LOIRP releases four new images
LOII-162-H3; image credit: LOIRP
This is a re-release of Life Magazine’s “Image of the Century” from 1966. The performance of our hardware and software image processing methods has been significantly enhanced to remove some of the banding artifacts that are derived from imperfections in the spacecraft image scanning hardware.
This image of Copernicus crater was taken from a spacecraft altitude of 45 km (27.1 miles) and is approximately 207.7 km (~125 miles) to the center of the image. An interesting aspect to this image is that with this oblique view, recent impacts of small craters have much more brightness than older craters of the same size. This suggests the value of oblique photography in doing crater aging studies as well as multispectral remote sensing of excavated materials from the craters.
You can download the full resolution image [505 MB tiff} here.
LOII-162-H2; image credit: LOIRP
This image is the second subframe of a three subframe set that makes up the high resolution frame LOII-162. This is a nearer field image and the top of this image is the continuation of the bottom of LOII-162-H3. The unnamed interesting crater in the upper left does not show up well in vertical views of this region of the Moon. Direction wise, this scene is southward of the H3 subframe. The light regolith blankets around newer craters are very easy to denote in this image.
You can download the full resolution image [758 MB tiff} here.
LOII-162-H1; image credit: LOIRP
The image LOII-162-H1 completes the three subframe set of the famous image of Copernicus. This oblique view of this region of the Moon shows the northern plains of Tranquility, about 50 kilometers north of the Apollo 11 and 12 landing sites.
You can download the full resolution image [2.37 GB tiff} here.
LOII-162-M; image credit: LOIRP
This is the medium resolution image of the set of LOII-162. This completes the set of Lunar Orbiter II Frame 162 Images. This image looks north toward Copernicus and was taken with the 8” camera on the LOII spacecraft.
You can download the full resolution image [571 MB tiff} here.
LOV-027-H2; image credit: LOIRP
This is one of the special images from the Lunar Orbiter program. This image was taken
of the Earth on August 8, 1967.
This is one of only three images of the Earth taken from the five lunar orbiter spacecraft. In its full resolution form, you can easily see Sicily, Cyprus, the Caspian Sea, lake Bakial, and other features such as the Nile delta. The Chinese coast is visible on the upper right as well as India and Ceylon in the center of the image. In the lower right the Indonesian islands are also visible. The estimated resolution of the image on the Earth is approximately 5 kilometers. This helps to justify the concept of an Earth facing camera system sited on the lunar surface as it would be a very stable platform with the opportunity for frequent upgrades of any telescope there. The Lunar Orbiter high resolution camera has a 24” optic. With some of the technologies available for large mirrors on the Moon, some interesting Earth remote sensing is possible.
You can download the full resolution image [1.07 GB tiff} here.
Future Images
LOIRP is going to go back and capture the rest of the lunar orbiter IV images of the south and north polar regions in order to support the LCROSS mission. A montage image will be made to incorporate all of the LO-IV southern polar images into one mosaic. Further work is contingent on future funding.
Posted by: Soderman/NLSI Staff
Source: LOIRP
