Smallsteps Wallpaper: V2 Rocket

While looking at all the strange images from old Soviet moon missions on Don Mitchell’s site, I thought it would be interesting to design a set of wallpapers from these early images. I call the series “Smallsteps” as in Neil Armstrong’s famous, “One small step…” quote from Apollo 11. Obviously, there would have been no “giant leap” without a large number of these other “small steps” preceding the Apollo Program (although some of the images I have planned actually come after or during the Apollo program). Smallsteps Wallpaper: V2 Rocket

To me, the fact that the human race was even doing space exploration back then seems almost out of time — and then you look at the spacecraft that were sending back these images and it is amazing that anything really ever worked. Tin cans with cameras sending back images that were often just as bizzare and rough as the vessels that carried them. It is even more incredible when you consider that people eventually started strapping themselves to these rockets and floated around the vacuum of space in boxes wrapped with foil.

Seems appropriate enough to start the whole set off with the V2 images of Earth sent back in the shockingly early year of 1948. According the the Air and Space Museum these are the first images of the Earth taken from space in history. The image itself I suspect was just scanned from some print and the number tags and directionals are original (although there were about 17 of them and I removed a majority of them in Photoshop).

Closest Iapetus Flyby of Mission In 2 Days

Iapetus from 693,941 kilometers On Sept. 10, the Cassini spacecraft performs its closest flyby during the entire mission of the odd moon Iapetus, passing by about 1,640 kilometers. The moon is somewhat further out than most of the others, so despite the fact that Cassini has many months if not years in front of it still, the moon is too out-of-the-way to be making any additional passes. Who knows when another spacecraft will be this close again? Hope its a good look… it will have to last.

I made this “close to true color” image from the raw files using the BLU, IR1 and GRE filters. The distance seen here is approximately 694,000 kilometers.

Io Aglow

Io Night Side Eruption Map This is a bit old taken from February 2007’s New Horizons encounter at Jupiter. A very noisy image was released of Io on the dark side of Jupiter that illustrated the glowing lights of lava flows and auroral displays in Io’s tenuous atmosphere interacting with Jupiter’s magnetosphere. Original Noisy Image of Io AglowNoise always bothers me and there has been a desire to somehow clean up the presentation of this fantastic image.

The process was simply to blur the image, layer highlight information a few times with varying degrees of sharpness or blur and to simply hand remove what would seem to be simply noise artifacts. The problem is that some of this information wasn’t just noise, but is actually auroral glow (especially at the disk edge). So after some of the noise was removed it was softened and re-introduced selectively around active areas where the assumption is that the glow near these spots is more intense. The final step was to simply reduce the file size so that it became sharper.

This presentation is purely artistic although it does come from real image data… I just wouldn’t use it to support any scientific papers. The items marked simply as “volcano” were newly discovered by New Horizons.

Rhea From about 50,000 km

Cassini actually passed within 5,000 km of Rhea (a moon of Saturn) on the 30th and took a multitude of images. All the closest images are quite bright and it is unclear if the moon is just that bright, if there was an anomaly in the process or if some basic calibration has yet to occur. At any rate here are more distant images from the flyby and what happens if you register the various filtered images into one RGB (red, green, blue) file in Photoshop. The IR1 (infrered) is placed in the red channel, the GRN is placed in the green channel and the VIO (ultraviolet) is placed in the blue and you get what is truly false color, but not very far from what other natural color images have shown in the past. Rhea in IR1, GRN and VIO

Saturn (the solid color behind Rhea) seems a bit more green than expected… however, if the moon was starting to pass onto the side of the planet in darkness, it does tend to move toward green hues when in shadow.

Rhea from 5,000 km

Here is another one the further away images at 58,731 km in clear filter (B&W). You can see into one of the craters along the edge at the lower left side and peer across at the opposite side wall. It is similar to the close flyby images obtained of Dione and its deep canyon walls from last year.

And another clear filter from 61,602 km:

Rhea

While We Were Away

So, the bottomless pit on Mars is not bottomless (although still a hefty 78 meters deep) Not Bottomless Pit

And the Martian rovers survive the dark dust storm of 2007 and resume their extended missions. The only question remaining is… what exactly (if anything) can destroy these everlasting robots! Below is a recently returned image of the Martian surface as it appears today.

Martian Rovers Resume Mission

On Holiday

I am currently on holiday in Doolin, Ireland am not expecting to make any posts during the week. Upon return wanderingspace will be putting a full-time effort into the Carnival of Space (see previous post). Uranus Rings Edge On Until then, enjoy this rare occasion of Hubble’s view of Uranus as it’s rings are seen “edge on” for the first time in 42 years. Since the rings were only discovered in the late 70’s this would be the first time we have ever had the opportunity to view them this way.

Carnival of Space for September 27

Wanderingspace will be hosting the Carnival of Space for September 27. I am thinking that the theme will be art and space or rather, the art of space… whichever seems more appropriate whenever we see which way the content leans. It seems an appropriate theme for this site as imagery is what really drives the concept of this site with just a touch of news and articles for the part-time space enthusiast. If anyone would like to participate in the carnival or has any ideas of what would make a great contribution to it, please leave your email and comments in the usual comment space provided on this post.

Martian Skies Will Clear Up

Put on a happy face. Martian Skies Will Clear Up

The robotic arm on Spirit has begun operations again. The dust storm has been breaking up and allowing sunlight to recharge its batteries enough to resume some scientific activity on the surface. Apparently things are not quite so clear yet on Opportunity’s side of the planet, but it is starting to look as if things will be back to normal soon enough for Spirit at the very least.

