Lunar Spacecraft Images, A place for moon panoramas, mosaics etc. Options

[Phil Stooke]

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

[Phil Stooke]

PS - did I mention I'm having the hardest time getting any work done these days...

Phil

[MizarKey]

Phil, the pages for the images for 6/2 and 6/4 are coming up with 'page cannot be found' messages...do you have any pull to get them back on track?

Eric P / MizarKey

[Bob Shaw]

Phil:

Well done - I thought Clementine was a bit of a lost cause, with very few good images!

Have you done any landing sites? It'd be nice to see familiar locations in an unfamiliar way...

Bob Shaw

[Phil Stooke]

Bob - quit asking me questions! I'm supposed to be working...

I have done some landing sites... I'll post a few things later. LWIR images are in pole to pole strips with gaps between them at lower latitudes so not all sites are covered. For instance I made a strip across the Apollo 17 site to see if I could find evidence of the LM ascent stage impact. But I couldn't. But the Apollo 14 SIVB impact shows up. I also used these images to find a candidate for the Ranger 6 impact site, which is on LPOD somewhere.

Clementine had lots of good images... but it made its pics with a high sun to reduce shading, because it was intended for multispectral compositional mapping. At the equator all you see is full moon style albedo variations. But near the poles the sun is always low anyway so those images are excellent. The HIRES camera gave good results too, near the poles. LWIR looks good in most areas.

and Mizarkey - no, I have no pull. Chuck Wood is trying to do the LPOD website from a remote location and is having a few problems. But it should get sorted out eventually.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

This is a Clementine HIRES mosaic of the south pole. The prominent crater is Shackleton.



Phil

[um3k]

I'm supposed to be working...

Aren't we all!

[Phil Stooke]

Mizarkey asked about LPOD. They had server problems... and they are temporarily at this URL until they get it fixed:

http://www.perseus.gr/LPOD/index.htm

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

Here's another unfamiliar lunar scene...

Clementine long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) image strip - very heavily processed, the raw data is impossible to use, but Photoshop can unveil the landscape behind the noise.

This is Mare Anguis, AKA Angus Bay if you are in the Moon Society (no, I'm not). It's on the east end of Mare Crisium, and it's the preferred site for the Moon Society/Artemis lunar base.

Phil

[dilo]

SMART-1's tribute to Cassini
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/SMART-1/SEM4GN1DU8E_0.html
(posted image slightly out of focus? )

[tedstryk]

Hard to tell...depends how much of the frame that really is. Focus and clarity are hard to determine with ESA images due to their penchant for oversampling.

[Phil Stooke]

I don't see any evidence for imperfect focus in this image. Also it's interesting to compare it with Lunar Orbiter 4 and Clementine... I'll post something on that later. But this holds up well.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

OK, here's the comparison...



I have chosen a small area on the NW rim of Cassini, chosen to give better Clementine coverage from the north periapsis images, with higher resolution in this area.

Lunar Orbiter 4: the new digital version from USGS.

Clementine - from map-a-planet, not raw data which would be a bit better. But I've spent too long on this as it is!

SMART-1 doesn't have the resolution of either of the others... but don't forget that this is jpegged and probably reduced from the original, which might be a bit better. More importantly, though, we are at 40 north, and SMART-1 's orbit is optimised for southern hemisphere viewing. At 40 south the resolution probably exceeds LO4 and Clementine UVVIS, and at 90 south it will be 10x better than LO4 and as good as Clementine HIRES. Plus it's got better lighting than Clem for morphological studies and will have better global coverage than Lunar Orbiter.

Phil

[Bob Shaw]

The problem I have with both SMART-1 and Mars Express isn't so much the quality of the data, so much as the *quantity*. ESA's miserly approach to image release compares s-o-o-o unfavourably with the situation in the US!

(sigh)

[Phil Stooke]

Yes, Bob, you're right.

I forgot to mention, about my previous post... the Lunar Orbiter image is presented at full resolution. The other two are enlarged to match it. Some of the apparent fuzziness in the SMART-1 image is caused by my enlargement of it.

Phil