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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

Click to view attachment
um3k
QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Jun 6 2005, 03:49 PM)
I'm supposed to be working...
*

Aren't we all! laugh.gif
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



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

Click to view attachment

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
djellison
It shows the comparative 'resolving power' quite well though

ESA is quite shocking really - it's beginning to gte annoying.

Doug
ilbasso
Of course, the other-other possibility is that this is the ONLY picture that SMART-1 has taken lately. (yeah, right!!) tongue.gif
Bob Shaw
We saw the Huygens images (albeit with all sorts of caveats, but personally that's no grief!) fairly quickly as a result of ESA's liaisons with various universities and some creative accounting (be quiet, Doug!). I wonder whether there are any public resources out there which happen to have Mars Express and SMART-1 images casually available to the academic community, and which we might make some (reasonably informed, if not tenured) comments upon?

It's like pullin' teef, innit?
djellison
Well - the MEX data is slowly getting put in an online archive, but my GOD it's awkward to use.

Doug
Phil Stooke
Here's my latest image from the Jurassic period of lunar exploration.

Surveyor 6 - view to the northeast. It shows the landscape lit by a high sun after the 'hop' - and so we see two footpad imprints from the initial landing, plus the effects of rocket firing on the surface. The color chart on the omnidirectional antenna is splattered with dirt.

Phil

Click to view attachment
tedstryk
QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Feb 10 2006, 09:41 PM)
Here's my latest image from the Jurassic period of lunar exploration.

Surveyor 6 - view to the northeast.  It shows the lanscape lit by a high sun after the 'hop' - and so we see two footpad imprints from the initial landing, plus the effects of rocket firing on the surface.  The color chart on the omnidirectional antenna is splattered with dirt.

Phil

Click to view attachment
*

Great work!
Bernard
Superb!!!
I really wait for your book;

Thanks
edstrick
<grins and applauds the Surveyor mosaics> So much better than the raw stuff!
Bob Shaw
QUOTE (Bernard @ Feb 11 2006, 11:04 AM)
Superb!!!
I really wait for your book;

Thanks
*


Yes; Phil should kindly bring forward the publishing date to, say, yesterday!

Bob shaw
Phil Stooke
-Puff!- I'm working as fast as I can! -puff!- that one image took three weeks to make... and it's only one sixth of the entire panorama...

Plus... I just discovered a map of a proposed radio observatory in Tsiolkovsky crater, and I have to see if I can squeeze it in. And I have to wait for SMART-1's impact so I can map that... and I'm hoping the Chandrayaan-1 impact taget will be known in the summer so I can include that - Aaargh! It never ends.

Phil
Bob Shaw
QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Feb 11 2006, 09:38 PM)
-Puff!- I'm working as fast as I can!  -puff!- that one image took three weeks to make... and it's only one sixth of the entire panorama...

Plus... I just discovered a map of a proposed radio observatory in Tsiolkovsky crater, and I have to see if I can squeeze it in.  And I have to wait for SMART-1's impact so I can map that... and I'm hoping the Chandrayaan-1 impact taget will be known in the summer so I can include that - Aaargh! It never ends.

Phil
*


Phil:

Luxury...

Bob Shaw
Phil Stooke
You're right, Bob.

Phil
tedstryk
Here is some progress on my Luna 9 work. Enjoy!





Interestingly enough, the Luna 9 camera position slowly changes, making it difficult to merge data from the pans. Either the craft is slowly settling or tipping, or the camera is sinking. This is illustrated in the slight change in position between pans 2 and 3. The part of the spacecraft in the forground gives great context, but unfortunately washes out the whole scene in pan 1. But nowhere is the motion more obvious.

RNeuhaus
The view on Moon surface is somewhat strange to me. Not like to the Earth colors since we have atmosphere which difracts the light into many colors that in the Moon does not happen. Staying in the Moon is like to take pictures of blank and white. Is not it? Maybe, we will se some gray colors too?

Rodolfo
Phil Stooke
Very nice, Ted. The spacecraft tilted slightly between each pan - I don't know if anyone knows why. I also made a composite view of all three.

One interesting thing to try is to copy out the six thin vertical strips which were viewed in the three dihedral mirrors, reverse them and try to match their positions on the pans. I got some of them but not all. It was an ingenious attempt to measure topography from the thin slices of surface viewed from two positions. Some of the mirror strips add details below the bottom of the main panorama.

Phil
BruceMoomaw
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.
tedstryk
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.
Bob Shaw
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
BruceMoomaw
These days fax machines weigh about as two journalists, too -- albeit in the figurative sense.
Phil Stooke
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
Bob Shaw
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
tedstryk
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.

edstrick
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.
Phil Stooke
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
ljk4-1
Would it be possible to use the Surveyor solar panels as laser reflectors?
edstrick
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.
djellison
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
Bob Shaw
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
ljk4-1
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....
Phil Stooke
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
AndyG
QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Feb 13 2006, 12:20 PM) *
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!


They do: I see it's about mag -8 at the maximum.

But that distance is killer #1: an iridium flare at lunar distances, compared to the 780km orbit of the satellite, will be about one quarter million times dimmer. Killer #2 is the size and finish of the panels - they're not polished metal as with the Iridium satellites, they're designed specifically as light-absorbing materials. Being generous, let's say they're ten times dimmer. Killer #3 is that they are (as you state) three to four times smaller. So we're dealing with a transient flash perhaps ten million times dimmer than mag -8, which is equal in magnitude to +9.5. Not bright - especially against a lunar background.

The final nail in the coffin, as I see it, is that the angle of the panels are not known with any great precision. At the Moon's distance the Earth only subtends 2 degrees. Iridium flares on the Earth are very localised: just a few miles can take you from a "wow" flare to a "ok, so I saw it" one - I can see that it would be extremely likely for any equivalent lunar flares to miss the Earth completely, for all (or a huge amount) of the time.

Shame though. :-)

Andy
Bob Shaw
Andy and Phil:

I take your points - but remember the famous Mars flashes, from about 150 times further away?

It may well be that nothing is visible, but it's worth a little thought - it'd be great if something *was* seen!

If the Surveyor solar panels (not counting the failures, which are probably debris) were arranged to face the morning or evening sun (depending on when the vehicles turned off) then I wonder whether there might be glints visible from Lunar orbit? One problem might be predicting where the darn things are pointing - as I'm sure you know, Surveyor 3 woke up enough to try to take TV pictures *after* it lost contact with Earth (the vidicon tube was damaged by UV as a result of a filter opening, although it was closed when the spacecraft was last in touch with the ground, so it must have decided to do it all by itself!) so perhaps the solar panels are at some utterly unknown angle!

Bob Shaw
dvandorn
QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Feb 13 2006, 12:33 PM) *
Andy and Phil:

I take your points - but remember the famous Mars flashes, from about 150 times further away?

Ahh, but I have it from reliable sources that a Professor Pearson from Princeton University has identified those Mars flashes as vast explosions of hydrogen gas. While these may seem unusual, they are more than likely simply the result of volcanic activity, and shouldn't concern us in any way...

biggrin.gif

-the other Doug
edstrick
Nah..... not hydrogen.

Methane!
Phil Stooke
"Surveyor 3 woke up enough to try to take TV pictures *after* it lost contact with Earth (the vidicon tube was damaged by UV as a result of a filter opening, although it was closed when the spacecraft was last in touch with the ground, so it must have decided to do it all by itself!) so perhaps the solar panels are at some utterly unknown angle!

Bob Shaw"


Yes, Bob, but Apollo 12 photos show us the orientation now.

Phil
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