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Lunar Spacecraft Images, A place for moon panoramas, mosaics etc.
Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Feb 12 2006, 06:11 AM
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The Soviets remarked on that slight post-landing shift at the time. I imagine it was very delicately balanced on a pebble, and the slight vibration from the rotating camera head dislodged it.
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tedstryk
post Feb 12 2006, 03:02 PM
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QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Feb 12 2006, 06:11 AM) *
The Soviets remarked on that slight post-landing shift at the time. I imagine it was very delicately balanced on a pebble, and the slight vibration from the rotating camera head dislodged it.


I read about that, but I always assumed it was in the seconds after landing, not a slow progression.


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Bob Shaw
post Feb 12 2006, 08:59 PM
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QUOTE (tedstryk @ Feb 12 2006, 03:02 PM) *
I read about that, but I always assumed it was in the seconds after landing, not a slow progression.


No; it was well after landing, and was detected via doppler shift by the Jodrell Bank radio telescope. The fact that it moved made front page headlines in the UK Daily Express, which newspaper had provided Sir Bernard Lovell with a fax machine to print the images. It was as a result of the proportions on the machine being set to standard settings that the Phil-O-Vision surface images came to be. FWIW, in those days fax machines were built round big spinning cylinders and weighed about as much as two journalists!

Bob Shaw


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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Feb 12 2006, 11:48 PM
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These days fax machines weigh about as two journalists, too -- albeit in the figurative sense.
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Phil Stooke
post Feb 13 2006, 12:21 AM
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Doppler, Bob? That doesn't sound right. I'm wiling to be proved wrong, but I can't see it being right.

I guess we ought to rename the old vertical exaggeration technique Bernie-Vision. Pity.

Phil


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Bob Shaw
post Feb 13 2006, 12:26 AM
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QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Feb 13 2006, 12:21 AM) *
Doppler, Bob? That doesn't sound right. I'm wiling to be proved wrong, but I can't see it being right.

I guess we ought to rename the old vertical exaggeration technique Bernie-Vision. Pity.

Phil


Phil:

It's certainly what they said at the time - I was looking at some press cuttings just a few weeks ago. Perhaps they reported a false positive which turned out positive...

...I really *must* scan the things and post them here!

Bob Shaw


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tedstryk
post Feb 13 2006, 01:05 AM
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Here is a version I am working on flattening out. Also, a version in which I have artifically expanded the sun glare to hide the missing part of the horizon.



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edstrick
post Feb 13 2006, 02:04 AM
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I have long looked at the Luna 9 pans and compared them to Surveyor and Apollo pans, and I've been convinced that Luna 9 did *NOT* land in normal mare terrain. The site does not at all resemble the typical flat inter-crater terrain imaged by Surveyor 1, Luna 13 or Apollo 11

The entire terrain around the spacecraft is "rumpled" and rolling-hummocky. The site it resembles most is the Apollo 14 site on the Cayley deposits of Imbrium Ejecta.

Either it landed within a cluster of secondary craters, on low relief highland edge terrain, or on a wrinkle ridge like the one on Surveyor 6's horizon.
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Phil Stooke
post Feb 13 2006, 03:55 AM
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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


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ljk4-1
post Feb 13 2006, 05:21 AM
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Would it be possible to use the Surveyor solar panels as laser reflectors?


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"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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edstrick
post Feb 13 2006, 05:56 AM
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Luna 9 might be in that cluster of secondaries at the south of your candidate landing circle or the rough terrain (probably more secondaries) by the wrinkle ridge at the right edge of the circle, but another good candidate would be that embayed region of uplands just to the left of the candidate circle. The isolated hills and crater further west would probably be below the local horizon and not noticed. Granted, statistically, any mare surface contains regions of more hummocky and irregular terrain, mostly associated with secondary impacts.
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djellison
post Feb 13 2006, 08:54 AM
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QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Feb 13 2006, 05:21 AM) *
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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Bob Shaw
post Feb 13 2006, 12:20 PM
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QUOTE (djellison @ Feb 13 2006, 08:54 AM) *
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


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ljk4-1
post Feb 13 2006, 01:55 PM
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QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Feb 13 2006, 07:20 AM) *
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


Perhaps someone should recheck the TLP (Transient Lunar Phenomena) records for any such
unusual glints from the various landing sites.

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~rhill/alpo/lunarstuff/ltp.html

http://www.mufor.org/tlp/lunar.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_lunar_phenomenon

http://www.ltpresearch.org/

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/1837/

Wouldn't it be ironic if the Surveyor 2 and/or 4 solar panels happen to fall just right....


--------------------
"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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Phil Stooke
post Feb 13 2006, 04:22 PM
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What about the optical reflectivity of the high gain antenna?

I know nothing about this, but my concern about the solar panel is that I might expect it to be left pointing at the horizon - either west for end of day power or east in case it survived the night, for morning power. Apollo 12 images of Surveyor 3, for instance, show the solar panel facing west at a steep angle, but the antenna nearly (probably exactly) perpendicular to the Earth line of sight. I don't know the limits of motion of the panel, either, but I assume it tracked the sun to some extent. Anyway, the antennae might give glints near full moon, if they are reasonably reflective. I've never heard anybody discuss this... there might be equal or better chances for glints off ALSEP or other surfaces as well.

Phil


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... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.

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