Wallpapers: Earth from the Space Shuttle

Something impressive seems to be happening on STS-118 (the Space Shuttle mission currently in orbit)… Photography. Wallpaper: Endeavor Against Earth Horizon

Surely there are many excellent images to be had from previous Shuttle missions, but the images coming from STS-118 are really something to see. Perhaps one of the astronauts doing the EVAs (extra vehicular activities) has a degree in photography? At any rate, this site’s recent effort to give Earth it’s fair presence on this site has to take advantage of some of these fantastic images coming from NASA.

Wallpaper: Endeavor Docked

Wallpaper: The International Space Station

If you would like to see more check out the current mission’s multimedia gallery here or digg the story here.

Wallpaper: Earth Portrait

Wallpaper: Earth Portrait You have probably seen this image of the Earth before. This was the way the Earth appeared to the final astronauts to land on the moon in 1972. It has since become the quintessential Earth portrait, used more often than any other global image of the Earth. This is probably due to its beauty but also worth mentioning the relative rarity with which we get to see a full globe image taken of the Earth in one snapshot. Only missions and probes that leave the vicinity of the Earth are able to do this and some other popular Earth portraits have been taken by Galileo, Messenger… there is the famous Earth/Moon portrait taken by Voyager 1 and of course several from various Apollo missions.

Wallpaper: Martian North Pole

Wallpaper: Martian North Pole Since the Mars Phoenix Lander has now been successfully launched, and is on its way to potentially making the first ever successful landing in the Martian polar region… Here is a great image of the region taken from the Mars Recon Orbiter’s archives.

On a side note, there was one previous mission called the Mars Polar Lander which was to touch down in the region in 1999. Communication was lost with the lander just prior to the designated arrival date and the whereabouts of the probe have been a mystery ever since. Recently the Opportunity and Spirit rovers, the old Viking Landers and even the original Pathfinder components had been clearly imaged from orbit by the Mars Global Surveyor and that raised hopes we might finally make a visual connection with the remains of the doomed lander. Initially some hopeful findings had been made, but they later panned out and as of this date MPL still remains lost.

Wallpapers: 1024x768 Set 05

1024x768_set05 Managed to make the more common wallpaper size 1024x768 for the 14 most recent wallpaper posts (started with set 05 images, 1-4 to come). Download zip file here. Some were not produced as they just didn’t translate so easily into the format. However, the opposite is true in some cases such as for this image of the Martian south pole. Its resolution was hopelessly low for the larger landscape format, so now with the smaller size it was possible (just barely) to get it posted as a wallpaper.

Wallpaper 1024x786: Martian South Pole

Included in the set for download are the images pictured at the top and for the sake of google search, here they are listed out:

  • 1024x768 Wallpaper of CALLISTO at half view, moon of JUPITER
  • 1024x768 Wallpaper of EARTH from APOLLO landing site
  • 1024x768 Wallpaper portrait of EUROPA, moon of JUPITER
  • 1024x768 Wallpaper portrait of JUPITER
  • 1024x768 Wallpaper of MARS region of DEUTERONILUS (not shown)
  • 1024x768 Wallpaper of MARS surface at HUSBAND HILL
  • 1024x768 Wallpaper portrait of MARS
  • 1024x768 Wallpaper portrait of PHOEBE, moon of SATURN
  • 1024x768 Wallpaper portrait of RHEA, moon of SATURN
  • 1024x768 Wallpaper of SATURN, crescent view (not shown)
  • 1024x768 Wallpaper of SATURN from above the NORTHERN POLE
  • 1024x768 Wallpaper of SATURN globe
  • 1024x768 Wallpaper of SPACE WALK
  • 1024x768 Wallpaper portrait of TETHYS, moon of SATURN

Saturn and Titan Animation by U. Gordan

Saturn Titan Animation Officially this site’s most mentioned personality, Gordan Ugarkovic does it again with a series of color images combined to show an hour at Saturn. In addition to this being a gorgeous animation, the very image of Saturn and Titan in the same frame has thus far, in and of itself, been quite a rarity in the Cassini mission. The other moon visible in the shot is Dione.

Original image appears on the unmannedspaceflight forum.

Cassini to Go Geyser Diving?

Recent Image of Plumes at Enceladus There has been a plan for Cassini to make a close flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus early next year. The plan was that while Cassini is doing its usual orbiting of Saturn, that it would be tweaked to come within about 1000 km of the small icy moon and make observations. But that plan may be revised soon to include what would likely be the most dangerous maneuver Cassini has made since its orbit insertion and passing through the ring-plane.

The new plan is for Cassini to pass within 30 km of the surface of Enceladus… which is in itself an impressive move. What makes this even more daring is that the path should take the probe straight through one of the moon’s many geysers in its southern region. To survive what will likely be a barrage to tiny particles coming from these plumes, the cameras will be facing away from this activity as the body of Cassini itself (which is fortified with a protective shell) should take the brunt of the damage. After this most dangerous phase the cameras will capture details of the geysers and Enceladus itself as the probe moves safely away from the body. Additionally, this close plunge should also allow other instruments on Cassini to get a good scent of these materials as well and should be able to accurately describe what exactly is coming out of the geysers.

Should this plan be adopted, the event is scheduled for March of 2008.