Don't know about your PC but probably that's due to the video card. Any modern browser will use the video card, so things such as dedicated memory (or lack off) might have an impact.

Great map!
Besides the lighter patches I see one or two interesting dark ones.

Yes, reduced and very likely cropped.
That dark image has an alternate brightened release, where the landing leg is cut of. It's on your link.
You can't get any more that out of the release images since those are converted to 8bits. The original data has a higher dynamic. If we had it, we could try to do an HDR version.
But since we have the different releases, we can stack them (as I did) and recover part of the original information.
Here I've recovered some details on the rock face highlights:


It's uncertain if the release images are the full frames or not.
I think they are not, with the areas with no information around the edges cropped.
But it's just my opinion, I don' have any more data then you

Yes, they are arranged in a circular fashion to give an more or less vertical view. A kind of polar projection.
Even if you have the full uncropped raws, you'd need to correct them for projection » see Orthographic projection.

Exactly the same I posted, only processed differently. There are different sources for the same images with different stretches. My versions are just a stack of all the releases.

The image you say I'm missing it's the first image on the sequence I posted.
All this has been discussed earlier on the thread. The image sources are there.

Unless you correct the images for lens distortion the matches will be all over the place. Looking at the ESA releases you can see the correction:
http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp-co...st-panorama.jpg

All those images are from first sequence. I think that the second sequence turned out to be in darkness and the rotation was done much latter.

About the useful FOV, I stand by my interpretation.
There are details almost up to the limit, so the lens edge must be farther out. See the third image (the one with the leg and well exposed).

Nice work on the CIVA FOV issue.
Putting it all together, I get to following approximate crops (from the full CMOS raws) on the released images:





Very consistent with vignetting. Reminds me of fish eye photos.

Yes, there seems to be some overlap at the bottom edge of the frames. Looks correct, since the cameras are tiled down.
Perhaps the FOV uncertainties come from that. Could be that the number given is the horizontal FOV at the middle of the frame...

Great work.
There's some overlap between at least two images, so you can place those at a reasonably correct distance for the points closer to the lander.

Replying here since it's not related to the processing itself. That new Luna 9 fragment is part of panorama 1.
It covers about 75% of the middle overexposed part, but less clipped that the version here: http://mentallandscape.com/C_Luna09_1.jpg
Yet the version on Don's site shows surface features better.

Here's a merge of both:

There are no magical processing algorithms.
Fancy stuff like fourier filters can be done manually by fine tuning highpass filters to the desired feature size.
That will enhance contrast on certain spatial frequencies, thus enhancing the visibility of certain structures.
It will also reduce pixel noise or small scale uncertain features.
So in images such that Luna 9 fragment, some large scale features may become apparent and the lens flare / overexposure effects reduced.

Yet all I see from the posted image is pixel noise and perhaps the paper fiber structure.
So you isolated and enhanced noise, and removed any details. If should be the opposite !
Just my honest opinion, trying to help, not to put anyone down

Fantastic scenery

That is a great find!
The glints look extended. Could it just be camera bloom or are we seeing the effect of reflections on the surface (covering a large area)?

PDP8E, how is it possible to have super-resolution from a single image?

Or do you mean deconvolution techniques?

Looks right to me. Really brings the entire site into perspective. Great work.

It would be interesting to have the Rolis image on the pan.

Yes, that is consistent with the terrain model here: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30524429 and here: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/th...n_and_cliff.jpg

It's unclear how that model was built. Perhaps they are using unreleased CIVA images to constrain topography based on shadows and sun position.
I'm curious about the terrain further out. Don't know where that data comes from.

Yes, low pass at the end, after all filters.

On this case, the best option would be contour filters and rainbow / spectrum palettes instead of grayscale.
Those bring out structure and small contrast variations without changing the original values.

Exaggerated filtering will give you false details due to pixel value rounding errors that then get amplified over and over.

This is small example. The word "detail" printed on a small font size.
Right top is 3x resample. The "t" starts to show a false curved appearance, but in general, resolution seem to improve.
But heavy filtering (right bottom) gets you ringing artefacts and just false details (for example, a thin line connecting the "a" to the dot on the "i" as appeared.).



Just my 2cents, just trying to help,

Alex_k, most of what I see on that image is just small scale noise generated by processing.

You are processing the image at a higher resolution than the original.
So any "details" that become apparent but are below the original pixel size are just noise.
I'd recommend using a low pass filter on the end result to remove them.

Anyway, you can more or less trace the petal outlines by small changes on the noise pattern.
Makes sense because even if covered in dust, they are still smother that the surrounding soil.

There's no contrast variation, but the petals are traceable if you look for texture variation.

You may assume that the tilt is the same as with the Lunas. Not much, probably just the effect of gentle local slope or rocks.
Here's a nice page about Luna that shows that:
http://www.strykfoto.org/luna9.htm

My experience is that Wikipedia is a good source of mission and instrument names.
I usually start with the english page and then check the different language versions.
Usually the english version is more complete, but the local versions are better for spellings, investigator or entity names, etc, etc.

Sometimes it helps to search by entities and dates. There are yearly or monthly reports that you can find as PDFs.
Got some stuff about japanese probes from the 1980s that way.

Precision, quality, organization are no longer valued.
Make-do, funny, improvisation and luck seem to be valued in today's society.

But from a PR point of view... it worked brilliantly!

One thing that might be useful, would be a sticky topic (with heavy moderation and no discussion) to post language specific keywords or acronyms.

Proper terms help in searches if you don't know the language.
Translating results is easy. Translating the questions (search queries) is not.

For example, if you google translate "painel de controlo" (portuguese) you get "control panel".
But searching for "dashboard" would also be useful.

I like your panorama site / book. I really hope you get it published.