The whole cake! Titan Images

Click away ....

http://mars.lyle.org/titan/ indexed images

http://spacescience.ca/titan/raw/ raw images

http://anthony.liekens.net/index.php/Main/Huygens composites

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~neilh/huygens/huygens image triplets
separated.zip separated for composite processing

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html
useful proggie for creating composites....

enjoy!

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html
useful proggie for creating composites....

enjoy!


GOOD GOD!...EEE GAD!...

SINFUL

I CAN'T STAND IT!


ANOTHER WORLD

No kidding, the images are rather small. I haven't read much in depth
about the imaging system they use, but damn! How much money was spent
on this program? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure great science will come
out of it, but oh well, not the most dramatic of surface photos. Even
some of the Venus probes from the 70s have some better imagery.
ESA, defend yourself! Casini's imagery has been awesome, so what's up?

It was lunched at the end of 1997. Don't tell me it took 10 years to build?
I would assume the last thing to design and build is the computers and
instruments in order to install the latest technology.
JS


wrote in message
oups.com...

Pham Newen wrote:
No kidding, the images are rather small. I haven't read much in
depth
about the imaging system they use, but damn! How much money was
spent
on this program? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure great science will
come
out of it, but oh well, not the most dramatic of surface photos.
Even
some of the Venus probes from the 70s have some better imagery.
ESA, defend yourself! Casini's imagery has been awesome, so what's
up?

The tolerances these chips need to meet are considerably higher than
anything within 1AU of earth.
This chip needs to be low noise, low light, low power, and low mass.
They also need to be highly reliable and highly durable.
They need to be custom made to meet the first four requirements.
Meeting the fifth and sixth requirements is a matter of selecting the
best one of as many as you can make.
For starters these are class 0 chips. Meaning they can have no column
defects and no dead pixels. Yield rate for these is on the order of 1%.
ESA needs to make a number of these chips and select the best one. If
they want to pick the best of 10 then they need to have 1000 chips
made.
Lest we forget was building this probe in the late 80s early 90s. CCD
technology was more costly than it is today.
Designing a custom chip would cost well over $1 000 000. Each chip cost
well over $1000 to make.
That is just for the sensor. You need to do the same thing at the same
price for the electronics and lens. If ESA paid less than $4 000 000
for the camera they got a bargain.

If you double the resolution then you quadruple the number of pixels
and the chance of a defect. You also quadruple the power consumption
and the weight.

This is all a moot point when compared with the one real factor: upload
speed. Huygens can only upload data at a fixed rate. Given the probe
has a fixed life span in which to transmit the data you have an
absolute amount of information you can upload. a certain amount of the
bandwidth is devoted to the other instruments. This leaves you with a
finite number of pixels you can transmit. There is no data redundancy
with the pictures so you can double that number. Divide this number by
the number of photos you want to take and you arrive at the maximum
resolution of your imager.

Ian Anderson
www.customopticalsystems.com

Szaki wrote:
It was lunched at the end of 1997. Don't tell me it took 10 years to
build?
I would assume the last thing to design and build is the computers
and
instruments in order to install the latest technology.
JS

I assume they did too. it still takes a long time to enshure 99.9999%
reliability.
the physical constraints (power, mass, size) need to be set before they
begin to build any of the mechanical parts. given this, the constraints
of the camera are effectively set. the plans are further cemented once
you begin to design the other electronics.
Ian Anderson
www.customopticalsystems.com

**** This is all a moot point when compared with the one real factor:
upload
speed. Huygens can only upload data at a fixed rate. Given the probe
has a fixed life span in which to transmit the data ***!

I believe that the limitation was the volume of data was the time allowed
for transmission. Given the possibility of crashing, sinking into a 'sea'
and the orbiter disappearing over the horizon.


BTW the TV coverage was very poor!!

Yours (in Europe)
Paul

wrote in message
ups.com...

Szaki wrote:
It was lunched at the end of 1997. Don't tell me it took 10 years to
build?
I would assume the last thing to design and build is the computers
and
instruments in order to install the latest technology.
JS

I assume they did too. it still takes a long time to enshure 99.9999%
reliability.
the physical constraints (power, mass, size) need to be set before they
begin to build any of the mechanical parts. given this, the constraints
of the camera are effectively set. the plans are further cemented once
you begin to design the other electronics.
Ian Anderson
www.customopticalsystems.com

I worked for 12 years for an aerospace company building commercial
satellites. Our products were, Superbird, PanamSat, Globalstar etc...
Things are not that tight, any way everything gets tested, including the
hole space craft in an environment chamber to ensure quality and every thing
works.
Most expensive is the lunch, $10K/ pound or so.
Julius

"Szaki" wrote in message
...

I worked for 12 years for an aerospace company ...
Things are not that tight, ...
Most expensive is the lunch, $10K/ pound or so.

You aerospace guys enjoy your food I guess.
(Were you misled by the subject line?)

"George Dishman" wrote in message
...

"Szaki" wrote in message
...

I worked for 12 years for an aerospace company ...
Things are not that tight, ...
Most expensive is the lunch, $10K/ pound or so.

You aerospace guys enjoy your food I guess.
(Were you misled by the subject line?)

You're funny, he!
"LAUNCH" , my mistake!

Julius

"Szaki" wrote in message
...

"George Dishman" wrote in message
...

"Szaki" wrote in message
...

I worked for 12 years for an aerospace company ...
Things are not that tight, ...
Most expensive is the lunch, $10K/ pound or so.

You aerospace guys enjoy your food I guess.
(Were you misled by the subject line?)

You're funny, he!
"LAUNCH" , my mistake!

I just love those typos that still make sense,
probably because I make more myself than most
people ;-)

best regards
George