other than our own. The first lander beyond Mars. The first visit to a pre-biotic earth analogue. I'm european, I pay my taxes - and I'm blown away by the data thats been sent back.
The greatest minds in the world built this thing. If you REALLY think you can do better - off you go - no one's stopping you.
Let me get this straight - you're vitriolic and scathing of a probe you know NOTHING about, and are not prepared to LEARN about. You know nothing of the rest of Cassini's 4+ year mission around Saturn. You know nothing of the technology of the early '90s - the limits of technology - fundamental limits of communications technology - difficulties in travelling billions of miles across space - the radiation damage that can be caused - the 1200 degree entry, the -200 degree descent and the 12G landing. And yet you consider yourself informed enough to criticise this achievment.
Tell me - what amazing things have YOU achieved recently.
Doug
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I don't know why people expect all the image processing done perfectly one hour after taking the pictures. This is for a very complex machine. People take for granted days if they shoot foto's of their own.
I guess people are spoiled wih MER and MOC.
edit - added a remark I made somewhere else
just a reminder, Huygens is an ATMOSPHERIC probe. The primary goal is to learn about the atmosphere. Unfortunately, atmosphere is not as suitable for taking pictures as surfaces, so the pictures may look a little dissappointing. However, the main value of this particular mission is not in its ability to take pictures (like it is for MER, which are geologic probes) but taking data from the atmosphere: the detailed composition of the air, isotopes, compositions and number of aerosols, clouds, temperature, you name it: all was measured by Huygens. This will take a while to process though, but will be very usefull.
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I am quit sure that most people are dissapointed with this pictures. My girlfriend said just thumbnails when will better images arrive? I sad to her you just looking at high resolutions images.
4.Comedy
Yesterday ESA release one blurred unfocused panorama image and all journalist oohed and aahed and applauded at the panorama ESA put together. Only one thing was strange nobody couldnot se anything on that image.
The emperor has no clothes.
Let me get this straight... $3 billion and we get 3 MB of jpgs out of it? This is it. There are no hires. Just this motley collection of fogged out and blacked out shots interspersed with 1960s vintage digital photography
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I posted this in a different thread... pasting it here cos it's been a long day and I can't be bothered typing it all in again! :;):
----------------
For pity's sake...
Don't you get it? Don't you GET it? This isn't science fiction here, tho it feels like it at times. This is real life exploration and discovery. Not everything works perfectly, as designed. Things go wrong. Things, and people, disappoint and under-achieve. Expectations - often unrealistic in the first place - are dashed and more modest, more humble realities take their place.
So the pictures aren't pin sharp. Big deal. It's not the first time. Lewis and Clark probably lost some of their sketches of flora and fauna on their epic trek across the US. Charles Darwin probably missed out on the opportunity to study universe knows how many exotic species as he explored the Galapagos. The colour camera on Apollo 12 didn't work, depriving us of spectacular images from the Moon. Mars Observer, Polar Lander and more recently Beagle 2 failed for a hatful of reasons, and we all know what we might have lost there. IT HAPPENS. It's just the way of things. The universe charges us for the wonders she shows us, and keeps some things back for herself, or at least makes us wait for them until we deserve them. It's disappointing, and frustrating, but it's life.
Some of the people being criticised here spent decades on the project. They don't owe you, or me, or anyone else, a thing. They were working on our behalf, because we're not smart or dedicated enough to do the things they do. We sit here at our screens, sipping coffee, warm and cosy, while they've spent years of their lives holed up in labs or machine shops working away all hours to get these "p*** poor pictures" for us to enjoy. They've done all this for us, so that we might understand and appreciate the universe a little bit better. They designed, built and then sent a spacecraft literally half-way across the solar system, succesfully landed it on the most inhospitable, most alien world yet seen, and it sent back pictures which are as historic as the first imags beamed back from Viking or Voyager or any of its other ancestors. Think about that.
Thanks to those "p*** poor pictures" Titan has been transformed, literally overnight. On Thursday night before going to bed I set up my telescope in my yard and aimed it at Saturn. The planet was beautiful, sublime, its rings split by the Cassini Division there before my eyes. And off to the right in the eyepiece was a pinpoint of light - Titan itself, shining there, hugging close to Saturn just as it had appeared to Huygens himself three and a half centuries earlier. When I went to bed the next night Titan wasn't a mere pinprick of light to me any more. It was a real world, a world with, we think, rivers and streams which reflect an orange, cloudy sky, shorelines lapped by slow-moving waves, tall mountains and rolling hills. A world where one day astronauts will wade out a short distance from the land and stare in awe at the sight of the alien waves of an alien sea, a billion miles from Earth, rolling gently over their boots. Think about that.
