Tavern on the Meta

John Dvorak

3:23 AM

black and white in 2021, really? /s

fish-eye projection with this low field of view?

Journeyman Geek

@JohnDvorak cause spaaaaaccceeeeee

John Dvorak

~~implying the bottom one is a shot of a terrestrial desert~~

Feeds

4:45 AM

stackoverflow.blog/2021/05/21/…

rene

5:05 AM

@Rob well, for their first attempt I would say kudos to them. The two camera's/lenses are not comparable. The lower one is from the Mastcam, the top one from what perseverance would call hazcam or navcam, I think. By the look at the map they are not close to any geological formations that stand-out so I wonder if we get tp see more exiting images then these.

Rob

5:21 AM

Yes, they missed the volcano formation by a bit, and are on a particularly flat spot.

rene

5:33 AM

Do we know if they aimed for that spot? IIRC the mars rover drifted a bit too close to terrain that was deemed a hazard zone. On the other hand, Viking II landed also in a rather flat area. Maybe landing at all was their first priority.

Rob

7:28 AM

@rene Replying to your third sentence (will get to the other points when I get a break), the Utopia Planitia area (where the Viking II landed) looks different than where the Chinese landed:

Define "flat".

Meta Andrew T.

It is flat enough, for a certain distance...

Coastline paradox

The coastline paradox is the counterintuitive observation that the coastline of a landmass does not have a well-defined length. This results from the fractal curve-like properties of coastlines, i.e., the fact that a coastline typically has a fractal dimension (which in fact makes the notion of length inapplicable). The first recorded observation of this phenomenon was by Lewis Fry Richardson and it was expanded upon by Benoit Mandelbrot.The measured length of the coastline depends on the method used to measure it and the degree of cartographic generalization. Since a landmass has features at all...

rene

@Rob Ah, I judged it based on the map: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianwen-1#/media/… That looks indeed more "rocky"

Rob

8:07 AM

@rene That Wikipedia article en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianwen-1#Mission_planning says:

> "In July 2020, CNSA provided landing coordinates of 110.318° East longitude and 24.748° North latitude, within the southern portion of Utopia Planitia, as the specific primary landing site.".

While other reports from the Chinese space agency (now removed from their website) report their landing at google.com/search?q=109.9E%2C%2025.1N%20 109.9E, 25.1N, Utopia Planitia

We'll have to wait for HiRISE to grab a snapshot to know the exact location.

@MetaAndrewT. True, if it were ant sized it would be flat enough; like some parts of the Earth appear flat.

Meta Andrew T.

Confirmed: the Earth is flat (for ants)

Rob

and some humans.

SPArcheon

8:35 AM

A month later.

Apr 29 at 12:11, by SPArcheon

Quick question - does anyone know if stupid Edge has a way to disable hiding the "HTTP://" on not-https sites?

still didn't found a way to stop this annoying behavior.

Rob

9:47 AM

@rene 4th: Landing in one piece is probably a first priority. 2nd: Difficult to determine the size of rocks from a relatively low resolution aerial view, one pixel can be a few hundred meters; the Spy Satellites on other planets (where there's no people) aren't as high a resolution as the one over your head. 1st: Here's the aiming and landing areas:

rene

10:15 AM

@Rob nice. I guess it takes a few orbits before Hires will capture images: mars.nasa.gov/imgs/mro/whereismro/MROdisplay.png ?

John Dvorak

did they intentionally stay away from any recognizable terrain features?

Journeyman Geek

probably safer for landing I'd guess

Rob

10:30 AM

@rene Nice image, yes a few orbits or less should be enough for a flyover; then a few days to analyze and post the photo - it will be a few pixels, after image enhancement.

@JohnDvorak Apparently it's a combination of low risk and high scientific value, heavily weighted towards one of those objectives: e6r3ayc2dqk5m6vt5vlyq7cmzi-ac5fdsxevxq4s5y-spaceflightfans-cn.t… space.com/china-mars-rover-tianwen-1-landing-site

rene

@Rob I expect something like this: mars.nasa.gov/resources/25634/… ?

John Dvorak

oh, nice, I was briefly wondering if they did that so that they could fake a successful landing by taking pictures of a desert :P

Rob

Yup

John Dvorak

urgh! Is that a delayed email nag? :fire:

autoplay videos on hover? :rage:

Meta Andrew T.

10:48 AM

:tableflip: