Open Source Scientific Image Processing
Anthony Liekens has a wonderful page on open-source Cassini-Huygens image analysis.A group of people from a space IRC channel took the raw images from the descent of the Huygens probe onto Titan's surface, and applied image processing: they stitched panoramas, created animations, created stereograms, added sharpening and color. The results are very impressive!
I hope NASA takes notice of this. There's a lot of interest, energy and talent in the community, which could be very helpful in analysis of astronomical data. Astronomy has a long history of amateur involvement in scientific research, perhaps more so than any other science; extending that to space-based research seems only a small step.
[ 19:30 Jan 17, 2005 More science/astro | permalink to this entry | ]