Posts Tagged ‘JPL’

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Published on Dec 10, 2013

When NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew past Earth on Oct. 9, 2013, it received a boost in speed of more than 8,800 mph (about 7.3 kilometer per second), which set it on course for a July 4, 2016, rendezvous with Jupiter.

One of Juno’s sensors, a special kind of camera optimized to track faint stars, also had a unique view of the Earth-moon system. The result was an intriguing, low-resolution glimpse of what our world would look like to a visitor from afar.

The cameras that took the images for the movie are located near the pointed tip of one of the spacecraft’s three solar-array arms. They are part of Juno’s Magnetic Field Investigation (MAG) and are normally used to determine the orientation of the magnetic sensors. These cameras look away from the sunlit side of the solar array, so as the spacecraft approached, the system’s four cameras pointed toward Earth. Earth and the moon came into view when Juno was about 600,000 miles (966,000 kilometers) away — about three times the Earth-moon separation.

During the flyby, timing was everything. Juno was traveling about twice as fast as a typical satellite, and the spacecraft itself was spinning at 2 rpm. To assemble a movie that wouldn’t make viewers dizzy, the star tracker had to capture a frame each time the camera was facing Earth at exactly the right instant. The frames were sent to Earth, where they were processed into video format.

The music accompaniment is an original score by Vangelis.

The full image caption for this movie is available at:http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/cata…

600,000 miles away.

Damn, no wonder it’s so small.

Adds a humbling perspective to things.

Don’t it?

Peace.

Oh dear. First my dear Doc Watson… and now Ray Bradbury, who, as you might imagine, meant a whole heck of a lot to this searching mind. I can’t really write too much at the moment, I’m sorry, it’s too emotional.

What a beautiful, sweet man. And what an inspiration he has been and will continue forever to be to so many.

I will just play these two videos in his honor.

In Memoriam: Ray Bradbury 1920-2012

Published on Jun 6, 2012 by 

A Mars rover driver pays tribute to author and visionary, Ray Bradbury.

Published on Jun 6, 2012 by 

Through the years, Ray Bradbury attended several major space mission events at JPL/Caltech.

On Nov. 12, 1971, on the eve of Mariner 9 going into orbit at Mars, Bradbury took part in a symposium at Caltech with Arthur C. Clarke, journalist Walter Sullivan, and scientists Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray. In this excerpt, Bradbury reads his poem, If Only We Had Taller Been.

Sir, be seeing you…

Peace.

I love Martian dust devils. Really. I do. Don’t know why, really… they’re just cool – in a decidedly alien sort of way. Yeah, yeah, we have plenty of them on Earth, but, well, these are on Mars. They act kind of weird. So there.

In case you have never seen any, here is a nice video of a whole bunch of them. Just 8 seconds and… Just delightful! To get the proper impact flowing through your synapses, you really should watch this in full screen. Note their size. You’ll need this spectacle lodged firmly in your head to fully dig the upcoming video.

Uploaded by on Dec 30, 2007

Dust devils on Mars sweep past the NASA rover Spirit. Movie sequence made by MERDAT. Sorry about the Chinese date tag, I am currently working on including other language capabilities in the programs image tagging function. Still image data courtesy NASA/PDS.

Okay… now that you are well-grounded in the visual coolness of dust devils on our dear Mars… get a load of this:

This next one is remarkable and quite seriously stunning.

I have never seen one this big! This ‘video’ is just a HiRISE image so we can’t see it’s true power and beauty, but after checking the video above, you will most likely get what I’m driving at here. It must be just intense to watch! Apologies in advance for the silly robovoice, maybe this tuber doesn’t have a mic.

Uploaded by on Mar 7, 2012

The Serpent Dust Devil of Mars
A towering dust devil casts a serpentine shadow over the Martian surface in this stunning, late springtime image of Amazonis Planitia.
http://www.uahirise.org/images/2012/details/cut/ESP_026051_2160-2.jpg

The length of the shadow indicates that the dust plume reaches more than 800 meters, or half a mile, in height. The tail of the plume does not trace the path of the dust devil, which had been following a steady course towards the southeast and left a bright track behind it.

The delicate arc in the plume was produced by a westerly breeze at about a 250-meter height that blew the top of the plume towards the east. The westerly winds and the draw of warmth to the south combine to guide dust devils along southeast trending paths, as indicated by the tracks of many previous dust-devils. The dust plume itself is about 30 meters in diameter.