I'm British, and - okay, I'm biased, being a space nut - but personally if Huygens had only returned one single picture of the surface, and one panorama, I'd have considered my contribution (probably around £1) money well spent. What happened with the delay in releasing pictures is annoying, yeah, but when politics intrudes that's what happens. Yes, ESA could learn a lot from NASa and JPL re picture release, and they will, but c'mon, this kind of stuff is still new to us, give us a break. The guys at JPL have huge press offices, people who are good on camera, astronomical budgets... ESA just isn't geared-up for this kind of global attention. Yet. Give us time. We'll get better, you'll see.
It's not a competition, you know. It's not some media wrestling match between ESA and NASA to see who gets their pictures out fastest. This is for the good of all of us. We've waited generations to see these pictures, so a few more days wait won't kill us now, will it? Better and better images will be released, not just by ESA but by many of the unofficial imaging sources - we have one of them here on newmars, hi Doug! - and then we'll all be smiling like we were when the panoramas started rolling in from SPirit and Opportunity.
Just be patient and stop griping. This time last year Titan was just a ball of orange on a Voyager picture. This time last week it was a world with vague light and dark markings - how we saw Mars in Lowell's time. Now, Titan is a living, breathing, gurgling world we can imagine walking on and flying over. I look at those coastal scenes and can easily imagine bays, inlets and coves.
We should all feel humble and grateful. Not disappointed or angry.
-------------------------------
And as for the cost? That $3bn wasn't just for the Titan pics... you're forgetting the breathtaking images Cassini has returned of Saturn... its rings... the moons... Mimas silhouetted against the cloud tops... all the pictures of Jupiter and its moons before the probe even GOT to Saturn...
I say three cheers for Cassini, Huygens and everyone involved in it! :up:
Stuart Atkinson
Skywatching Blog: [url]http://journals.aol.com/stuartatk/Cumbrian-Sky[/url]
Astronomical poetry, including mars rover poems: [url]http://journals.aol.com/stuartatk/TheVerse[/url]
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Um - you've just repeated what you said earlier. That doesnt make it any less stupid.
Doug
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O.K. there is a couple of people trying to make the best out of the images:
http://anthony.liekens.net/index.php/Ma … in/Huygens
I hope for some interesting data from the gas chromatograph.
Who was responsible for not switching on the second transmitter ? NASA or ESA ?
Anyway - that was ...... missing words...
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LO
I remind you again that http://www.futura-sciences.com/communiq … 525]Futura Science froggy site delivers Huygens photos in primeur.
And remember that at the Cassini-huygens date program, not even USA had the technology for a thermal shield that would resist the 12000°C temperature (twice the Sun surface temperature) reached by the probe when entry in Titan's atmosphere, and it was not really sure that the shield would resist.
Here in Europe, everybody relax and enjoy the probe survival
Na !
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You guys are wasting you breath on "No Life on Mars". Despite Doug pointing out to him that Huygens "did NOT cost $3B", he continues to repeat that figure ("Let me get this straight... $3 billion and we get 3 MB of jpgs out of it?").
======
Stephen
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Trying to compare the Mer pictures to those of the hygens lest you forget the mer camera was selected and installed from cutting edge designs that are only at most 3 years old. Then again the hygens were put in place more than 7 maybe 8 years ago. Can you just picture where we were just that long ago with the invention we all take for granted called a PC was being used by all. I can tell you I was using a 386 maybe running at 40 mhz that barely had 16mb of memory and a hard drive that was at best 200mb in size. Nowadays we are using machines that are 2G for processor speed 686 or avalon with 256mb of ram on a stick with 80g drives. So you see how far technology has come since then.
Be patient, the images of titan will come, they will as long it stays running.
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Do you think there is any vast difference between state-of-the-art optics, lenses/glass, mechanisms, etc., from ten years ago and those same optics of today? The media may be digital instead of analog film, but that doesn't mean they are superior, just different.
And the PCs of today, those nifty notebooks that are plastered everywhere there is room in the shuttles, those aren't sturdy enough for space. They crash quite often and you can't have the shuttle's main computer crashing on you. I believe that the Hubble had an upgrade to a 486 capable PC which drew some criticism by people who thought it should have had a Pentium installed. But that 486 was a very hardened space rated processor. Radiation is tough stuff.
