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Space Science

Amateurs Beat Space Agencies To Titan Pictures 251

Posted by timothy from the decentralized dept.
loconet writes "Nature.com is reporting that a group of enthusiastic amateurs managed to process raw images of Titan from the Huygens probe faster that any of the giant space agencies in charge of the mission. Terragen, a freeware program that converts the basic brightness data in aerial pictures into a topographical map, to generate the ground-level vista was used."
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Amateurs Beat Space Agencies To Titan Pictures More

Amateurs Beat Space Agencies To Titan Pictures

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  • Without quality control... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by topham ( 32406 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:01PM (#11413125) Homepage
    Without quality control it's usually possible to beat a company, or organization to the punch.

    (And doesn't mean it is necessarily inferior in quality either).

    But it is a little unfair.
    • They're not "crunching" the raw images. They're taking the raw images and creating a fictional rendering of what they think it'd look like.

      Its like Pixar taking NASA satelite images and coming up with a Toy Story-style rendering of Manhattan.
      • There were several pictures posted on that site. The pictures that you are referring to are only one or two of them. The rest are not fictional, they are purely the raw data that the ESA posted, and they stitched those raw photos together to create a montage.
      • They're taking the raw images and creating a fictional rendering of what they think it'd look like.

        Isn't that what they did in the movie "White Chicks"?

        Those plastic masks were very disturbing ...

    • Re:Without quality control... (Score:4, Informative)

      by AviLazar ( 741826 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:19PM (#11413355) Journal
      I had a website for a text based RPG a long time ago. My website was considered the best for accurate information that came up quickly. The reason - whenever the administrators for the professional companies website needed an addition to the web page - they had to wait for the IT department to fulfill the order (they had other projects too).

      So large organizations suffer from that, especially government ones. The good thing is though, the organizations tend to have better resources, so while not always true, they generally produce a better end result. (bring on the flame war on how i am wrong). :)
    • Oh please! Quality control for a mosaic image? Good enough free tools for stitching mosaics will do just as good a job as any 'scientific' application for the same purpose.
      • Yeah! I mean, I'm sure that these people made sure that their images were all pieced together at the proper angles and scaled properly (since they were snapped at different times) so as not to produce a wildly inaccurate rendering of the scene.

        (/sarcasm)

      • Here are the Technical Details (Score:5, Informative)

        by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @07:28PM (#11414014) Journal
        There are extensive technical details on what they actually go through here [arizona.edu]

        See, for example, these field test photos of the camera [arizona.edu] in the Arizona area. as they say:

        To construct any of these projections, the direction of every pixel in each of the three imagers was measured and expressed as a nadir and azimuth angle in a spherical coordinate system centered on the imager in question. Parallax due to coordinate center offsets was ignored. The distortion due to the optical systems was removed using an empirically-derived unwarping function. The images were projected onto a mosaicking plane using one of several projection algorithms (mercator, conic, stereographic or gnomonic) defined below, causing the various images to be spliced together.)

        oooooooo.... Pictures.

  • No surprise there... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chris09876 ( 643289 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:02PM (#11413140)
    I'm impressed with them..., but it's not a surprise really. With the raw data images being released as soon as they were made available, anyone who was interested enough could begin processing them immediately. I doubt NASA/ESA thought it was a race. But still, great job for them! They probably did it for a fraction of the cost that the big agencies needed to process the images ;-) So much beaurocracy..

    • Re:No surprise there... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TiredGamer ( 564844 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:08PM (#11413213)
      Not quite right. Remember a lot of scientists' careers ride on the precision of processing here, whereas these amateur guys aren't going to lose face. There's a lot more here than pretty picture, and in science speed can lead to errors.
      • You'd think that the scientists would want some higher res pictures.

        Is it just that it would take a long time to transfer higher resolution pictures? It'd be nice to have thrown a nice 5 megapixel camera on there and get some really clear shots :)

    • Re:No surprise there... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kiltedtaco ( 213773 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:13PM (#11413286) Homepage
      They probably also have a fraction of the scientific validity. Dealing with these images is not easy. I assure you the scientists who were working on the mission are just as anxious to look at the data they collected as these other people. But pretty pictures, which are about all these people have created, are crap for scientific purposes.

      I've never dealt with images like they're using. And I won't. But I have dealt with astronomical spectroscopy, and I know that without the right calibration images, without knowing the details of the instrument, and the exact conditions of the exposure, your results are useless.

