Cassini-Enceladus closest flyby today!

Cassini will approach this moon at a distance of only 175km! Should provide some great pics of this frozen moon.
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...

I love the hi-res black and white photos.
We have HD-res 1080p available right now on a $4,000 TV. But the billion dollar spacecraft still uses b/w. I hate how they always cover stuff up.

Originally posted by IronPuma
I love the hi-res black and white photos.

We have HD-res 1080p available right now on a $4,000 TV. But the billion dollar spacecraft still uses b/w. I hate how they always cover stuff up.

You fail to understand how the images are processed my friend:




please see this:

"This false-color view is a composite of individual frames obtained using filters sensitive to green (centered at 568 nanometers) and infrared light (two infrared filters, centered at 752 and 930 nanometers respectively). The view has been processed to accentuate subtle color differences. The atmosphere of Saturn forms the background of this scene (its color has been rendered grey to allow the moon to stand out)...."

From here

The truth is that, by using filters, far greater sensitivity and resolution can be produced from the information the telescope gathers (via a CCD) than "simply" an equivalent television camera could. Plese remember that "conventional" TV cameras use red, blue and green "filters" to produce their colour images - NASA use many different filters to obtain first-rate images.

I hope that helps?

AlfredENewman thats an exceptional example, most of the images produced by NASAs spacecraft seem to be using dated imaging equipment at best, I would have to agree with IronPuma on this. NASA loves tried and tested technology, without competition I guess they have this luxury, however with any luck this will soon be changed.

With all these sattelite photos of Enceladas you have to wonder, will google make a google Enceladas?

Anyone else see what I see?

Europa Junior!.

Originally posted by IronPuma
I love the hi-res black and white photos.

We have HD-res 1080p available right now on a $4,000 TV. But the billion dollar spacecraft still uses b/w. I hate how they always cover stuff up.

Generally the black and white photos are taken through differnt colour filters as AlfredENewman has already pointed out. Taking photos through differnt filters is much better for scientific analisis.

It's not that NASA likes to use dated, tried and true equipment, as picard_is_actually_a_grey suggests. I think it's more to do with the fact that an HD video camera or your average consumer digital camera won't work in space. It's not properly shielded or designed for that environment.

Remember also that the equipment is at least 7 years old.

First pics are finally coming in..
take a look here :
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...