Numerous bright tracks trend from northwest to southeast. It is interesting to see that these tracks are bright, whereas dust-devil tracks elsewhere on Mars are usually dark. Dark tracks are believed to form where bright dust is lifted from the surface by dust devils, revealing a darker substrate.
http://www.uahirise.org/images/2012/details/cut/ESP_026051_2160-1.jpg

Here in Amazonis, the dust cover is too thick to be penetrated by such scouring. A blanket of bright dust was deposited over this region recently, just before the arrival of MRO, so the surface dust here can still be moved. Perhaps the bright tracks form when the settled dust is stirred up by the strong winds generated by the dust devils (tangential wind speeds of up to 70 miles per hour have been recorded in HiRISE images of other dust devils).

It’s also interesting that this image was taken during the time of year when Mars is farthest from the Sun. Just as on Earth, Martian winds are powered by solar heating. Exposure to the sun’s rays should be at a minimum during this season, yet even now, dust devils act relentlessly to clean the surface of freshly deposited dust, a little at a time.

Written by: Paul Geissler (7 March 2012)

This is a stereo pair with ESP_025985_2160.
http://www.uahirise.org/ESP_025985_2160

– Credit HiRISE – NASA/JPL/University of Arizona –

Link – http://www.uahirise.org/ESP_026051_2160

Nice, huh?

Peace.

A sporty new video’s arrived from the boffins over at Lunar Explorer Italia − this one dealing with an interesting look at what is perhaps yet another fossil, a flat little round guy of a nice size this time, unfortunately broken. But, it’s “reconstructed” nicely… and shown to compare favorably with an Earthly organism called a Nummulite.

Nice little stream, too, or rather the remnant thereof… that looks, shall we say… recent!

Un flusso? Che cosa?

Sì, l’uomo!

Indeed, that got me going a bit more than the fossil did, as, well, there are tons of fossils. But rarely have I seen such close up, on the ground, positive indication of surface water. This is really great stuff.

Can’t you just see the water bubbling up from a spot under the Rover’s wheel… heading off down the slope… only to quickly get absorbed into the soil, all the while evaporating at the same time? Way cool, I say!

You know, having said that, the Rovers should really be giving us videos… maybe next time, as they’re so fond of saying. Yeah, right, that’ll happen.

Fantastico … godetevi lo spettacolo!

Following is the always interesting “description” that LEI attached to the video. Heady, these guys… :)

Channel Icon

What are we looking at? Will be the usual – wonderful! – Photomosaic in natural colors that shows us a piece of Mars?

No, this is more.

More.

Go and look at the EDM below …

We already know what they say and write in many :”… but what is it? E ‘a detail that you do not understand … is too small … … is undefined does not explain anything and does not prove anything. .. “.

Yes, certainly.
And you know why? Why the “people” (like the Anomaly Hunters Sunday …) wants to be surprised and, to believe, wants to see – or rather: MUST SEE! – Something big: a pyramid – or perhaps a group of Pyramids! -, An amphitheater, a Cosmodrome, a “face” that looks toward the sky or maybe a “parable” that points to nowhere …

Yes, it’s true: you try the “Big Test”, because it is “common thought” that only the “Big Test” AND ‘ “the smoking gun.”

It does not work that way.

Those seeking the “Cathedral” – and that we have already said and written until the nausea (more ours than your, believe it …) – in the end, does not want to see anything and even if he stumbles and falls on a simple but essential “Brick” … I do not see it!
Not consider.
I do not even understand.

LORD, that (in our humble but informed opinion) is the brick!

Look at him, Study him and if you’re really good, explain and spiegatecelo.

Resident of Enceladus? image N00121336(crop) NASA/JPL

What the heck is that? I just knew you’d ask. This JPL image is a crop I chopped from the “full-res” image number N00121336 taken by the Cassini mission to Saturn, the top right catches a bit of the moon Enceladus. The thing at center left is, as you might imagine, unidentified.

Most of you have probably seen the spectacular ring photos that were recently released showing the varying mountains of material at the ring edges. Truly fascinating. I am impressed! Thoughts came flooding in via remembrance of Dr. Norman Bergrun’s work, published long ago in his book The Ringmakers of Saturn, wherein evocative and rather spooky evidence of massive objects of very likely artificial construction was presented.

Did my usual stop at Skipper’s Mars Anomaly Research site to see if there was a new post — and there was — a nice post on the Cassini investigations at the Saturnian moon Enceladus, featuring a whole bunch of high strangeness objects of which the object here in my post is but one. This one I picked for its visual brightness and cool shape, however the others are equally strange in their own right (one looks like a big lobster claw, another a giant resistor!).