      Will these images get by a peer-review journal? Not a chance in hell. Extracting meaning from these data is a challenging and long undertaking, and I sure don't trust a "casual astronomer" to do it.

      • Re:No surprise there... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by CODiNE ( 27417 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:37PM (#11413546) Homepage
        The scientific validity of these pictures are pointless. All the space pics posted online by scientists are scientifically worthless as well. Pretty pictures are released intentionally to wow the audience. X-rays and ultraviolet light are turned into bright red and green shades, which destroys any data actually contained in the red or green visible spectrum. My point is there's nothing to complain about here since all they are doing is saving NASA the extra work of re-tweaking the images for public consumption. Now let the guys in the lab coats forget about press release images and focus on the science.

        -Don.

        • Re:No surprise there... (Score:3, Informative)

          by mike77 ( 519751 )
          X-rays and ultraviolet light are turned into bright red and green shades, which destroys any data actually contained in the red or green visible spectrum.

          Actually working on X-ray astronomy for many years, I thought I'd comment on your point. Any imaging CCD usually does not pick up wavelength of light outside of the band in which it's designed to observe. Be it through the materials used in the construction of the CCD, the filter placed in front of it, or the mirrors used to direct light. This is don

      • I wouldn't say useless. I'll be using those pictures to pique children's interest in science. While news of the Titan landing is still fresh in their minds, I can show them WHY it's such a big deal. Wait six months for decent processing from the scientists and it will be a bit more ho-hum, rather like showing kids the Viking lander photos. Six months, 26 years - it's all the same to them.
    • "They probably did it for a fraction of the cost that the big agencies needed to process the images"

      I bet this is part of NASA's faster cheaper initiative. The just release the data and let the enthusiasts do it for free. Viola! Faster and cheaper.
    • They're not 'processed' at all. All they did was take a greyscale image and derive a heightfield from it, then render it using guessed at 'Titan-like' atmosphere parameters. Terragen is a great piece of software, but they could just as easily have rendered your back garden pond with similar results or rendered the Titan data and made it look like the south pacific. In fact one of the most effective uses I've seen made of Terragen is to render Martian data as a Terraformed surface.

  • I'll be impressed (Score:5, Funny)

    by kmhebert ( 586931 ) <kev@@@kevinhebert...com> on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:03PM (#11413157) Homepage
    When the amateurs can build a spaceship that can fly to Saturn!

  • Well... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Blue-Footed Boobie ( 799209 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:05PM (#11413173)
    Terragen is awesome software, and amazingly the developers have kept the cost reasonable.

    I've been using it for some years now. It is surprisingly easy to load these grayscale images in a heigh-maps and get an accurate render. I'm kicking myself now for not thinking of doing the same thing!

    • Re:Well... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Blue-Footed Boobie ( 799209 )
      To get an idea of what you can do with Terragen, check out Luc Bianco's [lucbianco.free.fr] site.

      One of the most amazing I have seen is this image [lucbianco.free.fr].

    • I used to play with VistaPro on my Amiga back in the day, and loved being able to tinker around with elevations, camera angles, self-made lakes and such. Is there any F/OSS program even remotely similar in scope to Terragen?

      • Re:Well... (Score:2, Informative)

        by Blue-Footed Boobie ( 799209 )
        If you just want to play around, Terragen is free.

        You are required to register your copy of Terragen if it is for commercial use, as specified in the License Agreement presented to you when you install or first use Terragen. If you only intend to use Terragen personally, on a non-profit basis, registration is optional and you may continue to use the unregistered version of Terragen free of charge. Registered users will also have access to priority email support, and will be able to render images larger t

    • I agree, I think this [deviantart.com] is among the most amazing Terragen images I've seen :-o
    • It was one of my buddies who got the the credit for the pretty graphic, and we folks around here are proud of him. the original graphic is wallpaper size at 1024x768, available via the original page at http://anthony.liekens.net/huygens_static.html

      He's actually south of Boston, but it's close enough for the other side of the pond.

    • Terragen is awesome software, and amazingly the developers have kept the cost reasonable

      What ?!?!? C-c-c-c-cost ?!?!? You mean these evil greedy soul-sucking bastards actually charge money for using their program ? Shame on them ! Do they not know that the Prophets [ryerson.ca] have said : "Thou shalt not write or use proprietary software, for it is unclean unto you" ? The wrath of the almighty Root be upon them ! They shall be cursed with all their descendents to the seventh generation !

