Some Info On The Photos Curiosity Takes, Stores & Transmits

In a world where we can throw gigabytes of information around in seconds, we get a bit blasé about the technical achievement it takes to get that done. Case in point: The Mars Curiosity Rover fields 17, count em, 17 cameras. For the most part these cameras store their data in "raw" or unprocessed format (I am not going to get into raw and jpeg and what is best, let's just take it on faith for the moment that raw is big, jpeg....not so much)what NASA/JPL has to deal with however is the size of Curiosity's data stream which is huge by comparison is an amazingly small 30meg per Sol. No, you are reading that right. Curiosity can stream 30 megabytes of data a DAY. (Hell, one frame off my ancient dslr in raw is bigger than that!) So you can imagine that the rover's controllers are not snapping away like a bunch of Japanese tourists on the GW bridge. Nor are they downloading everything that the rover takes either. Why? Because that 30meg a Martian day also has to carry all the other scientific data that Curiosity generates as well.

Well you must be saying, how do they know what to download or upload....depending on you point of reference (confused yet? lol) Well Curiosity does the same trick your camera does. When you look at the pictures in your camera, you are actually looking at the "thumbnail" (a low resolution representation)of each photo. The rover just sends thumbnails from which decisions are made as to what gets sent from the rover. Another trick they use is one I have harped on for years (people that have taken my photography courses have heard this one before) Megapixels are a myth, you don't need them. Yes, I have heard the arguments, more megapixels clearer better pictures. True in part, but unless you are printing wall sized pictures, you many never see the difference between 6 and 16 megs. Most people never print a picture so anything over 1 megapixel is a waste and to prove that point Curiosity's cameras for the most part are on 2 megapixels! Oh I know...sensor size and all that, but still it is vastly smaller picture which takes up little space on the rover's memory cards. But most importantly is the kind of hoops NASA/JPL controllers have to jump through each day just to get data back and forth!

You really should read this article here about the cameras and what they do. It is fascinating material. Go here for more on the Economist

Is It Time to Rename the Moon?

Here is something that always kinda puzzled me. According to a small article in Boing Boing:

• Jack Pate says: "'The Moon' is a stupid name for our moon. As a species, we should all come together and come up with something even marginally more creative. The planet Jupiter has 63 moons. None of them is named 'Moon.' This has got to be the biggest astronomical gaffe in the Universe."

I know it is a name out of antiquity, but in today's "enlightened" time when we know that other astral bodies have moons that is comes of a bit odd that the Earth is the only body in the solar system that HAS a generic name for it's own satellite.

Anyone?

Tatooine May Exsist?!

Oh you Star Wars fans are going to love this one! Remember in the earlier part of the first Star Wars movie when Luke looks up into the glare of the dual suns on Tatooine? Well it seems that the Kepler space telescope has pulled another rabbit out of the hat by finding a planetary system that for all world reminds on of planet Tatooine.

Dan pointed me towards this article that details the very strange planetary system of Kepler 47. For it seems that this system of planets orbits not one but two suns!  Plus the Kepler 47 suns  are themselves orbiting each other and do so in as little a 7.5 days!  The two planets (kepler 47b & 47c) are themselves in varying degrees of odd.  47b orbits the pair of stars in less than 50 days where 47c orbits the pair every 303 days. This would put the planet in the "habitable zone," where life could possibly exist because of liquid water.

NASA announced that Kepler-47 is 4,900 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. This discovery seems to prove that planets can for in the highly unstable space around a binary star system. Plus it goes further to show that once these planets form, they can "persist" in the system for very long periods.

Astronomers found two planets in the Kepler 47 system that orbit two stars

Of course if you were standing on the surface of the "Tatooine" planet, the stars would not look very much like those out of Star Wars. One star is about the size of our sun but is only about 85% as bright. The other is very small, in the range of 1/3 the size of Sol and putting out only 1% as much energy.

Astronomers were quick to point out that two or more stars in a system are not unusual. The question to this point was, could a planet form in such an unstable system. Now they know that they can and do form.

NASA Kepler 47 article here

artwork NASA

A DIY Space Suit?!

Here is Cameron M. Smith. Cameron wanted to fly for the Airforce, but had bad eyesight. Cameron sat his sights on the edge of space, but like the rest of the 99%ers, he could not afford the astronomical price tag. What is an inner child to do? You build your own space suit. Instead of a rocket you build a big balloon to take you to the edge of space!

Now at 50,000 feet there is very little air. Exposure here is deadly, so if you build a space-suit, it can not be some silver jumpsuit with a play helmet, but something that will keep you alive in an extremely dangerous environment.

But even so, Cameron's parts list sound a bit Rube Goldbergish. a diver’s dry suit, an aquarium pump, nylon straps, wire, PVC fittings and valves topped off by a 1980s-era soviet fighter helmet.

Cameron says that this suit is a "proof of concept" which he will test in a hypobaric chamber.

According to the Wired article:

• if all goes well it will be rebuilt with sturdier elements.

Then the next challenge is building the balloon that will take him there.

There is more, click the article title for the complete Wired article

Speculative Fiction an e-book from Amazon,

David Scholes, whom we have had on the program several times, writes with some good news:

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• I've just published a new e-book on Amazon - here's the link:
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• New E-book on Amazon Link
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• I'm also in the process of getting it published by Lulu as a paperback.
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• There are some familiar stories such as: Trath, The Intervention, Equalisation, and OdinForce plus some alternate history stories and a bunch of other stories.

Cheers  Dave

Thanks for the heads up Dave!