Is NASA deliberately releasing low res images of the Bright Spot on Ceres?
Why are photos of the Dark Side of Ceres (PIA19183) clear and crisp while the latest Bright Spot photo (PIA19185) from the same day is grainy and low resolution?
According to the JPL Photo Journal, the images of the Dark Side of Ceres have been processed to enhance clarity. So, here is a dumb question: Why isn't the image of the Bright Spot processed to enhance clarity? Surely NASA would want the best clarity for the most interesting anomaly on Ceres.
Dark Side of Ceres - ENHANCED for clarity- http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19183
These images of dwarf planet Ceres, processed to enhance clarity, were taken on Feb. 19, 2015, from a distance of about 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers), by NASA's Dawn spacecraft. Dawn observed Ceres completing one full rotation, which lasted about nine hours.
Ceres - image PIA19183 taken by NASA Dawn spacecraft Feb. 19th - view full size jpg - or - download tiff file
Bright Spot - NOT enhanced - http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19185
This image was taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft of dwarf planet Ceres on Feb. 19 from a distance of nearly 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers). It shows that the brightest spot on Ceres has a dimmer companion, which apparently lies in the same basin.
Ceres - image PIA19185 taken by NASA Dawn spacecraft Feb. 19th 2015 - view full jpg - or - download tiff file
There really is no comparison between the two images. PIA19183 is clearly (pun intended) a much better quality image than PIA19185.
Where are the raw 1024 x 1024 images for both PIA19183 and PIA19185? Why doesn't NASA or JPL post the raw images immediately or at least a few days after they come in? We have acces to the Vesta raw images that the Dawn spacecraft took back in 2011, but It looks like it took two years though for NASA to post these raw images of Vesta. Why does it take so long?
Wouldn't it be easier for NASA to post the RAW images right away anyway instead of all of these cropped and enhanced photos?
So where is all of this going?
Let me make a prediction about the Bright Spot on Ceres before you all get your hopes up. I predict that the Bright Spot is going to turn out to be nothing special. NASA's story will be something involving reflective ice or volcanic rock. NASA is already angling for the volcanic theory with their latest news article titled 'Bright Spot' on Ceres Has Dimmer Companion.
February 25, 2015—Dwarf planet Ceres continues to puzzle scientists as NASA's Dawn spacecraft gets closer to being captured into orbit around the object. The latest images from Dawn, taken nearly 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers) from Ceres, reveal that a bright spot that stands out in previous images lies close to yet another bright area.
"Ceres' bright spot can now be seen to have a companion of lesser brightness, but apparently in the same basin. This may be pointing to a volcano-like origin of the spots, but we will have to wait for better resolution before we can make such geologic interpretations," said Chris Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, based at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Read full article here - https://www.nasa.gov/jpl/dawn/bright-spot-on-ceres-has-dimmer-companion
The article then informs you that, "Images are available at the Ceres Science Gallery". If you happen to take the time to check out this so called Science Gallery, then you can download the fullsize image for the Bright Spot(PIA19185) which is only an 80kb jpg file. That's a very small file size for a fullsize image in my opinion. Also, if you are really adventurous, you can go to the JPL Photo Journal website to get a better TIFF file for PIA19185 which isn't much better in quality and is only a whopping 289kb file. Why aren't the full size jpg and tiff file images something more like the raw images with a 1024x1024 pixels and a 1Mb or 2Mb file size? The file size of PIA19183 (the so called enhanced image) is much larger at 1.86MB and is more in line with what we would expect.
