HUYGENS Titan photos have been altered!!

Hey, I found that picture that was quickly taken down. I can certainly see why NASA and the ESA didn't want us to see it! It's right near the top of this page

Originally posted by zamphir66
People, people, one of the pictures was made orange to attempt to give an idea what Titan looks like in real color. Almost all pictures from space are black and white, the color is interpolated later on by computers.

Interpolated is a big word for manipulated. The near infrared reflected spectra should give us more details in the objects in the field of view. Bringing our own white light in the form of the surface science lamp should also bring out more detail. So why are these photos such blurry crap?

I think from a purely scientific point of view, good pictures are not the most imporant thing. Temparature, atmospheric composition, radiation, all of these things are likely of more interest to the exo-[insert field of study here]-ologists than just pictures. Also considering that this probe was such a shot in the dark, fly by wire deal to begin with, the designers would be much more concentrated on those other things than pictures. I hope what I said makes sense?

I did a little search after reading that the CNN news have been altered and I found some interesting results. I found the original news!! I'm not sure if it's the correct article so Serum39 might be able to confirm it.

I don't know if you guys will be able to see it, it's from google cache. I suggest you guys save the webpage to your hardrive to prevent the only proof that the article has been changed to fade away.

Original News: www.google.ca...:4o9YrtD45HsJ:www.cnnsi.com/cnn/2005/TECH/space/01/14/huygens.titan/+titan+removed+nasa+picture+16+january+2005&hl= en&client=firefox-a

Altered News:
www.cnn.com...

So. let's take a look at the differences:

Original time: Friday, January 14, 2005 Posted: 5:09 PM EST (2209 GMT)
After the change: Friday, January 14, 2005 Posted: 8:12 PM EST (0112 GMT)

So they corrected this 3 hours later. Let's go on.

Here's the original article from the beginning to the mention of a picture beeing removed:

(CNN) -- The first image from the surface of Saturn's largest moon Titan shows a rock-strewn plain stretching toward a distant horizon in pictures released by NASA.

The only picture released by the ESA shows the moon, from high altitude, with what appear to be drainage channels and a shoreline.

Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general for the European Space Agency, declared the image "magnifique."

Scientists at ESA mission control stared in rapt attention, some crying and applauding, as Titan was displayed on the screens.

For unknown reasons, NASA, which operates Cassini, the satellite orbiting Saturn that relayed Huygens' signal, removed an image of Titan's surface from its Web site. ESA had not released that image. No official information was available about the image from Titan's surface.

So why has it been removed? I don't know, but maybe someone could send an email to the author of the article to ask him why it was altered!

and that would be the only interesting thing here..can't see a reason to hide a image of that quality. i mean you will never be able to prove anything based on pictures like that, because in the end you speculate about 2 pixels and if they look real or not..nonsense...except of course, aliens are dancing around Huygens, that would be visible

I haven't exactly read the whole post but I want this said.

Titan Is alot farther from the sun than earth. The ammount of sunlight intensity that titan gets is more than, at least, 50% than that of Earth. Titan also has that increidbly thick atmosphere. SO If I had to say titan proably on average gets as much light as earth does by the average half moon. To produce a image of that quality the camera shutter would have probally been open for a good while an what you are seeing may very well be just a trick caused by the movement of the light source.

I'm suprised this is all yall are making a fuss over and not what appears to be rivers draining into a bay But yall do always seem to amaze me.

Originally posted by Mizar
...what you are seeing may very well be just a trick caused by the movement of the light source.

Any movement on the part or the camera of the surface science lamp would have produced the same effect across all objects in the field of vision...not just one isolated object.

[edit on 17-1-2005 by Geneticus]

[edit on 17-1-2005 by Geneticus]

Forgive me if this sounds ridiculous but i am certain i heard one of the presenters or 'specialists' on a television program about the Huygens probe landing on Titan say

'There are no shadows on Titan'

Something to do with the sun not being able to penetrate the murky/cloudy atmosphere of the planet.If this is true wouldn't there be no shadows at all on the surface ?

It makes sense that the diffused light from the clouds originating from across the entire sky would create diffused shadows on the ground below.

