Lunar Spacecraft Images, A place for moon panoramas, mosaics etc. |
Lunar Spacecraft Images, A place for moon panoramas, mosaics etc. |
Jun 5 2005, 01:27 AM
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#1
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10229 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
As promised in another thread... I thought all the images from Surveyor, Apollo etc. needed another place to go than the Mars Forum.
I will start the thing off with a link, not an image. I occasionally have images in Chuck Wood's Lunar Picture of the Day (LPOD) website, www.lpod.org. This URL: http://www.lpod.org/LPOD-2005-05-25.htm is my latest, a Clementine LWIR mosaic. The text accompanying the image explains how I made it. LWIR images from the PDS look useless but they can be made into very nice image strips. In most areas of the Moon they are the highest resolution images available, since the HIRES camera only functioned well over near-polar latitudes. So image junkies who want to see new scenery emerge from their computers can go wild! Phil -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke Maps for download (free PDF: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Cartography.pdf NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain) |
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Feb 13 2006, 03:55 AM
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#2
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10229 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
There certainly is some low to medium scale relief on the Luna 9 horizon... but I'm not sure it's all that unusual for a mare area, if it happened to have a crater rim nearby. Nevertheless, as you can see here:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/1341.pdf I have argued that Luna 9 cannot lie at the position usually given for it, which would put it among Apollo 17-scale mountains. The most likely position is shown in that reference. It has to be far enough away from the mountains that they cannot be seen. The area I indicate does indeed contain wrinkle ridges, as well as craters of various sizes. Any combination of them could account for the horizon relief. Phil -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke Maps for download (free PDF: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Cartography.pdf NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain) |
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Feb 13 2006, 05:21 AM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430 |
Would it be possible to use the Surveyor solar panels as laser reflectors?
-------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853 |
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Feb 13 2006, 08:54 AM
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#4
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Would it be possible to use the Surveyor solar panels as laser reflectors? I think the design of a laser reflector is that specifically so that it will return the incoming laser back in the direction it came from - that is the way they are optically designed. A solar panel would just reflect back out at the angle of the incoming laser. You would have to have the solar panel at exactly the right angle to reflect the light back to the source - an almost impossible task. Doug |
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Feb 13 2006, 12:20 PM
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#5
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2488 Joined: 17-April 05 From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK Member No.: 239 |
I think the design of a laser reflector is that specifically so that it will return the incoming laser back in the direction it came from - that is the way they are optically designed. A solar panel would just reflect back out at the angle of the incoming laser. You would have to have the solar panel at exactly the right angle to reflect the light back to the source - an almost impossible task. Doug Doug: Although the panel would not be nearly so reflective as proper LRRR blocks, they ought to reflect sunshine reasonably well. Depending on the orientation of the panel (just one, the other is an aerial) I suspect that at either sunrise or sunset you might get an Iridium-like flare from the surface. Iridium panels must be about three or four times the surface area, however, and are a quarter of a million miles closer to us - but they *do* reach minus magnitudes! It'd all depend on the orientation of the spacecraft, the position of the Moon, etc, etc, and the whole event, if visible at all, might only be seen over small parts of the Earth's surface at a time. Still, if somebody can work it out, it might be worth looking at as an advanced amateur observational project, much like the attempts to discern the shapes of asteroids etc by grazing occultations. Bob Shaw -------------------- Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!
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Feb 13 2006, 04:35 PM
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#6
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Member Group: Members Posts: 593 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 279 |
Depending on the orientation of the panel (just one, the other is an aerial) I suspect that at either sunrise or sunset you might get an Iridium-like flare from the surface. Iridium panels must be about three or four times the surface area, however, and are a quarter of a million miles closer to us - but they *do* reach minus magnitudes! They do: I see it's about mag -8 at the maximum. But that distance is killer #1: an iridium flare at lunar distances, compared to the 780km orbit of the satellite, will be about one quarter million times dimmer. Killer #2 is the size and finish of the panels - they're not polished metal as with the Iridium satellites, they're designed specifically as light-absorbing materials. Being generous, let's say they're ten times dimmer. Killer #3 is that they are (as you state) three to four times smaller. So we're dealing with a transient flash perhaps ten million times dimmer than mag -8, which is equal in magnitude to +9.5. Not bright - especially against a lunar background. The final nail in the coffin, as I see it, is that the angle of the panels are not known with any great precision. At the Moon's distance the Earth only subtends 2 degrees. Iridium flares on the Earth are very localised: just a few miles can take you from a "wow" flare to a "ok, so I saw it" one - I can see that it would be extremely likely for any equivalent lunar flares to miss the Earth completely, for all (or a huge amount) of the time. Shame though. :-) Andy |
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Feb 13 2006, 06:33 PM
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#7
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2488 Joined: 17-April 05 From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK Member No.: 239 |
Andy and Phil:
I take your points - but remember the famous Mars flashes, from about 150 times further away? It may well be that nothing is visible, but it's worth a little thought - it'd be great if something *was* seen! If the Surveyor solar panels (not counting the failures, which are probably debris) were arranged to face the morning or evening sun (depending on when the vehicles turned off) then I wonder whether there might be glints visible from Lunar orbit? One problem might be predicting where the darn things are pointing - as I'm sure you know, Surveyor 3 woke up enough to try to take TV pictures *after* it lost contact with Earth (the vidicon tube was damaged by UV as a result of a filter opening, although it was closed when the spacecraft was last in touch with the ground, so it must have decided to do it all by itself!) so perhaps the solar panels are at some utterly unknown angle! Bob Shaw -------------------- Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!
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Feb 13 2006, 11:18 PM
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#8
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
Andy and Phil: I take your points - but remember the famous Mars flashes, from about 150 times further away? Ahh, but I have it from reliable sources that a Professor Pearson from Princeton University has identified those Mars flashes as vast explosions of hydrogen gas. While these may seem unusual, they are more than likely simply the result of volcanic activity, and shouldn't concern us in any way... -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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