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

[Phil Stooke]

Here's a map of the lunar south polar region with a few sites added. LEx was a lander which competed for the LRO spare capacity opportunity eventually won by LCROSS. The background is the new radar image of the south pole from Arecibo, courtesy Campbell et al.

I have posted a version of this elsewhere (I can't find it now), but this version is corrected from that earlier one.

Phil

[pgrindrod]

hey all,

after ages of lurking (doesn't everyone say that?) i thought i would finally try and contribute something. the moon certainly isn't my speciality, but i've had fun with these images nonetheless.

while i was achiving some data at work i came across a microfiche from the apollo 15 metric mapping camera, which i hadn't seen before. fortunately for me and my scanner they are all online, with a lot of other apollo stuff, at lpi - have a look, it's a treasure trove.

i'm sure there are people here who can do the images more justice than i can, but i've had a bit of play around with the apollo 15 set anyway because i hadn't seen it used anywhere on here.

there are a few more on my webpage, but here's a low-res panorama (for me to learn how to post images if nothing else!)

apollo 15 rev 4 panorama


cheers,
pete

[Stu]

Very nice Pete, and welcome aboard UMSF!

[djellison]

For those wondering - that's Pete, previously seen here:
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=4139



Doug

[peter59]

Litte gift for all dissapointed by Smart-1 and Kaguya's fuzzy images.


Mariner 10 - one day after launch (November 1973).
Image FDS0002659


Mariner 10 - one day after launch (November 1973).
Image FDS0002667

[peter59]

.. and more


Mariner 10 - one day after launch (November 1973).
Image FDS0004637


Mariner 10 - one day after launch (November 1973).
Image FDS0002267

[PDP8E]

UMSFers,

Where can I find the complete image library of the Surveyor 3 mission?

(it returned ~10K images, i would like the hi res, hopefully calibrated, -etc...)

Does this exist on-line or do I need to order/buy it?

tnx !

[Phil Stooke]

It exists only in hard copy. You have to go to the LPI library, search the negatives and scan them.

Phil

[edstrick]

"Where can I find the complete image library of the Surveyor 3 mission"

Surveyor data was returned by slow-scan analog transmission and recorded on analog tape. A very small amount (punched card computing, almost no hard disk capability... this was 1966-68 or so) was digitized and image processed to sharpen and improve analog ghosting, etc, or for photometric/colorimetric analysis and reported in published papers. I doubt any of that exists anywhere findable and restorable and I have to assume no original analog data tapes of Surveyor images survive, or so close to none they scientifically don't count.

Images were recorded by some sort of data-recorder camera that had essentially a high precision slow-scan TV, and the slowly rendered single-frame image raster was exposed directly onto film.

What I'd like to know is the location and status of such FIRST GENERATION film negatives. They are the primary and original data record.

[Phil Stooke]

They would be either at JPL or at the National Space Science Data Center at Goddard.

Phil

[tedstryk]

Cool images, Peter. Mariner 10 really did have an incredible imaging system. It was the first planetary spacecraft with a vidicon system that used a blast of light to get rid of after-images (Viking and Voyager also did this), which makes the image quality much better.

I will say that the Kayuga images we have seen from the science cameras have been quite sharp - we should see more in the future, since Kayuga began its official science mission in the last few days. The images we have been seeing are mostly from the engineering cameras and the HDTV camera, which is there for PR purposes.

[peter59]

Apollo 15 landing site observed by Mariner 10. Mount Hadley and Delta Hadley are clearly visible.


Image FDS0002285 (November 1973)

[PDP8E]

Phil & Ed

thanks for the replies...it just seems short sighted not to transfer these historic data sets to a digital format.


I will gladly fill out the grant papers to do this multi-year task!

cheers!

[Phil Stooke]

The Surveyor images are archived on negatives at LPI, along with numerous photos of assembled mosaics, many of which come with frame index number overlays. They would help you locate individual frames. But it's a bit of a mess. Surveyor was quickly overshadowed by Apollo and people lost interest - of course, there wasn't an amateur image processing community in those days.

To my mind the most dramatic and interesting early product to make with Surveyor 3 images would be a wide-angle panoramic view shot in the first couple of days after landing. The systematic high resolution imaging I used for my pan was shot late, with high sun and no shadows, so it's very bland. There might be some good coverage at high resolution from early in the mission as well.

Phil

[nprev]

But it's a bit of a mess. Surveyor was quickly overshadowed by Apollo and people lost interest - of course, there wasn't an amateur image processing community in those days.

Phil

What an incredible shame...but also a call to arms for all you imagesmiths out there. I wonder if NASA would react favorably to an organized amateur (and, boy do I use that term loosely here) effort to digitally preserve images from the first Golden Age of UMSF?