[meteorite-list] Stardust Flyby Images of Comet Wild 2

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:32:00 2004
Message-ID: <3FFD0C20.79F1665C_at_bhil.com>

     Hi,

         I was fascinated by the first flyby image that was
     released (the one featured on APOD). Despite its generally
     fuzzy appearance, there is a lot of detail buried in there
     that I hope we'll get to see when the wizards are through
     massaging the images for detail and content.
         I took a copy of that image and squeezed it as hard as I
     could. I doubled the spacing of all the pixels and filled in
     the intermediate spaces with eight-way median values, twiddled
     with its histogram to re-distribute the greyscale values to a
     more normal distribution, then stomped all over it with a
     square sharpness filter.
         I found that is LOTS of detail there, although my
     ham-handed efforts left some messy artifacts. For example, the
     "crater-like" circular features do not have uniformly shaded
     bottoms. They're not smooth (nor flat I would guess), but
     usually show a single deep dark conoid pit that's probably a
     large primary vent for outgassing.
         The walls of these "crater-like" features show some linear
     features, as if the depressions had formed by a slump-like
     collapse, perhaps from the rapid removal of material from
     beneath the "slump" by outgassing. Lots of tantalizing
     features not quite sharp enough to interpret. I'm left with
     the impression of a surface with lots of varying contours.
     Many of the smaller high contrast features seem to be
     albedo-related, as if between light and dark materials,
     perhaps at smaller "un-slumped" vents.
         If anyone's interested, you can view this roughly enhanced
     image at:
     <http://www.bhil.com/~kelly/wild2.html>.


     Sterling K. Webb
     ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

     Ron Baalke wrote:

          I've added an animation of the Comet Wild 2 flyby
          images taken by
          Stardust to the Stardust website.
          Included is a chart from the Dust Flux Instrument
          showing
          the particle impacts on the spacecraft during the
          flyby, and
          another chart showing the spacecraft thruster
          activity:

          http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/news/status/040106.html

          You can view the animation directly from here:

          http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/images/w2_flyby1.gif

          Ron Baalke
Received on Thu 08 Jan 2004 02:52:12 AM PST