November 23, 2004
titan's good side
A big thanks to Alfons, who pointed out the new Titan photo-mosaic. This beautiful mosaic was created from a series of photographs taken during Cassini's flyby of Titan nearly a month ago.
I've scaled the image down some but I encourage you to check out the high-resolution Titan image (537.1 kB) available over at NASA's Planetary Photojournal. It's just amazing.
Mission scientists are still puzzled by the sharply defined bright and dark regions. It's clear from the lack of cratering that the surface is geologically young but what caused those divisions or what features they even are is still up in the air. With several weeks to analyze the images, scientists are still calling them "extraordinary" and "alien".
I'm sure we'll all learn a lot more about Titan when the ESA's Huygens probe descends through the thick atmosphere in January 2005. I can't wait.
In case anyone was wondering, yes, I'm still following those two amazing Mars rovers. Just a quick update for those of you who care.
Spirit's driving slowly up the Columbia Hills at Gusev Crater, trying to be very frugal with batteries which don't get a lot of solar charging during the Martian winter and spring. Terrain is rough in the area so things are pretty slow.
Opportunity is charging back up and (soon) out of Endurance Crater where she weathered the Martian winter. This side of the crater puts her solar panels at a choice angle to the sun so batteries are doing well and Opportunity is taking a lot of great photographs and doing other data collection.
Maybe during the slowdown this winter, with the Firefox pressure cooker behind us, I'll have a little more energy for updates on the rovers, Cassini, and several other very interesting missions underway or in planning.
Posted by asa at November 23, 2004 11:01 PM
Ack, those contiguous images sure get messed up when displayed in feedhouse.mozilla.org
Posted by: pepp5 on November 24, 2004 12:09 AMThat's a really nice effect with the chopped up images, there. How do you achieve it? Please tell me there's an automated tool, I'd hate to think you're that OCD. :P
Posted by: nentuaby on November 24, 2004 12:54 AMnentuaby, you slice up the image into smaller sections, each with a differing width and then use css to float them one after the other.the Text just wraps round then. :)
"with the Firefox pressure cooker behind us"
The story has been mentioned already but it;s nice to see the BBC notice it >> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4037833.stm
The dark areas are intriguing, maybe just because it reminds us of earth. With seemingly two different compositions. Can't wait to find out what it is.
Posted by: Paul on November 24, 2004 05:15 AMWhat I find fascinating is that scientists really don't know (yet) _what_ they see in this picture. Even the radar measurements are not understood yet - They don't know what kind of surfaces reflected / absorbed the radar signals.
Posted by: alfons on November 24, 2004 09:53 AMInstead of chopping up the image, you might do it something like this (the opacity-thingys should be removed and instead the image should have a transparent background):
[p]
[div style="position:relative;"]
[img src="http://www.piercedotzler.com/asa/astro/moon-sm.jpg" width=500 height=420 border=0 alt=""
style="position:absolute;left:0px;left:expression(-400);top:0;opacity:0.5;filter:alpha(opacity=50);"]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:400px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:422px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:430px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:440px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:446px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:450px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:452px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:453px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:452px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:450px;height:40px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:446px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:440px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:430px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:422px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:410px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:400px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:370px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:340px;height:20px;"][/div]
[div style="float:left;clear:left;width:300px;height:20px;"][/div]
[/div]
Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla Mars bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla
[p]Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla Firefox bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla
[p]Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla NASA bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla
[p]Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla Mozilla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla :)
Lauritz, that's a great suggestion! I'll try that one next time. Slicing the image is easy with Photoshop, but with your solution, my image is still usable to people who want to copy it. Then again, maybe the slicing is a simple DRM mechanism ;-)
--Asa
Posted by: Asa Dotzler on November 24, 2004 03:24 PM