      And you, despicable sinner, w

  • Faster == better ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RWerp ( 798951 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:05PM (#11413177)
    From the article:
    Liekens does caution that not all of the pictures will be scientifically reliable, something that ESA and NASA obviously have to take care over.

    "We're impressed with their ability and enthusiasm, and looked at their images with great interest," says Bashar Rizk, part of the Huygens imaging team from the University of Arizona, Tucson.
    A key paragraph. Does fater always means better? Before we jump on the NASA/ESA bashing bandwagon, we should remember that both are renowned scientific institutions that gain reputation not by doing everything as fast as possible, but as accurately and precisely as possible.

  • Land Ho! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by StefanJ ( 88986 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:05PM (#11413179) Homepage Journal
    Of all these pieces, I like Christian Waldvogel landscape the best:

    http://www.lupomesky.cz/mirror/aliekens-titan/ti ta n_panorama_colored.jpg

    It's very evocative. Here's this probe from one world, landing on another, and what does it see?

    A shoreline!

    What a wonderful throwback to the age of exploration here on earth.

    Stefan

  • Karma Whoring.... with pictures! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bob-o-Matic! ( 620698 ) <robert,peters&gmail,com> on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:06PM (#11413189) Homepage
    Much larger images than on the nature.com page:

    http://anthony.liekens.net/huygens_static.html/ [liekens.net]

    Enjoy!
  • While space programs, universities, astronomy facilities and so on struggle to get serious funding, what seems obvious is that there is a huge massive of people enthusiastic enough to pitch in for free.

    Another poster has already mentioned the quality control dangers in this 'free for all' approach, but so long as the tools and processes used are documented, experts can check things out after the fact, and the early "rushes" can always be corrected if QA does slip.

    All in all there is surely plenty of scope

    • Re:Open source space program, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by brian.glanz ( 849625 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:19PM (#11413352) Homepage Journal

      'Distributed contributions' are turning many industries on their heads; think of music and more lately the creep into entertainment at large, for example, Napster on.

      Science, even space science, has not been exempt from these sweeping changes even as those guarding the capitalistic infrastructure are, frankly, more intelligent and capable than those guarding 'entertainment' have been. It ought not to be that I need pay US$thousands to simply read scientific articles in the Journal of _______. The Internet exists because scientists pushed ahead (in the military's wake) in the name of information sharing. In protecting their overpaid publishers' investors, fat Universities and other players minting on controlled access to knowledge, the scientists have to some extent let us all down.

      I'd very well expect more significant contributions from 'amateurs' and including the crowd here, were the general quest for knowledge less constrained by capitalism. We have all the tools at our fingertips, literally, to undo more of the corporatism we can refer to roughly as 'closed source'. It's up to the real players though, the scientists themselves, to do as they have done here. Way to go, ESA. Viva la revolucion.

      BG

  • Coolest thing is overview poster (Score:5, Informative)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) * on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:06PM (#11413194)
    The coolest thing I have seen from the great site gathering these open images (link in article) is a poster combinging and tying together all of the pictures seen so far here [mac.com].

    It's 2MB and I wouldn't nromally link to something that big on Slashdot, but it's very cool and held in a .Mac account so it will hold up to load (I just hope it's not locked).

    It shows a picture of Titan, and the square from that that represents a blow-up of a small section, then links a part of that to the aerial view displaying the "rivers", then from that to the side view from above showing the shore, then shows in there where the landing site is and the picture from that.

    Enjoy!

  • Pretty pictures (Score:2, Insightful)

    by imsabbel ( 611519 )
    If we only wanted pretty pictures, nobody would have need to sends a probe. you could have paid an illustrator.
    Terragen renders hightfields with fractal detail algorithms and textures them algorthmical.

    So they somewhow photoshoped a more or less high field out of the raw and rendered it with some "grey rocks" or so texture setting, because the standart white snow peaks isnt fitting...

    I certainly dont mind science taking its time. This thing was lauchned YEARS ago. one week or two more for correct, final i

    • Re:Pretty pictures (Score:4, Informative)

      by dark_requiem ( 806308 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:30PM (#11413474)
      If you read anything to do with these pictures, you'd know (because it's plastered all over the article) that the creators of these pictures have stated repeatedly that they aren't intended to be viewed as scientifically accurate, but rather a preliminary look at the surface of Titan, with inaccurate colors. No one is trying to pass this off as final processed images, and no one is claiming that these guys did as good or better than what the space agencies will produce. The idea is to get a first look at processed images, as a preview of what is to come. These aren't illustrations, they're based on the actual raw image data. Further, they didn't use Photoshop, they used Terragen. They didn't apply any new textures, they applied false colors, and STATED that the colors were innacurate. The terrain is based on the raw image data, and while it is likely not 100% accurate, it is approximate. I also am excited to see the final processed images, but you need to get your information straight before you bash the work of talented amateurs.
    • Yeah, there are some pictures on that page that are partly artwork because they took the creative liberty to fill in gaps.

      But there are other images on that page that are just like what NASA and the ESA will do, which is going through the trouble to stitch together all the raw images, and leave blanks where there is no info. They did a great job of compiling the raw info and sharing with everyone to see.

      Writing off all their work as "quick crap" is pretty lame.
  • "Liekens does caution that not all of the pictures will be scientifically reliable, something that ESA and NASA obviously have to take care over."
  • Most of the scientists at ESA and NASA involved with the mission were probably spending most of that same time just remembering that they could breath again. (That, or toasting the success.) And since they weren't exactly racing to get the images out, saying that they were "beat" is perhaps a bit misleading.

    It's also worth remembering that the science teams are almost certainly sitting on quite a bit more data, so when their pictures get released, I'm sure that there will be plenty more to "oooh" and "ah
  • ...but bear in mind that if NASA and ESA hadn't sent this probe there, there would not have been any raw data to process.

    Thumbs up to the folks doing the processing, and thumbs up to Terragen for the great software, but big, big points to the folks who SEND THE PROBE. :-)

  • "Well, we could have beaten them, except for that darn 15 day delay due to concerns over the FCC.

    "I mean, what if those images captured life on Titan, and they were right in the middle of a 'wardrobe malfunction' or something?

    "I guess maybe in some ways we are still proud to be your father's space agency."

  • No waves? No ripples? No surface distortion? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by popo ( 107611 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:14PM (#11413294) Homepage

    Amazing how the texture/wave pattern stays consistent right up to the land. ...almost like a bad 3D render with little or no thought put into it.

    Hmm...

  • Wha? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Leo McGarry ( 843676 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:15PM (#11413308)
    Terragen, a freeware program that converts the basic brightness data in aerial pictures into a topographical map, to generate the ground-level vista was used.

    Yoda pleased to hear this will be.

  • ...In this upcoming Mastercard commercial:

    Coffee table book on Nasa. . . . . . . . . . . $19.99

    Open source images from Titan . . . . . . . . Free w/ Terragen

    Beating Nasa to Mars with a manned mission . . Priceless

    There are some things Bill Gates has already bought, for others, there's Mastercard.

  • I hope this is a hoax (Score:5, Funny)

    by Typingsux ( 65623 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:20PM (#11413368)
    One of the pics:
    http://img118.exs.cx/img118/8690/cassinipic7sg.jpg [img118.exs.cx]

  • This word is very commonly used for hobbyists, sounds a little derogatory. Sounds a little like Immature.

    What it really means is the guy isnt getting paid, or rather, he/she has higher motivations than the weekends paycheck.

    What do you call the Amateurs who built a product that beat the flagship product of the worlds richest corporation?

    • Re:Amateurs? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dark_requiem ( 806308 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @07:04PM (#11413805)
      These guys are amateurs. They admit that they're not trying to compete for scientific accuracy with the major space organizations, and that they have taken creative licence with the coloring of these images, and that the details may be inaccurate. If they were trying to do a professional job of processing these images, with an emphasis on accuracy, then they would be doing a professional job, and you would refer to them as professionals. Since they are taking creative licence with the images, and admit to the distinct possiblity of inaccuracies, they are considered amateurs.

  • When you work unreal hours... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:31PM (#11413479)
    When you're willing to work all night through because of your love for hacking, you'll likely beat those who treat this as a daytime job -- and have a life otherwise.
    • Except these people don't. From this [esa.int] page:

      While Huygens rests frozen at -180 degrees Celsius on Titan's landscape, a symbolic finale to the engineering and flight phase of this historic mission, scientists have taken little time off to eat or sleep.
      They have been processing, examining and analysing data, and sometimes even dreaming about it when they sleep. There's enough data to keep Huygens scientists busy for months and even years to come.
  • So how long till a Titan MMORPG is released?