To add on to what was just mentioned, I don't think there are any shadows on Titan, and if so just small very diffused ones. The dark spots under those chunks of "ice" aren't even shadows. I read that at one point those blocks of ice may have been slightly melted and then they perhaps re-froze. But it dampened the ground beneath it enough to make the ground darker, then it refroze, so that is why you are seeing dark spots underneath these pieces of ice.

Also to the guy making all of these random and wild claims. WTH are you talking about, life now would be discovered on 3 planets. They never discovered life on Mars, and if so I'd like to see where you're getting this data.

Also I'd like to hear more about this sea of liquid water on Europa.

lets not forget these arnt the finest resolution pics.

[edit on 103131p://400110 by instar]

I seem to remember another thread or threads about mars pics being altered. Why are you so quick to be skeptical? Do you really think NASA is going to slip with their images? They have pros scanning these pics not you? If they have evidence of anything you're not going to get them off their site.

isn't it simply a given that NASA's knee-jerk response is to prevent any proof of extraterrestrial life from ever being sprung on the public? there is always the slight chance, especially with mars, of some bizarre creature wiggling across the ground right in front of one the rover cameras, so does anyone really doubt that there's a contingency in place to supress such a thing???

an image like that would be altered, if even released at all.

NASA's policy is to "lockdown" whenever there is the potential for explosive revelations coming out....if you don't believe me get a transcript of what was said in the COLUMBIA mission control. a "nothing gets out" LOCKDOWN was ordered..... .........and keeping us all in the dark about alien life is far more of a priority than any particular shuttle mission.

I think people are looking WAY too hard to prove their government is lying to them, cheating, stealing, manipulating etc. But regardless on a different note, I'm not sure if anyone looked at the animated gif of the titan pics, (www.mars.asu.edu...). If these pics are meant to be in succession, what is the small whitish blur that APPEARS to move from the top right of the gif towards to the bottom middle roughly 4-5seconds into the animation? It moves right across the area that is being cliamed to have been painted out. Some sort of image arfifact? It could almost pass for a bug quickly zooming past the camera

ps: on closer examination, in the animation there does indeed seem to be a rectangular section blurred out, and the white object becomes blurred as it passes through that section, and APPEARS to actually change direction before continuing along it's original path. A bit strange. How authentic are the pics used to create this animation?

Originally posted by Geneticus
Bandwidth is totally irrelevent. You can transmit an entire DVD movie over 14.4 dialup if you have enough time, you're willing to accept data degradation, and you have a way to pick up where you left off after timeouts.

Mission specs "required" only few minutes of operation time on surface for Huygens.
In that time you don't send much photos.


And yet again, here's exemplary page showing what artifacts lossy compression causes to image.
ai.fri.uni-lj.si...

Originally posted by I See You
Why are you so quick to be skeptical?

There's some serious obsessions to conspiracies in this thread...

"The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie."
-Joseph A. Schempeter

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one."
-George Bernard Shaw


BTW, why aren't all of you protesting against your governments and big money cotrolled multinational corporations while those are the ones which make everyone equally slaves of capital?


And for end, here's ten points question, what's this?
Shouldn't take long because there seems to be so many "experts" in here.

It's obviously a picture of a thermonuclear explosion photoshopped to look like a sunset in a massive international government coverup to hide the existance of hydrogen bombs!

Originally posted by Geneticus
This thread is not about bandwidth...it is about altered pics. In your quote above from ESA, they ADMIT ALTERING THE PHOTO!

Sigh, well actually bandwidth does have something to do with it in a round about way. As everyone keeps saying, when your sending as much data as possible over very little bandwidth over very little time, you have to compress it as much as possible, trading a bit of quality in for quantity.
This is a posible (and likely) explanation for some of the rectangular blotches on the photo. So it does have quite a lot to do with it you see?

And for end, here's ten points question, what's this?
Shouldn't take long because there seems to be so many "experts" in here.

Its the albatross that hit the WTC !

Sunset/ sunrise over water?

That animated gif is interesting indeed. It seems like there's something moving from about half way up the photo to that rectangular spot. Thinking that there must be a perfectly logical explanation to that I'd guess that since the information is gathered and send in 'stripes' (afaik), maybe there was a solar flare or something that corrupted that stream. That would make sense that there would be small 'blank' spots at the edge of the stripes. Any1 who actually knows this stuff have better idea?

E_T isn't that just a plain simple sunset against the water??