What is Digg?97 Comments
- crackah, on 05/26/2008, -0/+17The images are all low quality and B&W so they can send the over faster for people to see ASAP!
HD images will come. - guytoronto, on 05/26/2008, -1/+18Where are the Transformers?
- scaaven2, on 05/26/2008, -6/+21this was last night, not LIVE BREAKING
- Devroush, on 05/26/2008, -0/+15Images are clear and sharp, nice! Site won't survive Digg though.
- bluffcityjk, on 05/26/2008, -1/+14Did it happen to occur to any of you idiots that the primary purpose of this mission is to test the soil for possible bacterial life, not to provide you sophomoric simps with cool wallpaper images.
- Farik, on 05/26/2008, -0/+12Flash image loader wasn't working well for me.
http://i30.tinypic.com/fenlnt.jpg
http://i32.tinypic.com/2l8g6x1.jpg
http://i26.tinypic.com/29z7fj5.jpg
http://i25.tinypic.com/104s4ex.jpg
http://i30.tinypic.com/2uyhcw6.jpg
http://i31.tinypic.com/21joetd.jpg
http://i32.tinypic.com/mcun2r.jpg
http://i26.tinypic.com/2j1wyzs.jpg - Tunguska, on 05/26/2008, -14/+26Rofl black and white.
- Harrison88, on 05/26/2008, -0/+11Probably to do with the amount of bandwidth they can transfer.
- godzillaWax, on 05/26/2008, -0/+8If I remember correctly, the rover has a relatively narrow window of opportunity to communicate with the orbiters during any given day. So if that's the case, better to transmit more b&w photos than fewer color ones.
- MetalLizard, on 05/26/2008, -2/+10Can someone with knowledge in this area explain to me why they don't attach HD cameras to these rovers? Why do we only get B&W photographs? Is it about transmission time?
- midbc, on 05/26/2008, -0/+6more data and it takes longer to send in color
- Schmich, on 05/26/2008, -1/+7You mean $520 million? I frankly think it's cheap. Do you have any idea how much the US spends overseas per day due to the war?
- pinchduck, on 05/26/2008, -0/+6"The Canadian Space Agency will deliver a meteorological station"
It would be cool as hell if you could get the Martian forecast from terrestrial weather sites like weatherundground.com or the Weather Channel. - 4t0mik, on 05/26/2008, -0/+6I actually see something in all the "pano" pics. Looks to appear in the same spot on the landscape...and not on the camera.
http://cid-72d01bd0d8702bb6.skydrive.live.com/brow ...
Here is the source file I got it from.
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_4 ...
Top right on this picture.. - flashback99, on 05/26/2008, -1/+6They designed and launched a robot from the moving planet you live on, it travelled for between 36 to 250 million miles and landed on another moving planet that it barely visible, without hitting anything. It then landed without crashing. All of this was designed by people. And here you are complaining about B/W photos which you dont even have the equipment to analyse.
Thats where the million dollars comes from. - flashback99, on 05/26/2008, -0/+5They designed and launched a robot from the moving planet you live on, it travelled for between 36 to 250 million miles and landed on another moving planet that is barely visible, without hitting anything. It then landed without crashing. All of this was designed by people. And here you are complaining about B/W photos which you dont even have the equipment to analyse.
Thats where the million dollars comes from. - trav1970, on 05/26/2008, -0/+5Re: all the "NoHDTV/Color pix" comments..
Phoenix has no ability to talk directly with Earth - it saved the weight/cost of a big movable directional dish & uses a small low power UHF arial that can only talk to satellites (MRO/MGS/Mars Express) when they fly over. Communication windows only happen twice a day. It only had a few minutes time to send data immediately after landing, so its just a few pictures, no movies yet. It makes color pictures by taking lots of images with different filters in front of the camera, the color pix are calculated & done back at NASA. Once landed, it never moves, so HDTV would be a bit boring.. The 1 megapixel cam dates back from the project from which it was salvaged, Mars Polar Lander. Space-radiation-hardened super-sensitive large-CCD camera systems tend to look "out-of-date" compared to consumer specs - they are completely different, no comparison.
The white mark in the picture could be the parachute/shell, or even a cosmic ray strike - you will see these all over raw images from Cassini, etc.. Or of course it could be ALIENZ!!!1!!!
It also needs time to "relax" & charge its depleted batteries from the solar panels. Viking had nuclear batteries & large comms dish for direct to earth transmission - and also cost around 10 times the price in todays money.. - riskySalmon, on 05/26/2008, -1/+6Black and white pictures too :P
- EmileVictor, on 05/26/2008, -0/+5OK, I'd love to see a video of the landing from some form of embedded camera too, but lets consider the logistics here.
This machine is made with a scientific purpose in mind. Transmitting unnecessary information to or from it wastes precious hours when it could be doing work.
If they were able to get throughput capable of sending the video I'm sure they would be doing so right now.
