Chris Russell wrote:
Just a personal comment: these pictures seem to be of pretty poor quality, reminiscent of the Mariner 4 mission's "old technology" pictures of Mars. I know the Huygens probe only had 8 kbits per second transmission rate with Cassini, but still...less pictures of higher quality would be better than the low resolution ones we've seen so far, I would think. A $50 web cam from CompUSA could have done better (I know, I know, let's see a web cam function properly at -288 degrees F).
Just a guess about the image quality. The text indicates that the Huygens images were taken through a 660nm-1000nm filter. The would put them on the red end of the visible spectrum extending well into the IR. Looking at IR weather images of Earth like those at http://weather.unisys.com/satellite/sat_ir_west_loop-12.html they seem to have the same muted appearance. So maybe the Huygens images look the way they do because they are not centered on visible light. Again, just a guess. Patrick