It’s really a shame they didn’t put better imaging equipment on Juno. The argument being that little science would be gained from it. I’d argue secondary effects would have made it worth the weight.
You have to be careful what you ask for - I certainly like pretty pictures myself, but one of the reasons that Juno is so successful as a scientific mission is because it was kept to the barebones and managed scope so aggressively. With Juno ($1B for an outer planets mission) we got Flagship mission-quality science for a New Frontiers price. There's a good interview with Mark Wolverton on Planetary Radio that discuss…
Juno skims the cloud tops of Jupiter
51–60 of 60 posts
Re: Juno skims the cloud tops of Jupiter
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't stop at millimeters or kilowatt, so there is really no reason to stop at kilometer when megameter is more appropriate. Scientific notation is also fine, but "210 megameter" is in my opinion easier to read than "2.1 * 10^8 meters", especially for the casual reader. So while I respectfully make note of your feedback, I strongly disagree and stand by my choice of units. :)
Given how hard it is to convince most Americans to use prefixed metre measurements instead of inches, feet, yards and miles, I think it would be even harder to convince the world that a megametre, picometre, etc is the way to go. Not that I don't agree (I fully do!), the ease of using multiples of 10 is way easier. But it is very difficult to introduce change to the masses, no matter how sensible it is. The US is one…
... But as we speak about metric measurements I doubt that the US insistence on weird units apply. The average US citizen would presumably be confronted with "mega" and "giga" in their day-to-day lives, and millimeter, micrometer and nanometer are commonly used. Even femtosecond is a common, practical unit that anyone receiving refractive surgery will hear.
Picometer is unpopular because it only makes sense for sub-atomic lengths giving it few practical uses at the current time, not because "pico" is hard to grasp.
Also note that German, Dutch, Danish (my native tongue), Swedish, Norwegian, even Hindi and presumably many others also refer to the unit as "meter", so that particular disagreement is not "the US against the rest of the world".
(All languages have quirks - in Danish, we call a folding ruler in meters an "inch stick", and say the number "53" as "3 and half three's twenties" (skipping the "twenties" part in modern speech). Learn to enjoy the differences rather than hate on them.)
Re: Juno skims the cloud tops of Jupiter
#53Re: Juno skims the cloud tops of Jupiter
#54Re: Juno skims the cloud tops of Jupiter
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would it be possible to extrapolate frames in between to give one smooth flyover?
Nitpick: you interpolate data between two known points (frames), and extrapolate beyond the first or last known datapoint.
Re: Juno skims the cloud tops of Jupiter
#56Re: Juno skims the cloud tops of Jupiter
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would it be possible to extrapolate frames in between to give one smooth flyover?
Nitpick: you interpolate data between two known points (frames), and extrapolate beyond the first or last known datapoint.
Re: Juno skims the cloud tops of Jupiter
#58How much time elapses in that time-lapse? Edit: Two hours of real-time Jupiter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPMK_6-QrIg
Re: Juno skims the cloud tops of Jupiter
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
To prevent bots from causing bandwidth costs to be insane?
NASA can land on the moon, but can't make thier own captcha without capitulating to Google's massive takeover of the web?
Now Google's dominance is another story entirely, so one could argue they should use hcaptcha, but making their own one seems like superfluous bureaucracy
Re: Juno skims the cloud tops of Jupiter
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was surprised to hear that. I visit nasa.gov frequently, and I’ve never seen this nonsense.
It is pretty easy to set off if you control your browser much (privacy-enforcing proxies, ad blockers, etc.). I haven't seen it with NASA, but I'm currently doing something that trips CF's verify-your-humanity bullshit on third party sites a lot. Haven't yet figured out what upsets it.