It would be nice though, if it collected that video data on an internal form of storage and transmitted it when it both had the available power and was not in use. - eir574, on 05/26/2008, -0/+4Where did anyone say you don't have the right to an opinion? People might not like your opinion or think it has much value, but that's their right as well.
- littleBear84, on 05/26/2008, -0/+4I think the project logo looks like the Firefox logo, except in place of the 'Firefox' there's a phoenix.
- pukiman, on 05/26/2008, -1/+5At least it's not colored in red by Photoshop this time.
- Schmich, on 05/26/2008, -0/+4Does anyone know the reasoning behind having black and white?
- inactive, on 05/26/2008, -0/+4We will be getting color photos later, but right now they need all of the available transmission time to transmit data so they can know the status of all the sensors and whatnot. They need to basically run diagnostics and make sure everything is in working order.
- untitlednet, on 05/26/2008, -0/+4Hrmm.. That logo on their site looks awfully familiar.
- inactive, on 05/26/2008, -0/+3You should probably read up on how color images are processed by NASA.
It is a color camera, the final image we see haven't been colorized by all the data. - AboveandBeyond, on 05/26/2008, -1/+4I blame comcast
- defectDS, on 05/26/2008, -0/+31) Phoenix is a Lander, not a rover. It does not move. Whatever video it takes will be the same 360º around as would the images they are currently compiling.
2) The phoenix was meant for researching the surface and what lies below it. We already know what mars looks like through Exploration and Pathfinder, so really this camera really isn't even necessary beyond the use that everything on the lander is OK.
3) They'll be color soon once the color data comes in. In case you haven't noticed, mars is anywhere from 36,000,000 to 250,000,000 miles away. What do you expect? H.264?
If you really need color now, open up Photoshop and apply some red adjustment filters because there really isn't much else at all. - StandardsDT, on 05/26/2008, -2/+5Well what else did you expect? Buildings, People, Oceans, Cars, Snow, and more? My god people have no common sense now a days.
- readerz, on 05/26/2008, -0/+2The very last picture something standing in the distance! EOM
- MyBabeAbe, on 05/26/2008, -0/+2It's even funnier because the original name of firefox was phoenix
- Dush, on 05/26/2008, -0/+2Hopefully the Decepticons will leave this one alone.
- flashback99, on 05/26/2008, -0/+2So, remind me, what was it exactly you were looking for?
- secrity, on 05/26/2008, -0/+2The images from these probes are always sent using a single channel. Filter packs and different sensors are used to create any number of different sorts of images; one type of image that can be created are visible light color photographs. From what I have seen of the images form prior probes, there aren't many interesting colors on the Martian surface anyway.
- secrity, on 05/26/2008, -0/+2These pictures are useful for what they were intended. They needed images as quickly as possible to evaluate the condition of the spacecraft; which meant low bandwidth images.
- expert01, on 05/26/2008, -0/+2H.264?
- readerz, on 05/26/2008, -0/+1I was thinking the same thing but could be wrong.
- secrity, on 05/26/2008, -0/+1Do you know what sort of imaging equipment they have on this probe and how the images are produced?
- robeph, on 05/27/2008, -0/+1Bandwidth restrictions my dear lad, bandwidth restrictions...no broadband in space...
- defectDS, on 05/26/2008, -1/+21) Phoenix is a Lander, not a rover. It does not move. Whatever video it takes will be the same 360º around as would the images they are currently compiling.
2) The phoenix was meant for researching the surface and what lies below it. We already know what mars looks like through Exploration and Pathfinder, so really this camera really isn't even necessary beyond the use that everything on the lander is OK.
3) WHY ARE ALL OF THE COMMENTS THE SAME QUESTION!? - Krev, on 05/26/2008, -0/+1I wonder if that's an artifact from stiching images together, or if it's something that's actually on the martian surface? If it's reflective, it might be debris from the jettisonned booster?
- paralentor, on 06/02/2008, -0/+1So let me get this straight the 1976 Viking 1 lander had color photo transmissions
but the 2008 Phoenix does not?! Are the people at NASA in a quandary about how
to artificially colorize it. Don't want the public to see the blue sky?
Don't want the public to ever perceive even for an instant that Mars is quite similar to
Earths deserts. - punkcat, on 05/26/2008, -1/+2the reason for the black and white now is speed. (the more information you send the longer it takes.)
it could have landed badly and its best to get some kind of a quick report vs. nothing.
now that its set up properly the color ones should be coming through. - GuyHersh, on 05/26/2008, -0/+1That made me chuckle, I don't know who dugg you down, but I dugg you back up.
- jgreene777, on 05/26/2008, -0/+1and the aliens are hidden by the big missing chunks...
- robeph, on 05/27/2008, -0/+1again, it's BANDWIDTH LIMITATIONS. it's already slow as hell...color would make it so much more.
- dmkirt, on 05/26/2008, -0/+1Rocks... and more rocks! Whose collection is this anyways?!
Seriously - Very Awesome!
However, I was expecting to see a ski resort! -
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