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I think ESA did enough for the main stream media. There was 'the' surface image ready for the next days press - and colour data overlayed for the Sunday papers as well. In terms of the mass media - thats all they want. They wont mention Huygens again, whatever data and imagery is extracted from it's data set. That's the fault of the media - but most of the people I've shown the pictures to they've gone "wow", and not "huh"
Doug
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Cassini-Huygens: No life on Titan, but life still exists for Transatlantic Cooperation a French article by Franck Biancheri of Paris proof that international efforts can work IMO.
Further than the Moon or Mars, further than any place a human-made artefact ever landed, this is the successful mission accomplished by the remarkable EU/USA cooperation named ‘Cassini-Huygens’.
We come to the methodology aspect of what Cassini-Huygens is telling us: major space exploration programmes require international cooperation, but this cooperation has to be planned and organized in a way that they are developed with sufficient time preparation (some scientists worked for about 25 years to see their ‘baby’ emitting images from Titan) with no rush from one or the other partner for reasons of political agenda or visibility. This cooperation has to carefully weighed the added-value of each partner and must try to limit political and financial trading-horses. No systemic dependency for the whole project, especially if it is a sustainable one (such as a space station), must rely on one partner only (if so, then the project must be redefined or abandoned).
Therefore two kinds of international programmes will emerge: programmes which are truly international, meeting the criteria I just mentioned; and national programmes with an international component, where the main operator decides almost everything and the international partners have to adapt to its decision. For the largest projects, I do not believe that the latter solution is anymore viable.
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Do you think there is any vast difference between state-of-the-art optics, lenses/glass, mechanisms, etc., from ten years ago and those same optics of today? The media may be digital instead of analog film, but that doesn't mean they are superior, just different.
LO
How do you turn an analog film snapshot into radio signals ?
Garden dwarfs in the probe ?
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Sigh...
If only we'd seen this ad sooner, would have saved us all a lot of heartache...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v509/ … .jpg]Titan camera
:;):
Stuart Atkinson
Skywatching Blog: [url]http://journals.aol.com/stuartatk/Cumbrian-Sky[/url]
Astronomical poetry, including mars rover poems: [url]http://journals.aol.com/stuartatk/TheVerse[/url]
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You crack me up Stu.
:laugh:
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Garden dwarfs in the probe ?
No. Tooth fairies
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Again we se pictures of one dry planet, with some cracks on surface. No lakes no oceans. Pictures quality remind mi about Viking missions, I think my phone camera would do much better. Despite that many peoples talking about unreal images, I say look at Viking mission from 1974 and you will se also stones but better image quality. What is unreal if we can se stones and rocks on planet with solid surface. ESA again hiding pictures from public, can’t really understand why.
:band:
Fair enough, send your phone camera to Titan, land it on the surface, then send more than 350 pictures back to Earth with it. Sometimes I think that if Huygens had landed next to an alien and photographed it, some people would still not be happy that it had only photographed one alien and the angle was poor, colour saturation was out, and the shutter speed should have been slower to give us a small apperture for better depth of field.....
We should not get complacent when we consider what is being achieved with these probes/rovers - sending an object millions of miles, to wake up after an extended journey, then collect and return data to Earth - there are many times we can say "its not rocket science you know..." but this isn't one of them
The two sound files I've heard from Huygens sent a tingle down my spine - if I'd never seen one image, that would have still put a smile on my face.
Graeme
There was a young lady named Bright.
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
in a relative way
And returned on the previous night.
--Arthur Buller--
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Hyg probe landed in a mud according to ESA. Yes it’s true just look at crystal clear high resolutions images send by probe and see all that mud.
One positive thing about images:
When Mars rovers landed on Mars Nasa was flooded with people seeing worms, mushrooms, plants, numbers etc. Esa don’t have that problem. Esa images from Titan are so bad that people can’t se anything (although some can see lakes, big waves). Because of that all ESA staff can now concentrate on making even better camera.
Journalist:
I ask how can journalist applaud at panorama image when they can’t se anything on that image.
Remember great fairy tale The emperor has no clothes.
I just can’t do the same.
Achievement:
I wrote here that images are bullshit but soma answers titan is faraway, difficult to land low light , great achievement be satisfied with images etc. After Nasa landing on Mars and moon and Russian on Venus WE can’t be satisfied just with landing. Nice they landed but we want some results. For Russians was also difficult to land and they send also pictures from Venus in same low tech style as ESa. But Viking images from mars are far better then this crap from titan.
Sound:
For many millions we get 10Mb data from Titan so much science we get. To travel millions of km and get 10 Mb of data is crazy and 3Mb of this 10Mb are fogged out of focus images. They recorded also sound. As they proudly sad listen to this noise that you could hear if you was sitting on probe while descending trough titan atmosphere.
