Full Res 4K Pioneer Jupiter texture, mapping a lost world
Posted: 29.05.2024, 12:50
PART 1
A month ago an idea popped into my head. I was unable to go to sleep so I decided to test it, mapping Jupiter as it appeared during Pioneer. This was going to be a challenge! Only a couple attempts have been done prior to map Pioneer images of Jupiter and they were low resolution 1K maps. I however had a gut feeling 4K was feasible. The existing maps were a mess with latitude variations in the bands and much of the planet just unmapped.
First thing I did was start hunting for anything on the web of these images. Eventually I came across 3 places to find these images.
http://www.astrosurf.com/nunes/explor_p10_11.html
https://www.planetary.org/space-images/poster_stryk_lpsc_pioneer
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://astrosurf.com/nunes/explor/pioneer/*
Next up was to figure out what images were usable and where the images were in relation to each other. This was going to be hard considering the spacecraft took pictures via line by line as the spacecraft rotated and three things affected this, the movement of the spacecraft, the rotation of Jupiter, and the changing clouds of Jupiter.
Amid the project, I also found some incorrect info on where the images were. For example, image A5 is incorrectly labeled by the Planetary Society as A4 and being near the GRS but this is found to not be the case. A4 was garbled by radiation, and the GRS is near antipodal to it. https://www.planetary.org/space-images/jupiter-closeup-from-pioneer-10
A month ago an idea popped into my head. I was unable to go to sleep so I decided to test it, mapping Jupiter as it appeared during Pioneer. This was going to be a challenge! Only a couple attempts have been done prior to map Pioneer images of Jupiter and they were low resolution 1K maps. I however had a gut feeling 4K was feasible. The existing maps were a mess with latitude variations in the bands and much of the planet just unmapped.
First thing I did was start hunting for anything on the web of these images. Eventually I came across 3 places to find these images.
http://www.astrosurf.com/nunes/explor_p10_11.html
https://www.planetary.org/space-images/poster_stryk_lpsc_pioneer
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://astrosurf.com/nunes/explor/pioneer/*
Next up was to figure out what images were usable and where the images were in relation to each other. This was going to be hard considering the spacecraft took pictures via line by line as the spacecraft rotated and three things affected this, the movement of the spacecraft, the rotation of Jupiter, and the changing clouds of Jupiter.
Amid the project, I also found some incorrect info on where the images were. For example, image A5 is incorrectly labeled by the Planetary Society as A4 and being near the GRS but this is found to not be the case. A4 was garbled by radiation, and the GRS is near antipodal to it. https://www.planetary.org/space-images/jupiter-closeup-from-pioneer-10