Titanic Sonar Images

Titanic Sonar Images

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Digger

14,718 posts

192 months

Thursday 22nd March 2012
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Channel 5 in 40 minutes: Inside the Titanic.

db

724 posts

170 months

Thursday 22nd March 2012
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chrisj_abz said:
deadtom said:
very cool images, though the shadows in the stern section debris field puzzle me somewhat; they dont all face the same direction?

at first i assumed the shadows must have been added digitally in order to make it look more like a photograph, but its strange that they have not made sure all the shadows are projected in the same direction to give the impression of a single light source.
but then if the sonar device is not directly above the object, would you get a 'real' shadow on the sonar image?

if the former is the case, why not make sure all the shadows face the same way to make it look more natural?
or would it be the case that because the final image is a mosaic, the contributing images were individually processed and had shadows added before they were then rotated to the correct orientation relative to the other stuff (with the editors forgetting/realising too late about the shadows)
if the latter, surely enough passes over the objects would have been done that a mosaic wouldnt have blank areas?
Just had a quick look at the article and it looks to be a composite of Sonar images and ROV footage, so it will give a single point of light in that case, as its only the lights from the ROV illuminating it. your right that the final image will be a mosaic, with many hundreds if not thousands of pictures from the footage combined into the final image.
from the DM article in the 1st post
"They used two robot vehicles to scan the ocean bottom day and night with sonar cameras, moving at 3mph back and forth in a grid pattern.
They then stitched together the 130,000 high-resolution photos on a computer to provide a detailed mosaic of the wreck.