I think sound recording is of “great” scientific value so in future they should only record sound and drop images and others mesaurments. I hope this sound didn’t take much of remaining 7MB data.
My earlier post
Ha ha!
1.Image quality
I watch ESA press conference yesterday but nothing new. Only two new fogged images in samme low tech style. And they did worked all night but still don't know if it is something liquid on surface. I have big trouble to download on my 2Mbit DSL connections those big high resolutions images (50kb) from ESA. They are just perfect as wallpapers. What to say 3$ billion spend and get 50kb high resolutions photo. If ESA continue like this they will bit image quality from Viking mission very soon. There is no excuse to produce Viking-era images in a probe that was produced in 1997. Go a billion miles + and get 3MB in imaging upload? You gotta be kidding! Shame on you, ESA. Your imaging staff deserves to be on the unemployment line! fly across the solar system and throw back a miserable handful of pixels is INEXCUSABLE.
2. Scientific value
Now either this is just not a great scientific achievement but a great scientific gaffe by the pompous ESA on display in that televised PR traincrash last night OR we're looking at landscapes that exist only in Bryce and bad ones at that!
It's really difficult for people such as the pompous ESA who have dedicated their life to science to admit that they MESSED UP! I have yet to see the "quality" of the data they will be able to obtain from the probe, but if the miserable excuse for images they have produced is any indication, then the $3 billion would have been much better spent housing people who had their homes washed away by the Indian Ocean.
I assure you that it will be years from now and we will still be arguing whether the dark areas are liquid or floodplain.
3. What I expected
Better image quality
Probe will be alive for minimum one week and transmit data
Probe will take pictures in different direction when landed
Probe will examine ground
Probe will be so “advanced” that we can immediately say here are oceans or not.
4.Comedy
Yesterday ESA release one blurred unfocused panorama image and all journalist oohed and aahed and applauded at the panorama ESA put together. Only one thing was strange nobody couldnot se anything on that image.
The emperor has no clothes.
Let me get this straight... $3 billion and we get 3 MB of jpgs out of it? This is it. There are no hires. Just this motley collection of fogged out and blacked out shots interspersed with 1960s vintage digital photography.
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This string of pictures is too wide to post, but you can look up the website.
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~rwald/pano5 … odupes.jpg
The image below suggests that some liquid is on the lense.
Give it some time.
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Hyg probe landed in a mud according to ESA. Yes it’s true just look at crystal clear high resolutions images send by probe and see all that mud.
One positive thing about images:
When Mars rovers landed on Mars Nasa was flooded with people seeing worms, mushrooms, plants, numbers etc. Esa don’t have that problem. Esa images from Titan are so bad that people can’t se anything (although some can see lakes, big waves). Because of that all ESA staff can now concentrate on making even better camera.
You obviously do not read the responses to your posts. I think it was djellison who replied with the fact that the camera was made in America. Logically they would be the people to build future cameras as they can build on what they've done before. As to NASA being flooded with calls about worms, mushrooms, plants, and numbers, I'm sure that the ESA are glad they don't have that problem thousand upon thousands of calls about things that people only think they can see, I'd pass on that as well thanks.
Journalist:
I ask how can journalist applaud at panorama image when they can’t se anything on that image.
<SNIP>
4.Comedy
Yesterday ESA release one blurred unfocused panorama image and all journalist oohed and aahed and applauded at the panorama ESA put together. Only one thing was strange nobody couldnot se anything on that image.
Perhaps this is because the assembled journalists understand the science behind the mission and understand the implications of the images they are seeing.
Let me get this straight... $3 billion and we get 3 MB of jpgs out of it? This is it. There are no hires. Just this motley collection of fogged out and blacked out shots interspersed with 1960s vintage digital photography.
You are starting to sound more and more like a troll, if you just want pretty pictures I suggest you go to a gallery, if you want science read what the mission was really about before passing judgement.
from esa's website
The scientific objectives of the Huygens mission are to perform detailed measurements of the physical properties, the chemical composition and the dynamics of Titan's atmosphere and to characterise the surface of the moon along the descent ground track and near the landing site.
Huygens is a sophisticated robotic laboratory equipped with six scientific instruments provided by Principal Investigator institutions
It does not say Huygens mission is to land on Titan and send back pretty pictures for your desktop.
Graeme
There was a young lady named Bright.
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
in a relative way
And returned on the previous night.
--Arthur Buller--
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