That Flash-player is a little balky, but the images are more than enough to totally make my morning.

Wow!

That movie won't play on our system (previous ones did). How big is the file?

I'd really like to show my students . . .

Sadly, I can't get the JAXA server to show me the movie -- they must be getting hit hard. The best I can manage right now is this animation (click to enlarge):



--Emily

Someone put it on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkHuRRDshhg

Obviously the quality takes a hit, but at least we can actually watch it.

All..

I can access the original site now. Had trouble earlier.

Almost like being there...... awesomely beautiful..... thanks JAXA.

Tears..

Craig

Emily,

Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
THANK YOU!!!!!!!

unbeeeleeeevable.

And yet, on that Stage6 page nop linked to, there is something to make the blood pressure rise...

There is only one comment left so far on the clip. "nice cg"

Makes ya wanna spit...!

-the other Doug

Don't let it bug you too much. I realised a long time ago that such beauty is not meant to be appreciated by people like that.

To be fair, I thought some of these images were cg myself - the quality is so clean that it almost doesn't seem real! What a phenomenal camera.

Couldn't agree more. In fact, I sent one of the images to a friend of mine and made sure to mention that "this is not fake!"

Truly remarkable.

Just amazing, the best quality moving images ever returned from the Moon. Nicely composed, beautifully exposed, a camera with esthetic rather than exclusively 'dry science' guiding it! The value of obtaining imagery like this for it's own sake is a rare thing in US mission planning, Carolyn Porco had a struggle obtaining more than the 'bare science' images of the backlit rings mosaic, for what turned out to be the most widely circulated image of the Cassini mission. Let this be a lesson for what kind of imagery is worth obtaining. How long will it be until the US has a high def camera in Lunar or even Martian orbit?
One can imagine rotating the spacecraft so the camera turns around and back to its direction of travel over a few minutes mantaining the pictorial composition as much as possible. This would give interesting perspective effects as the foreground topography sped by faster in relation to the background from all angles. I would also suggest Orienting the camera straight down for passes over the western Orientale basin when it is suitably lit which could reveal the still poorly known topography there.

Don Davis

There often seems overload in the JAXA server now because of too much access.
If you have any trouble in seeing flash videos, try the mirror posted by an anonymous advocate
http://space.geocities.jp/jaxa_kaguya/kagu...80-270earth.flv

I've read an informal episode that the onboard HDTV plan caused some controversy in scientists at first, because the HDTV camera is very fragile and its effectiveness is uncertain than other scientific equipment candidates. But Prof. Matogawa insisted on the importance of science outreach toward the public, and made much effort for the plan. Now I'm realizing that he was right

Yes, he was...and glad to see that JAXA's learning the lesson early! This outreach should be a real boon for Japan's future UMSF efforts.

Wonderful movie specially by observing the Earth-rise and Earth-set!

This movie has two Earthset and they are different. Hence, I am guessing that the first ones is that Kaguya was flying over the North pole and the last ones corresponds to South pole. Am I right?

P.D. After visiting the Macplinger's post about JAXA's link and it has already answered to my questions.

What still images are you looking at? The ones at http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/11/20071113_kaguya_e.html look blurry and contaminated by video noise to my professional (but probably biased) eye...