Cassini to image the Earth tonight

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/waveatsaturn/timezones/

by rowanseymour • 13 years ago

102 35 13 years ago

saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

joeyrobert• 13 years ago

Everyone SMILE! Say cheese!

tehwalrus2• 13 years ago

which way is saturn at the moment? if it's only imaging for 15 mins, it surely can't see all of us!

jsmcgd• 13 years ago

I just tried to work that out using a basic app on my phone. My 'calculations' say that Saturn will be to the north east of the moon if you're in the UK? I spent about 3 seconds on this. Can anyone confirm/correct this?

Edit: by north east I mean if you imagine that the moon is on the centre of the map and you look up and to the right from it.

Edit 2: Looks like Saturn will be in the bottom of the constellation Virgo.

tehwalrus2• 13 years ago

ah, so I will be in the field of view, if still too small for the horizontal resolution? cool! thanks :)

StavrosK2• 13 years ago

Isn't Cassini near Saturn? How is it going to image the Earth? Why are we waving?

JonnieCache• 13 years ago

How is it going to image the Earth?

The sun is being blocked by saturn itself, so the earth will be visible to the camera. The real purpose is to image the rings. Actual info is here: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/waveatsaturn/

Why are we waving?

To ensure NASA's continued funding/for a bit of innocent amusement. Take your pick.

StavrosK2• 13 years ago

Right, so it's going to be far from the street-level imaging Google does, as I suspected.

rowanseymour• 13 years ago

I think the idea is to recreate something like the famous Pale Blue Dot [1] image taken by Voyager 1. Here's a thought from Carl Sagan about that:

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot

Achshar• 13 years ago

A bummer, saturn is currently visible here, but will be on the other side of the planet when the time comes.

nhoss2• 13 years ago

I love the romance of this. Even though the earth is only going to be a few pixels, the frame will contain a snapshot of the entire human race.

TravisLS• 13 years ago

That's one of my favorite things about the famous Earthrise photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise

The frame contains every living human, and every human who has ever lived - except for three of them.

terabytest• 13 years ago

That's such an overwhelming thought.

ceejayoz• 13 years ago

Well, assuming the lost cosmonauts conspiracy theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cosmonauts) is wrong.

sadkingbilly• 13 years ago

every human who has ever lived

How is that, exactly? Doesn't the picture only contain the light captured at that moment?

biot2• 13 years ago

Assuming perfect accuracy, how many people would it take aiming standard laser pointers at Cassini during the imaging to noticeably impact the resulting image?

wikwocket• 13 years ago

Based on XKCD's research (http://what-if.xkcd.com/13/), I am guessing the short version of the answer is, "More than we have."

biot2• 13 years ago

That's hilarious. However, my question involves impacting the optical imaging system of Cassini which is many, many orders of magnitude easier than overcoming direct illumination from the Sun. The real issue is the matter of beam dispersion rather than having insufficient power, as an astronaut 10 meters away could easily blind Cassini's optical imaging system using a laser pointer.

cdevroe• 13 years ago

I will be waving. Cuz I'm a dork. But I will actually be waving.

Come to think of it. I might even throw a waving party of some sort. Hold up a sign, have some beer, play some The Blue Danube via Spotify over Airplay.

fnordfnordfnord• 13 years ago

Shine a spotlight in the direction of Saturn, or build a fire. I wonder how much light you'd need to emit to have a noticeable effect? The Narrow Angle Camera is 1024x1024 I think[1], I have no idea what integration time, so my first guess is that we need to get a major city to riot/burn, or start a forest fire. Hmm, on second thought, maybe I'd better just have a beer and wave like cdevroe.

[1] Based on the properties of this image http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGFullS...

duskwuff• 13 years ago

Not quite the same question, but related - XKCD did a "What If" on whether, if everyone on Earth shone a laser at the Moon, it'd be visible. (TL;DR: No.)

http://what-if.xkcd.com/13/

mturmon• 13 years ago

The team at JPL that built Cassini will be out there too. From the announcement:

"Earth will be just 1.5 pixels wide, with the illuminated part of Earth less than a pixel, so the resulting mosaic will not show any features on Earth. But it's a chance to be part of a special portrait, to contemplate what we look like from interplanetary distances, and to celebrate the longevity of our Cassini spacecraft, which has been successfully orbiting Saturn for nine years."

thehme• 13 years ago

I will be waving from WTC (NYC), so hopefully other people will too. 5:27-5:42PM ET. Space programs are awesome!

arrrg• 13 years ago

In 2006 Cassini already took a beautiful image of Saturn with the Earth visible: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap061016.html

nsxwolf• 13 years ago

I'll wave when they send a bigger camera.

lee4han• 13 years ago

Say 'Cheese', guys!

WestCoastJustin2• 13 years ago

At Saturn's enormous distance, the crescent Earth, with most of North America illuminated by the sun, will span a single pixel and will appear as a pinpoint of light in the depths of space [1, 2]. FYI - The Cassini cameras are 1-megapixel cameras, modes include 1024x1024, 512x512, and 256x256 pixels [3].

I work at an observatory and there was some internal discussion this morning about heading outside to wave. Cool idea, but I don't think you are going to be able to see yourself in the image ;)

Times for anyone in the US to head outside:

  U.S. - Hawaii-Aleutian Stand. Time  Fri 11:27 AM 	11:27 	HAST
  United States - Alaska Daylight     Fri 1:27 PM 	13:27   (24/h) 	AKDT
  U.S. - Pacific Daylight Time 	      Fri 2:27 PM 	14:27 	PDT
  U.S. - Mountain Daylight Time       Fri 3:27 PM 	15:27 	MDT
  U.S. - Central Daylight Time 	      Fri 4:27 PM 	16:27 	CDT
  U.S. - Eastern Daylight Time 	      Fri 5:27 PM 	17:27 	EDT

[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57594419/cassini-spacecr...

[2] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/2013/06/1...

[3] http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/faq/FAQRawImages/#q5

Osmium2• 13 years ago

So I've seen some gorgeous images from Cassini, but I could've sworn they're all much higher than 1 megapixel. Do you have any info for how that works?

WestCoastJustin2• 13 years ago

I would checkout the FAQ page @ http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/faq/

I am not sure how the Cassini imagery works, but for something like Hubble Space Telescope (HST), here is what a raw image [1] looks like of M51 [2]. Typically the images you see from HST of M51 [3] will be a compilation of dozens of raw images using colour filters.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/qtQdcBS.jpg

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlpool_Galaxy

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Messier51_sRGB.jpg

calebegg• 13 years ago

They mention on the page for this (beautiful!) image:

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08329

that it's a combination of 165 images taken over a period of three hours.

hartror• 13 years ago

Megapixels aren't everything not matter what the camera companies tell us.

Cassini to image the Earth tonight

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