Reprocessing Historical Images, Looking for REALLY big challenges? Options

[Phil Stooke]

Thanks, Ted and Doug.

I think one message from Apollo and this image is that, with people in the loop, you can land pretty much anywhere. A lot of the site selection work for Apollo was based on finding the smoothest, safest places to land. But the pilots (I should really say the Commanders) could find reasonable places to touch down almost anywhere. I expect the next crews to land will have more hover time and better visibility, and will be able to go to places that were ruled out for Apollo.

This mosaic shows what is possible if anybody wants to dig into the rather nasty Surveyor archives at LPI or elsewhere.

Phil

[Bob Shaw]

That is remarkable, Phil.  It's the way I've always wanted to see that particular vista.  And I'm struck by the fact that an Apollo J mission would have had no particular problem operating in such an area -- there are abundant patches of relatively flat terrain suitable for landing a LM, and I don't see any slopes that an LRV would have had problems with.  It wouldn't have been any harder to carry out a J mission here than it was at, say, Descartes.

-the other Doug

Doug:

When you take the 'playa' pools of ponded lava into account, there may have been areas which were totally flat, too - I wonder how the orientation of the playas would have tied in with the descent trajectory of the LM? There are even such flat areas within Tycho itself, and I suspect that they would have been - and still are -the only possible landing sites inside the crater.

I just bought 'Lunar Panorama' and it has some excellent Lunar Orbiter images of Tycho in it, which I'll scan and post here in the next few days.

Bob Shaw

[Bob Shaw]

Phil:

Well did!

Bob Shaw

[Phil Stooke]

Mercy Buckets, Bob.

The playa feature is just off my mosaic to the right. In fact you can clearly see how the ground slopes down towards it. But as far as I can tell, the flat, cracked, playa floor was not visible from Surveyor 7. It must have been just slightly below the level of a nearer ridge, which formed the southern rim of the playa depression.

Phil

[edstrick]

Bob Shaw: "I just bought 'Lunar Panorama' and it has some excellent Lunar Orbiter images of Tycho in it...

Aren't Lowman's books great!..... Best versions of some of the 1960's space imagery ever published... and *INTELLIGENT* captions.

[Phil Stooke]

Since people liked the Surveyor 7 pic, here's another. This is a raw scan, I haven't cleaned it up. But the last image was very well known, and this one I can almost guarantee nobody has ever seen before. Tantalizing, eh?

This view looks at the same area as the last one, north of Surveyor 7 where a range of hills forms the horizon. But the light is lunar evening instead of lunar morning in the other one. A deep shadow falls into the Playa area.



I JPG'd it rather heavily to make it postable at full size. I have a full pan like this, except that glare from the sun blocks the view to the west. The over-contrasty nature of the image was in the original print. THis was scanned at USGS Flagstaff. Thanks Adrienne!

PS if all goes as we think now, my Surveyor pan files will soon be on the web...

Phil

[Bob Shaw]

Bob Shaw:  "I just bought 'Lunar Panorama' and it has some excellent Lunar Orbiter images of Tycho in it...

Aren't Lowman's books great!..... Best versions of some of the 1960's space imagery ever published... and *INTELLIGENT* captions.

Yes... ...a bit dated, though, insofar as volcanoes are still in the frame *everywhere* rather than *rarely* (if you see what I mean). The images are stunning, and the interpretations of the landforms are always interesting (even when perhaps slightly outdated).

[Bob Shaw]

Here are the scans I promised, taken from Paul D Lowman, Jr's 1969 book Lunar Panorama (pictures 11, 12, 13, 14 and 17). The originals are all B&W, and I've added in coloured numbers to the annotated images just where the original annotations were printed so that you can find the things. All these (except 12) are at 25% of max resolution, so if anyone wants bigger and better then e-mail me and you can have the 100% 300dpi scans. There are also a number of images of individual surface rocks, too, but I've not scanned them as yet.

There are some interesting Surveyor 3 and 5 images in the book too, which I'll scan in a few days.

Bob Shaw
shaw_bob@hotmail.com

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[tedstryk]

Here are the scans I promised, taken from Paul D Lowman, Jr's 1969 book Lunar Panorama (pictures 11, 12, 13, 14 and 17). The originals are all B&W, and I've added in coloured numbers to the annotated images just where the original annotations were printed so that you can find the things). All these (except 12) are at 25% of max resolution, so if anyone wants bigger and better then e-mail me and you can have the 100% 300dpi scans.  There are also a number of images of individual surface rocks, too, but I've not scanned them as yet.

There are some interesting Surveyor 3 and 5 images in the book too, which I'll scan in a few days.

Bob Shaw
shaw_bob@hotmail.com

Those images of Tycho are some of the best imagery from the program. I always thought it a shame that they are usually portrayed in a very degraded form.

[Dominik]

I've got a question.

What program can be used to process those RAW pictures from Viking, Voyager, etc. at best?

I know that there is a program, called ISIS, but I'm running windows xp and that program is for Linux only.

[tedstryk]

I've got a question.

What program can be used to process those RAW pictures from Viking, Voyager, etc. at best?

I know that there is a program, called ISIS, but I'm running windows xp and that program is for Linux only.

I do most of my work in Photoshop.

[tedstryk]

I have finally gotten around to playing with Surveyor stuff. Here is a small Surveyor 7 mosaic. Phil, I am more impressed with your work than ever - this is one hard data set to use!


I have also been working on the part of the Luna-9 pan that was originally released by the British after being intercepted by Jodrell Bank's radio antenae. This view is produced using data from three scans at varying illuminations. It has also been somewhat corrected for the fact that Luna 9 did not land on flat ground. While this image is produced from views taken under very low solar illumination and is of relatively poor quality, it is the first scene from another world seen by the people of earth, save a few Soviet scientists who had the whole pan and were preparing it for release. The original Jodrell Bank release was essentially in Phil-O-Vision, due to an error in their understanding of how the imaging system worked. It made the moon look like the craggyl place of 1950's science fiction.

[lyford]

Just want to break in to say great work everyone! This is becoming one of my favorite threads.... but then again I can be a nostalgic person...

[tedstryk]

I have used Apollo color and a bit more processing on the Luna 9 scene. While it isn't even up to Surveyor quality, this scene is important to me, as I said, because for most of the world, it was the first extra-terrestrial panorama seen by humankind, thanks to Jodrell bank.

[GregM]

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