Skipper thinks all these things including our guest here are life forms. It is, believe it or not, a distinct possibility. Just as up to 80% or so of our UFOs may be critters. Plasma critters.

This has been discussed in scientific circles for many, many decades… at least six of ’em… that plasma can and does behave much like a life form does… so much so there is very little doubt that plasma life forms not only exist but are as evolved and as diverse as our sort of life… as in microbes to people. Including intelligence. They are able to live in outer space.

By the way, the scientific discussions mentioned above — we’re talking David Bohm, Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein here… yes, it’s not the fringe, it’s the real deal.

Anyway, since I’ve no truck with any of those dudes, dudes who influenced my childhood, I have no problem in accepting and imagining the world of these creatures… and no problem with Skipper’s analysis… especially if you look at the sequences, the things do move and change shape, so hey… not much of a stretch. They sure are big, though! Jeez!

I am impressed. Very much so. There are tons of these guys around out there at Saturn… and different kinds, too! Very, very exciting. To me at least.

Now… I do have two problems with the Cassini mission, one pointed out by Skipper that I share, as will you, I bet.

Firstly, Cassini has several occasions flown way close to Enceladus, once in 2008 approaching within 16 miles of the surface! Sixteen miles! What could be wrong with that, you ask? Nothing!

The problem is that no photos have been publicly released that are any closer than 88,020 kilometers. Not one. And even those are only 512 pixels small. It twists my gut. In my opinion, that is simply criminal. In a literal sense. Our tax dollars paid for all this… and we want to see! Man, that ticks me off. Really, really, really so.

Secondly, I have a problem with the image below. Haven’t checked the others. This is the original “hi-res” (Ha!) shot with our selected guest critter in it, reduced from the 512 pixel width to the 497 that this blog theme displays.

My problem is the stars. Assuming of course that they are stars. Because if they are… then how in heck are they showing through the moon? Eh? I mean really, don’t you think that that is mighty odd? The moon seems to vanish into the ether just past halfway up; and below that doesn’t look too solid, either… I really want to know just what is up with that… that’s just weird. That’s just wrong.

I’m actually more concerned with this aspect than with the critters!

Even if these stars aren’t stars at all but are really just more critters, that’s cool, but what of the vanishing moon? This is driving me right up the wall! The cameras sure took some sporty pics of those rings, so, again… what is going on here?

Enceladus. Nearly full released resolution N00121336. NASA/JPL

And, now, something I just now stumbled across… here’s my resulting image just below.

I opened up the above shot from JPL/NASA and gave it 4 more f-stops of exposure (which is all I can give it in one shot)… and just lookee what we can see now!

A little bit more of Enceladus… which served as some small relief for the aforementioned mind-warping conundrum (is it really that dark out there? Wow!) but certainly not relief in full by any stretch of the imagination.

Lots more “stars” which I’m now thinking are just more critters… The “stars” all exhibit awful jpeg weirdies by the way which one can see just by enlarging the original, which causes our Skipper to go on about tampering and such in his report… anyway…

But look! There are at least four more of our lovely curved-V critters! Woot! They just aren’t up to glowing like our invited guest does. Wow!

Since they all have the same shape… are these camera artifacts? From the conditions out there? Reflections of the first one? Could be certainly, but it doesn’t seem likely… there are different families of critters in the day’s sequence… all the dudes in the Skipper’s report are from the same day… so… wow.

Finally, I would just like to note that it’s been more and more apparent to me over the years, more so lately simply due to more thought being devoted to it… that the farther out we go… the more the strangeness factor applies… and applies exponentially! Just weird!

Enceladus image N00121336 at plus 4 f-stops. image enhancement by Iggy Makarevich.

!!!

quote Adam Gorightly In The Land of EnchantmentAdam Gorightly

by Adam Gorightly

At first glance, New Mexico seems nothing more than a second sister to the Longhorn State, as big oil rules in the southern reaches of The Land of Enchantment where many of the towns one encounters along the way resemble greatly those rural landscapes stretching for hundreds of miles across the plains of Texas and Oklahoma.

