Autzoo.1651 net.space utzoo!henry Sun May 9 17:24:58 1982 planetary-image videodisk A very interesting news item in Space World (now the NSI's official publication). It seems JPL has put together a videodisk of images from 1970s planetary probes, partly because they want a more convenient way to distribute them to investigators. Hold onto your hats: there are ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND pictures on that disk! Side one has 46000 from the Viking orbiters and 4000 from Mariner 9. Side two has another 3000 from Mariner 9 (mostly dust-storm shots of little interest except to atmosphere types), 7500 from the Viking landers, 4500 from Mariner 10 (Venus and Mercury), and 33000 from the Voyagers (29000 Jupiter, 4000 Jovian satellites). These are all black-and-white images, to make maximum use of the image resolution. The type of videodisk was not pinned down, but it's one of the laser disks (and hence almost certainly the Philips format). The article says "...thought is being given to making the disks available to the general public...". This is the best argument I've ever heard for buying a videodisk player. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.