Huygens descent, with bells and whistles

May 5, 2006 1:54 PM

Movieof Huygens descent to the surface of Titan, complete with incrementally improving mosaic of the surface as it rushes up to meet the probe, and same-screen animations of probe rotation, accelerometer readings, and the doppler whistle that you must have heard by now. The explanation page is here. Via spacedaily.com.
posted by the Real Dan (16 comments total)

Seems vaguely familiar.
posted by DenOfSizer at 1:57 PM on May 5, 2006

If anyone hasn't seen it, it's definitely worth a watch. The sound and the visuals of Titan's surface - amazing.

It's a four-hour A/V compressed to about...four minutes or so.

Blows me away. We're on Titan. That's a major feat.
posted by rougy at 2:13 PM on May 5, 2006

Mea Culpa. Missed it in mefi, and then missed it in the search.
posted by the Real Dan at 2:17 PM on May 5, 2006

Worth the double post, I think. This may be the best thing ever released by NASA. Oh wait, it's the ESA! This may make up for ESA's dismal performance on the day of the event. Not to mention the Beagle 2 ...

Don't miss the other movie also released yesterday. Almost as good.
posted by intermod at 2:24 PM on May 5, 2006

What's with the Astronaut Footprint on Titan?
posted by squalor at 2:34 PM on May 5, 2006

Gotta say, that's the best music video I've seen since someone posted that Boards of Canada thing a few weeks back.

Rockin'!
posted by Relay at 2:34 PM on May 5, 2006

Sad that Trent Reznor's music has devolved to just this.
posted by hal9k at 2:40 PM on May 5, 2006

Don't miss the other movie also released yesterday. Almost as good.

Which one? I thought this was the only Titan footage.
posted by rougy at 2:47 PM on May 5, 2006

What's with the Astronaut Footprint on Titan?
posted by squalor at 2:34 PM PST on May 5 [!]

As posted in the other thread and shown in the video in really tiny text, the footprint photo is there to show a rough scale correlation.
posted by Phantomx at 3:09 PM on May 5, 2006

... this may make up for ESA's dismal performance on the day of the event...

OK.. I agree with the first part of that link, but don't quite see how that suddenly leads to 'Europeans still live in the Dark Ages' bit. I guess (but don't really know, at all) it may have had more to do with the fact that a) it was the first time ESA has ever really performed a 'high-profile' world's first and b) any organization with the word 'European' in it's name is usually bogged down with large amounts of bureacracy and sluggishness.
posted by Harry at 3:21 PM on May 5, 2006

Awesome.
posted by Smedleyman at 4:21 PM on May 5, 2006

Personally I like Kraftwerk's European-only B-side (that's now out of print) much better.

If there had been a little robot voice exclaiming "mission accomplished", well, that would have been the tops.
posted by jimmythefish at 4:53 PM on May 5, 2006

The lovely tinkelyness of the soundtrack just makes this even better. I always hoped the future would be this good. thanks, I missed this first time.
posted by piscatorius at 5:49 PM on May 5, 2006

yeah, that soundtrack ruled. it sounded like architecture in helsinki covering wendy carlos.
posted by bigschmoove at 6:31 PM on May 5, 2006

Missed it in mefi, and then missed it in the search.

In the onsite Yahoo! search for Titan, the first entry--and the 7th in the onsite Google search--is 5 posts tagged with titan. Clicking on that reveals crunchland's post as #2 but it would have been #1 with a bullet, had a search for Titan, an obvious search term, been made. People are not doing even the light lifting anymore.
posted by y2karl at 7:04 PM on May 5, 2006

fucking scrawny people. lift, damn it!
posted by bigschmoove at 7:37 PM on May 5, 2006