However, New Mexico is rich not only in oil, but arcane lore, with its fabled history of crashed saucers, atomic bomb blast sites and, some would suggest, Freemasonic conspiracies. According to the late gonzo conspiracy researcher, James Shelby Downard, Freemasonry has long practiced a system known as mystical toponomy, which pertains to the magic and mystery of words. To quote Downard: “Mystical toponomy incorporates word wizardry (onomatology) and the modern science of symbolism.” These three alchemical elements imbue a locale with sorcerous significance — Downard contended — connecting ancient ley lines in conjunction with latitude and longitude, and the divisions of degrees in geography (minutes and seconds). unquote

It gets even better… and has lots of pics, too… Indeed, I’ve just posted, today, on the L.O.W.F.I site, the June Guest Editorial by Adam Gorightly, renowned investigator and writer in our favorite field of Forteana. He tells a tale of strangeness regarding “The Land Of Enchantment,” also known as New Mexico. Read up on the mysteries there… and those encountered on Adam’s recent trip, which were numerous…

The Obelisk at the Space MuseumIt’s got a mysterious obelisk at a Space Museum, a primate space capsule, Hamm’s grave and UFO researcher Guy Malone’s adventures in publishing… strange symbols of Freemasonic import, good info on those same Freemason guys… Jack Parsons, JPL, the Devil’s Gate, a traveling Jesus Squad and much more…

Go for it… enjoyment guaranteed!

site_A86_pcam_90_cyl-A231R1 copywMarvin will be well pleased. He was so excited when he found out he was needed in Hollywood that he forgot his teapot, and it was lost all those years, until a cute little robot landed and started driving around, and just happened to do so right where he left it.

Seriously, now, the picture on the right is a Mars Pathfinder mission image by the JPL team. It’s a very tight crop within the full image, which is a composite of several individual pictures. Spotted long ago by Tim Beech, one of the original investigators of Martian photographic anomalies, it shows an object that resembles for all the world the classic spout of an English teapot, ready to pour a little cheer into our lives. This particular teapot spout, however… I am currently thinking… is another in a series of Martian critters, yes, I’m talking an animal, coming out of it’s lair to scope out the surrounding area for a bit of a snack. This view is primarily based on its shape, its relationship to the “rock” immediately to its left and on the marked dissimilarity to anything else in the entire image.

site_A86_pcam_90_cyl-A231R1 Image NASA/JPLThe larger version on the right is a levels enhancement by myself, to make the scene appear more natural, lighting-wise, not that it doesn’t pop right out at you in the image above. [Levels refer to the reaction of the imaging software in displaying the brightness level of any particular pixel, i.e. a certain value in the original data is output at the same, a brighter, or a darker level. Therefore the overall image ratios remain the same, as long as there is image data in a given pixel.] Clicking either image will take you to the original composite shot.

Do you think a rock could have eroded into that shape? I don’t. As always, your comments are most welcome. I am highly opinionated, it’s true, but I am also highly open-minded. 

As for the “rock” immediately to the left, it could be a rock that it’s using as a shelter, or it could be a shell. The smaller triangular-roofed “shell” that’s just a touch closer to us could be a fellow creature’s lair, as it has the same shape as the object our pal is peeking out from.

I don’t know, but that’s what I think of this bit of evidence… you must decide for yourself what you think it might be. We all want to see life running around in these images from space… I posit that that’s exactly what we’re looking at here.

LOL: From the JPL/NASA site: Back by popular demand: THEMIS ART IMAGE #73 These north polar dunes look odd -- like a plant, or fossil, or some alien creature. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/ASU

One of my all-time favorite Martian anomaly images, Mars Odyssey catalog number PIA08557… I’m confident you can sort out why on your own. What do the once-great Jet Propulsion Lab and the master of obfuscation have to say about it? As well as the Arizona State University folks who built and run the THEMIS instrument that snapped it back in 2001?

Firstly, they present it as an “Art Image.”  No trouble there, it’s pretty sweet, after all. But… remember now… to everyone involved in the shenanigans at an official level… literally everything on Mars… no matter what… is a sand dune. No matter what.

This is the comment on the JPL/NASA site:
Back by popular demand: THEMIS ART IMAGE #73 These north polar dunes look odd — like a plant, or fossil, or some alien creature. VIS instrument. Latitude 82.4N, Longitude 314.5E. 40 meter/pixel resolution. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/ASU.

Sand dunes. What else could it be? There are only sand dunes on Mars, right? Yeah, and I’m the Queen of the Nile. Ha! I find it most interesting that the majority of traffic at Xenotech Research and no doubt Skipper’s site as well is from NASA and its related contractors. Interesting, indeed. And telling.

It’s surely not a creature… surely… it’s immense… it put the widest bit at about 3 3/4 miles across. However, it could very well be a colony of lifeforms of the type that J.P.  Skipper’s been looking into and theorizing about. That’s entirely plausible. I would certainly like a reasonable explanation for it. This would not include sand dunes. That’s absurd. I’ll be zoomin’ in on this one…