    Maybe something a little like Dune or Command and Conquer as well, to send spaceships and start harvesting spice (or something).

    Given it has oceans and hills, rendering it all into something like the Giants citizen kabuto engine would be perfect and beautiful.... if they can optimize the engine just a little bit.

  • goofs (Score:3, Insightful)

    by KDN ( 3283 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @06:36PM (#11413535)
    If am amauteur goofs and gets the wrong color, or maybe points out something that is really noise, no one is going to really notice. If NASA goofs, on the other hand, everyone notices. Besides, the NASA people were also probably trying to find signs of fluid motion and stuff, the amauteur's were going for "cool" views.
    But I must say to the amauteurs, GO FOR IT :-).
  • I want to reiterate/emphasize an earlier comment...

    This data requires calibration to transform it to usable data. Sure these look nice, but what are the *real* colors/greyscale/temperature/etc. that these images depict?

    That said, I look at a lot of uncalibrated imagery and it's often fine to the naked eye. Since that's really the only use for these particular images, it's nice that they're out. Just do not mistake this for real scientific data -- or even accurate imagery -- at best it's a reasonable ap
  • Titan looks quite a bit like Morrowind. Now all we need are swords and bioengineered elves and we're ready to go.
  • Who gets the pictures out first or more accurately is important, certainly. But . . . look at what these images (regardless of their accuracy) can do. Granted, I doubt there's an idyllic seaside vista waiting on Titan for human visitors. The mere thought that there may be earth-like features on some distant planetary body is exciting enough IMHO to spark a greater interest in space travel.

    Of course, I'd be even more excited if a trusted authority (such as NASA) were to release trustworthy images such as

  • Fish? (Score:2)

    by io333 ( 574963 )
    Has anyone noticed that in the animated GIF, there's something swimming around in the ethane current that the lander fell in?
    • There's also a few things walking along across the ice boulders. Does anyone know what the time lag is between frames? I'd like to know how fast they walk.
    • Here [asu.edu] is a link in case you can't find it on the page. If you save it on your desktop, you can run it in "Windows Picture & Fax Viewer" and zoom in on various parts while the animation is running.

  • All of the pictures (Score:4, Informative)

    by scatter_gather ( 649698 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @07:05PM (#11413813)
    Here are all of the processed pictures [sandiegoho...prices.com] from the leikens site, without bothering to properly mirror the site. They don't allow deep linking, so here you can play with just the images. For proper credits see the liekens site [liekens.net].

  • This no surprise, amateurs can do exciting things. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by syousef ( 465911 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @07:12PM (#11413862) Journal
    The NASA scientists would be fools to release these images in a raw format as soon as they're available and then try to beat amateurs, who aren't responsible for the rest of the mission. Once the information is obtained years can be spent analysing it. In other words, when the mission is in progress the teams are focused on the mission, not post mission analysis.

    All these guys did was use software to make 3d models of the terrain and then pictures from those models. If you want to try something really fun, and have a mathematical inclination and a lot of time on your hands try downloading pictures from hubble, or from one of the large radio telescopes and doing some data reduction. The software's freely available on the web and runs on Linux. To get anything meaningful from the data you'll have to spend a lot of time learning about the data, instruments used to capture it, and the astro sources you're looking at though.

    This is the sort of thing that should be encouraged in highschools and unis around the planet.

  • Not just a "chat room" (Score:5, Informative)

    by QuantumFTL ( 197300 ) * on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @07:53PM (#11414274)
    It is very cool to see that this has been written up in Nature, however I'm a bit disparaged by the fact that the chat room that is mentioned here is not mentioned by name.

    If you would like to meet some of the folks who do this sort of thing, you should stop by #space on irc.freenode.net. #space is an unofficial channel for discussion of space-related science, exploration, and events.

    I've been around the channel since it split from #maestro, (a community of space enthusiasts who use the NASA Maestro program) and it is an exciting place to hang out during a space event.

    I would also like to note that I presented the Huygens imagery last friday afternoon to 100+ community members at Cornell University. Despite the fact that Cornell has many scientists on the Cassini mission, the #space channel was by far the fastest way to get the newly released data. If it was out on the net to be found - someone in there would find it.

    If you're interested in space it's a great place to go to answer questions or just to chat (flame wars about policy are kept in #space_politics :)). If you happen to drop by, I go by JPL-Justin in channel - say hello!

    Cheers,
    Justin Wick

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