A GROUP of amateurs has beaten the combined might of the world’s two biggest space agencies to piece together dramatic landscape views of Titan from pictures taken by the Huygens probe.

Space enthusiasts with no specialist training have created spectacular “mosaic” images of Saturn’s largest moon from raw data that has yet to be fully processed by Nasa and the European Space Agency (ESA).

While the agencies behind the Huygens mission have so far released only a few pictures of Titan, dozens of the first amateur images had been posted on the internet within hours of the spacecraft’s landing last Friday.

Many more have been produced since, and the best of them offer much more striking views of the enigmatic moon than any of the official ESA pictures published to date. The achievement is particularly remarkable because none of the amateurs who collaborated to create the composite images knew each other before. They met on an internet newsgroup that was discussing the mission, and started to make their own pictures because they did not want to wait for official versions.

Mission scientists posted 350 raw, unprocessed images from Huygens on ESA’s website for five minutes early on Saturday, to enable colleagues in the United States to pick them up, and these were intercepted by the enthusiasts. Anthony Liekens, a Belgian PhD student of biomedical technology, placed the first informal mosaics on his website before ESA published its own composite landscapes later that day.

“They were spreading the raw data around, and we knew where to look for it,” he said. “We picked it up at the same time they did, and saw marvellous things there that we wanted to share. We couldn’t wait, so we did it ourselves. ESA only released four or five pictures; we had a lot more.”

Producing the mosaics from the raw images was “like making a giant jigsaw puzzle, with 250 or more pieces,” he said. “It very exciting. All these people, none of whom knew each other, were co-operating and posting what they had done. Every time a new mosaic came out it was awesome.”

Mr Liekens emphasised that the amateurs’ pictures were not necessarily accurate representations of Titan, and reflect only raw data from Huygens. “ESA is going to be putting out pictures that are more correct and extensive,” he said. “They are slower because they have to be careful to get it right.”

One of the most remarkable panoramas, which appears to show a coastline and clouds more clearly than ESA’s version of the same view, was created by Christian Waldvogel, a Swiss artist and photographer.

Franco Bonacini, head of media relations for ESA, said the agency was pleased that enthusiasts had been inspired by the Huygens mission to use its data themselves, but that official images would be of much greater scientific value.

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