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Sunday, May 07, 2006

titan

Titanlanding

courtesy of old college buddy Dennis (Dennis, do you have a website?) here's an interesting (read: fuckin' cool) diagram of the NASA Cassini landing on Saturn's ginormous moon, Titan. It's actually a movie of the landing, depicting the landing in every possible way:
• from the point of view of a camera on the bottom of the lander
• from an animation of the stages of the lander's expansion (when the parachute was deployed and so forth)
• from an animation of the trajectory of the lander with reference to its target landing site on the ground
• from a spinning altitude dial
• using sound (literally bells and whistles) to indicate altitude and various other things I can't identify
• etc.

It's a really neat way to experience the landing, and might possibly give you an impression of all the variables that the scientists running this mission have to keep track of simultaneously. They say that computer games improve your multi-tasking skills. Here's why, folks.

Here's NASA's Titan page. Check it out, there are some beautiful images there already. I'm just shocked by how much Titan looks like Mars ...

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» Huygens Probe Images of Titan from The Map Room
Images of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, taken by the Huygens probe during its descent through Titan's atmosphere last year, have been released. Mercator projection and stereographic versions have also been made, which makes them maps of a sort. More... [Read More]

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  • The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.
    -- George Orwell


    Geography and space are always gendered, always raced, always economical and always sexual. The textures that bind them together are daily re-written through a word, a gaze, a gesture.
    -- Irit Rogoff

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