Cassini-Huygens / First Titan image shown(!)

[Stalkid64]

Doesn't appear to have hit any of the news sites yet, but about 15 minutes ago NASA TV's webcast showed the first raw image of Titan taken by the Cassini-Huygens probe from around 16km, just below the cloud cover. Full of drainage channels. The probe ran for 1 and a half to 2 hours, much longer than expected (which was a few minutes), and something like 300 images are due, and *possibly* a microphone recording (!) which should be extremely cool. C'mon, first proper audio from another planet! Likely to be thunder too. :icecream:
Give it up for Cassini-Huygens and the ESA! arty:
FIRST SURFACE PICTURE - direct from the ESA WEBSITE (HERE) . (Converted to jpg because tiff seems unsupported)

 

[Eagle]

Awesome, now when does colonization start?

 

[Trotterwatch]

More pictures here: http://mars.lyle.org/titan/

 

[Falcon4ever]

Awesome, now when does colonization start?

If they got cheap housing for students i'm in

 

[Stalkid64]

A little more info at random for those half-paying attention; The `rocks` in that picture above are ice blocks (so it may have landed on an ice sheet), and there are descent pictures where what they think are liquid methane oceans are clearly visible. I just want the damned audio now!

 

[_Chrono_]

wth?! all this technology and no colors?

 

[Remote]

Boring without colors.. And if Titan has no colors they should have aimed for another moon..

Why not train a money and give it a cheap digital camera?

 

[aprentice]

Why not train a money and give it a cheap digital camera?

What currency?

I think it would be funny if it landed and we found out titan was colonized already

 

[Stalkid64]

Well the audio files are up. Mostly noise, apparently silent on the surface but still this is sound from another world. There is also a colour image that, well, looks very much the same shade as Mars (there you go conspiracy theorists, work on that one for a while ) along with some very nice `panoramic` images from the descent.
As for the colour issue, if I remember right these are mostly taken with camera's designed for other purposes then colourised back on earth because for one thing, colour data encoding would just suck up all the transmission time which they don't get much of. Besides, colour accuracy in pictures is hard enough to maintain on this planet let alone one a good few million miles away that we've never seen before.
It'll come though. Cleaned up and coloured and "best guess", they'll arrive. Remember these are the first, utterly raw and untouched images decoded. They're `still in beta` at this stage. Love that panorama though...
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMTKR71Y3E_index_1.html

 

[Stalkid64]

I think it would be funny if it landed and we found out titan was colonized already

....And the first thing the microphone picked up was the strains of distant boyband music. Truly they'd be a race to fear. *shudder*

 

[WhiteX]

They landed there to suck all the resources of the space, we´re probing for water to then release our attack team, We are the evil aliens, i say!

 

[sheik124]

....And the first thing the microphone picked up was the strains of distant boyband music. Truly they'd be a race to fear. *shudder*

I'd shit my pants