Expert: Tom Whiting - 10/28/2004

Question
Hello Tom,
 With the recent flyby of Titan, I was wondering about the pictures that (hopefully) will be taken by the Huygens probe once it lands.  This ques may be a bit obscure, but would you know wheter the visual light camera on the probe will be of the same quality as the Mars Rovers?  Can we expect to see (assuming there is enough light to penetrate the thick atmosphere) such detailed and awesome vistas as we have of the rovers?

Kev

Answer
Hello KEV,
Well, I think that the cameras installed are at least equivalent
to what the Mars Rovers use, perhaps a few years earlier.
Plus, don't forget....we now have some excellent "refinement"
programs that can clean up and enhance any digital image.

The last word I had was not camera quality, but what kind
of terrain is the probe going to encounter (?), assuming it survives the trip downward to the surface....a lot can go wrong; remember the craft that just crashed into the Utah desert as the parachute failed to deploy?  Even at this late date, they seem to have no idea...even with the raw images of 2 days ago Titan flyby, no idea of that terrain down there.  Is is liquid methane or solid ice?  No one seems to know as yet.

I'm sure there is enough sunlight making it to the surface....
The raw images from yesterday showed an undefined
surface, so we know there is enough sunlight on Titan's
surface, probably like a soft sun thru fog....on the Earth.

BUT, if all goes well on January 14th, I'm sure we'll get
some great realtime pictures from the surface of Titan,
assuming the probe doesn't sink into the slushy frozen
methane ocean, if it exists.  Of course, realize that the
Huygen's probe is stationary, so we won't get any
roving pictures....probably be similar to the Viking pictures
of Mars in 1976....just one location panorama, but very
high detail.
FWIW, hope all this helps, and time will tell....stay tuned....
mid-January isn't that far away.
Clear Skies,
Tom Whiting
Erie, PA



FOLLOW UP:
BTW, thanks for the high marks....
Yes, you feel the same way I did when we were waiting
for Viking 1 to set down on Mars for the first time, on
July 4, 1976...a great day for a Mars landing....of course,
back then, it was a stationary platform, so you always
wondered, "What is right over that horizon?"
The rovers solved that problem.  

BUT, look at the bright side...even if the Huygens probe
fails, we still have a great 10 year Cassini mission around
Saturn and its moons to look forward to....as Galileo ends
its mission around Jupiter, we now have Cassini to watch
and follow.
And there is also a mission onward to orbit Mercury, arriving
in 2011, along with the new James Webb Space telescope
about that time frame too.
So there is always something new to look forward to.
Clear Skies,
Tom Whiting
Erie, PA