Titan Descent in Stages

Best compilation of Titan colorized descent images I have seen yet from NASA. I do suspect the actual color of Titan - on the ground - would look less metallic than these do. All the color seen here is based upon educated guesses and applied over the black and white images returned by Huygens. There were no real color images taken by Huygens during descent.

I plan to do a long post on some amazing renders made for an Italian magazine based upon actual imagery and data… but I am so busy these days. It will go up eventually.

Io and Amalthea Portrait

A rare view of Io and the small moon Amalthea seen in the same view was taken by Galileo and recently reprocessed by Ted Stryk (his page is linked lower right). Amalthea is a tiny elongated moon that appears to be quite red. It is assumed that the longish shape and red hue come from the deposit of materials ejected off Io and spiral inward to Jupiter, swept up by Amalthea in its orbital path.

A similar phenomenon has also been seen at Saturn with moonlets that “sweep” ring materials.

Saturnati XVIII

Another Ugarkovic Beauty. Visible in the image are also Enceladus, Epimetheus and Mimas.

Saturn Storm

See Riding with Robots for more.

Transparent Rings

Mars Phoenix: May 25th Landing Site

Getting ready for the next Martian visitor!

This image is taken within the region that Mars Phoenix is expected to land on May 25th, one month from today. The whitish areas criss-crossing the landscape here is the seasonal carbon dioxide frost that covers the Martian poles during the winter. Phoenix will represent the first ever landing in a Martian polar region and is expected to yield considerably different results than we have seen from any of the previous landers or rovers.

Saturnati XVII

The Aliens are Not Sorry We Have Been Away

The weRobot tee posted here a few weeks ago has taken over my life here at wanderingspace. For anyone not aware, my real day job is running The Chopping Block and Chop Shop out of New York City. We were at the NY Comic Con over the weekend and while there Gizmodo and Boing Boing both posted our robots tee and we were slammed by traffic. So space has had to take a back seat for the last week or so. More appropriate for this forum perhaps is the more recent alienWe tee we just released on the temp site (yes, we are still recuperating from the server load). Take a look and if you like, mosey on over to the order form.

Wallpaper: Io’s Prometheus Volcano

Jason Perry has been featured here a whole bunch lately as he has been uploading newly processed Galileo images nearly every week (not to mention the recent New Horizons set). Some of these images would make great wallpaper displays, but the only issue with some are missing data regions and the noise that is common with hires images from the Galileo mission. Wanderingspace has attempted to artistically replace and clean of few of these images and will be posting the results of these for the next few days.

The region shown is the most famous of Io’s active volcanoes Prometheus. Normally we see this volcano at the edge of Io’s limb to view the plume clearly on profile, but here Galileo views this very active region from above during a flyby on orbit #27. The reddish haze surrounding the area is either the plume itself jettisoning materials or could also be deposits lying on the ground – perhaps Jason will comment and clarify.

The above image is the Jason Perry original and the missing color information is apparent (only the green channel was provided from the mission). The noise at this scale is less apparent but much more visible on the hires version. It is important to note that the wallpaper version is an artistic attempt at cleaning and replacing the missing data and is meant for display viewing not science!

IMAGE NOTE: As stated above – the missing color data was colorized in the region it was missing and some of the thin strips of missing color data was simply replaced with new image information. You can also see areas at the edges of the composition that were filled with duplicate image data to fill the wallpaper frame most notably at top right and bottom left. The remainder of the image is original except for the noise reduction provided by Photoshop.

More New Horizons Io Images

The reason the left side is so blown out is due to the fact that the image was overexposed for Jupitershine and New Horizons cameras were designed for low light at Pluto which is ideal for observing the moons of Jupiter by light reflected off their host planet. However, doing this results in the total overexposure of the side lit by the Sun.

This is another Jason Perry image and the original can be found here. Wanderingspace simply removed the lens flare noise and the overexposed color noise. He just added some New Horizons Io images that he has personally reprocessed on this page.

Fun With Io

Jason Perry’s most excellent Io blog (who would have ever expected there would be an Io blog one day) is loaded with his finely reprocessed Io images from the historic Galileo mission. Some of the more dramatic images were only captured in monochrome (that is black and white to most), so I thought I might try and colorize one of these images just for shits and giggles.

The image is that of Hi'iaka Patera and two nearby mountains (taken in 1999). The tallest peak is about 11 kilometers high. The dark features are usually thought to be calderas, however the dark regions here could be depressions that were later filled by dark lava flows. Galileo took the images at from about 26,000 kilometers.

The colorized image is merely an artistic impression. You can see where missing data has been “filled” in with texture by comparing the two images and seeing where the composite left gaps. The color information is wholly interpretive and based upon colors that appear in many other Io images but are not at all matched up to the region specifically. The real image was processed by Jason Perry and the original image is located on his page of Galileo Io images from orbit 25.

Phobos as Seen by MRO

This is a semi-false color image as explained on NASA’s site, “The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took this image of the larger of Mars' two moons, Phobos… on March 23, 2008. Taken from a distance of about 6,800 kilometers (about 4,200 miles). It is presented in color by combining data from the camera's blue-green, red, and near-infrared channels”.

So there is some exaggeration of color here by including the infrared. I am guessing that is what is making the contrast between the reddish hues and those whitish marking at the edge of Stickney Crater. Click to see the hi-res… this may be the sharpest most detailed of Phobos I have seen yet.

Saturnati XVI

This may be one of the very best from Gordan. Nice work. For the full effect you must click on it to see the hires. The rings are quite sharp.

Hebes Chasma in Valles Marineris

I have been very busy lately… this is from the Mars Express site, “Hebes Chasma is an enclosed trough, almost 8000 m deep, in Valles Marineris, the Grand Canyon of Mars, where water is believed to have flowed. The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express studied the area providing new pictorial clues to its history.”

3 More By GU or Saturnati XV

3 intensely nice new views of Saturn by Gordan Ugarkovic.

Be sure to click for the hi-res view of this one. Enceladus hangs sharply in front of saturn – doesn’t even look real. I assume the second moon there is Mimas, but notice you can even make out a 3rd moon (Pandora) lodged in Saturn’s rings, right inside the hairline F-Ring.

Titan’s Unnamed Sea

Map-makers of the world rejoice! For the first time since the days of Columbus, you now have the opportunity to map out the details of undiscovered shores! Tim Minton has a passion for map-making, but his pursuits usually involve Earthly destinations – how could he resist the new Lakes and Seas of another world? Check out his flickr page for other maps and in particular his Titan set.

Saturnati XIV

Its Titan up top and Tethys below.

weRobot at Chop Shop

Okay, so this is not space related, but I am so excited to finally have my 51 robots design up and for sale at chopshopstore.com. See the Men’s style or Women’s.

Mars: Promethei Planum

Promethei Planum, an area seasonally covered with a more than 3500 m thick layer of ice in the martian south polar region taken by ESA’s Mars Express mission.

Earth and Moon Seen from Mars

This is an image of Earth and the moon acquired by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which is in orbit around Mars. The distance from MRO to Earth at the time the image was taken was 142 million kilometers (88 million miles). Hard to image such details could be drawn out in an image taken from such a distance as that.

A similar image of Jupiter was also acquired by MRO some months ago.