Sonar image of The Titanic

A new expedition to the Titanic -- now falling apart on the Atlantic floor -- set out recently, and has begun imaging the wreck. Team PR man Ed Cunning writes in:

What you will see is A bird's eye view sonar image looking down at Titanic's bow taken by the Waitt Institutes AUV, "Mary Ann," operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in an expedition lead by Premier Exhibitions, Inc. Visible are the mast, superstructure, openings for the one and two funnels, as well as the Grand Staircase. This image is one small section of a larger map being created that extends some 15 nautical miles squared.

Click through to the permalink to embiggen the pic. The official website includes an attractive visualization of just how far down the sunken ship is.

• [escowles]

  It would be really helpful if you could label flash-only websites for those of us using iphones — somehow a page saying “you need flash” wasn’t quite the stunning visualization I was expecting…

• [Raines Cohen]

  Will this expedition finally disprove the “lone iceberg” theory? Right, like the ship would fall directly into its own footprint at less than the speed of gravity. Which lifeboat fired the torpedo that triggered the embedded explosive charges?

• [bklynchris]

  “embiggen”-say it ten times fast in a mirror and_________.

• [bklynchris]

  That was an amazing site, perfect interacting interface, impressive. And they say that as the ship deteriorates the “rusticles” embiggen (sorry couldn’t help myself, but they do say rusticles!

  Also, I learned that apparently the Captain’s last words going down were, “Be British”. THey really do take themselves seriously, don’t they? THe British not captains, who should take themselves seriously.

  • [Felton / Moderator]

    For he is an Englishman!

  • [Tynam]

    British captains have a particular history of taking themselves seriously; it was still fresh from a history of naval empire at the time…

• [Anonymous]

  I’m sorry, but how does a sonar image cast a shadow?

  • [Chevan]

    The sonar source may be coming from the side while the sonar detector is above the wreck.

• [Patrick Dodds]

  2010 and that is the best image of the Titanic we can get? Deary dear.

• [Anonymous]

  Looks like the helix symbol from Heroes :)

• [lj]

  In reply to bklynchris, post no.5:

  This is what the captain meant when he said “Be British”:

  http://www.bookofodds.com/Accidents-Death/Transportation-Accidents/Articles/A0071-Fatal-Politeness-British-Mortality-and-the-Titanic

  It sealed the fate of a number of people on board, but, in the early 20th Century, that kind of behaviour was deemed an appropriate cutural response to a crisis. I think that, when it comes to cultural mores, most people take themselves more seriously than they might suppose.

• [mattxb]

  Wanting to die fairly and with dignity is being overly ‘serious’, is it?

  Also, you don’t build an empire by crying over spilt milk.

• [Anonymous]

  Thanks man

• [SteveNZ]

  @ bklynchris: “Perfect interacting interface”? Oh really? On my 2.7GHz quad-core Hackintosh with 4GB RAM, and a 27in Dell monitor, it runs like a fat three-legged dog.

  I found it frustratingly sluggish and unresponsive, and the interface is far from intuitively obvious. Why do designers persist in buggering up otherwise worthwhile websites with effing Flash? And can’t they construct a non-obnoxious, Flash-free alternative version?

  I’ll tell you what grinds my gears, to quote Peter Griffin…

  • [tcforest]

    >Oh really? On my 2.7GHz quad-core
    >Hackintosh with 4GB RAM, and a
    >27in Dell monitor, it runs like
    >a fat three-legged dog.

    Bog standard Dell Inspiron Core i3 with 4G RAM, Nvidia 310 and Ubuntu 10.04 here and it runs fine, (over a 3G modem also) Check your sofware
    ;-)

• [coaxial]

  I remember reading that one of the reasons for the Titanic’s accelerated deterioration is the all the rich playboys and grave robbers heading there now. My favorite: watch made from Titanic parts.

• [Anonymous]

  If this is a sonar image taken from above, why does there seem to be a light source on one side of the wreck, and a shadow on the other?

• [hallam]

  The interface on the site is absolutely horrid. It is sloooooww and nothing actually works.

  Quite likely the problem is partly load, but turning the user experience into a pig with winky bliky is never smart. I was going to the site for the content and the subject, not the winky blinky.

• [bklynchris]

  Thank you for your responses to “Be British”, I followed all links and found lj’s link very interesting, and I assumed as much from the comment. And, Felton, didn’t you love the subtitles in English for a song sung in…English! I guess bc it was sung in an Australian dialect? Just saying HMS Pinafore makes me laugh.

  And @ StevenNZ, all you managed to do with all that talk was make me hot. BUT, it worked fine for me and I’m running on half the number of your cores. Maybe it was meant to do more and I am just missing it? The side scroll bar was way too sensitive though.

  • [Felton / Moderator]

    I guess bc it was sung in an Australian dialect?

    Heheh! Either that or it was supposed to be the singalong version, but they forgot to add the little bouncing ball over the lyrics.

• [baxterdog]

  Sonar has a shadow, just like our eyes see a shadow. Same thing applies, a lack of response, or reflection causes a shadow.

  It’s very interesting to see sunken boats, etc. in a sonar image. They usually have a shadow from one side due to the side scan image. The form of the hull can be obvious, but can seem odd due to the software coloring.

• [Hakan]

  It’s like one of those weird pictures – my brain can’t understand what it’s looking at and suddenly the image pops out. I spent minutes trying to decipher it and then – wow.

• [Rob Beschizza]

  It’s called side scan, I think. This pic has a shadow because the thing receiving the sonar ping isn’t in the same place as the thing that sent it. It is being ‘lit’ from a different direction to create just the effect you see.

• [Rob Beschizza]

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-scan_sonar