Celestia Forums

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0 ... vesta.html
Now we have some decent images of Ceres and Vesta and I guess we can have soon some kind of low resolution map.The level of details seen here are not very different to the early images of Janus,Epimetheus,Promotheus and Hyperion as seen from Voyager.So I think will be possible to have a 0,5 k or even a 1k map of both asteroids.
Now I??m sad that soon we will lose all this,because NGST will only release false color images,since it will only work in the infrared.NASA should be thinking about a REAL substitute of Hubble...

danielj wrote:...NASA should be thinking about a REAL substitute of Hubble...

...And that's the problem with the public in general in regards to these things. They're only pleased by the pretty pictures, and have little or no understanding of what value other scientific data is.

...John...

Here the images are a bit more large:

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/ent ... r2007027a/

expecially the last .JPG.

danielj wrote:Now I??m sad that soon we will lose all this,because NGST will only release false color images,since it will only work in the infrared.

Daniel,

as usual you are looking at these matters essentially from your own "egoistic" point of view. The purpose of science and thus for spending such a lot of money is certainly NOT to send home pretty looking pictures (in visual light)! The scientific content of these is often not terribly great. That material is to a significant extent for popular science journals and WEB pages

Note that a shabby looking image in false colors, taken at some "odd" wavelength may well revolutionarise our views about the Universe. That's what we are after!

In many ways, astronomy in visible light has been largely exploited.

For example, we all know that infrared light can penetrate much better through the extended dust regimes near the center of our galaxy due to it's longer wavelength. It's due to the wave nature of light that longer wavelength light can literally "creep around" the dust grains, while shorter wavelengths are blocked by them!

So ONLY with infrared light we will ever have a chance of watching the incredible action near the central black hole in the MilkyWay. That's what we want to learn about!

Etc...

Bye Fridger

A very humble personal suggest for the textures: a color mix of Mars, Mercury and Triton, without craters (there will be surely, but where?)...

They are DIFFERENT things.NGST is the sucessor of Spitzer or SIRTF.It doesn??t have to do ONLY with beautiful images.Some information is only possible in visible wavelenght.Studying specially the solar system in infrared is not the ideal condition.If so,we would have lots of images of Solar System objects by Spitzer and we don??t have...
And what about Ceres and Vesta?We now have several images of the asteroids.Don??t you think we can create a map based on these.Or will we have to wait until NASA release a map of these asteroids,like it did with Wild2,Phoebe and others,for example?Remember that Ceres is round,so creating a texture for it is not very difficult.
About the color;it seems that the 2 asteroids are beige or maroon.Don??t you agree or the image was under filters?

t00fri wrote:

danielj wrote:Now I??m sad that soon we will lose all this,because NGST will only release false color images,since it will only work in the infrared.

Daniel,

as usual you are looking at these matters essentially from your own "egoistic" point of view. The purpose of science and thus for spending such a lot of money is certainly NOT to send home pretty looking pictures! The scientific content of these is often not terribly great. That material is often mainly for popular science journals and WEB pages

Note that a shabby looking image in false colors, taken at some "odd" wavelength may well revolutionarise our views about the Universe. That's what we are after!

In many ways, astronomy in visible light has been largely exploited.

For example, we all know that infrared ligt can penetrate much better through the extended dust regimes near the center of our galaxy due to it's longer wavelength. So ONLY with infrared light we will ever have a chance of watching the incredible action near the central black hole in the MilkyWay. That's what we want to learn about!

Etc...

Bye Fridger

Fenerit wrote:A very humble personal suggest for the textures: a color mix of Mars, Mercury and Triton, without craters (there will be surely, but where?)...

Can you explain that suggestion a bit better?

A patchwork colors of those planets. From the images Ceres seem in part "reddish" as Mars, "brownish" as Mercury an a bit white and bluish as Triton.

danielj wrote:Some information is only possible in visible wavelenght.

Yes, but most of what is both feasible AND important is already available in visible light.

Studying specially the solar system in infrared is not the ideal condition.If so,we would have lots of images of Solar System objects by Spitzer and we don??t have...

Daniel,

this statement of yours is again plain wrong. Spitzer specializes on other IR imaging projects than what is needed in the Solar system. This 85cm diameter IR space telescope has considerable geometrical pointing constraints, for example.

But let me just quote a few very important infrared imaging examples from the Cassini mission

(http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/)

1) Saturn in infrared (+ false color), tells us about the heat radiation from the various different areas of Saturn



2) Here is Saturns surprising "North Polar Hexagon" discovery and Aurora by means of infrared imaging



3) Saturns silhouetted clouds in infrared light


4) Enceladus' spectacular plumes in infrared light


5) and last not least the geat amount of knowledge we got only in (near) infrared about the solar system's most tantalizing moon: TITAN!



In visible light we just see a dull haze ball!

Any further examples required to remind you of the importance of infrared imaging for solar system space exploration??

++++++++++++++++++++++++
I have specially selected examples of IMPORTANT scientific DISCOVERIES, where infrared light was instrumental or even crucial!
++++++++++++++++++++++++

Bye Fridger

Look to my try:
I mixed the asteroid.jpg with mars.jpg and mercury.jpg and then tried to correct the color,specially to the blue side.Look to the result:

http://img409.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... resmq3.jpg

Here I mixed the asteroid.jpg to triton.jpg and mars.jpg.Just ignored mercury.jpg...
But this is sligthly better:
http://img413.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... resma9.jpg

A new try,with the ice spot:
http://img207.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... oolwq8.jpg
Is it too large?

With a smaller ice spot:
http://img207.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... potex2.jpg

You can edit your post, you know...

All of them look a bit dark to me, by the way.

It is becoming very interesting.I brighten the texture and defocused the image,almost erasing the cues of the original textures triton.jpg and mars.jpg and the result was nearer the image of the Hubble:
http://img118.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... resdq5.jpg
But I don??t know if the ice spot is in the right place and don??t know if is it too orange...

Maybe I should change to the Celestia Textures section?