High-definition video of the moon
Old-school bOING bOING pal Jim Leftwich points to startling new high definition video of the moon released by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NHK. The images were taken by the lunar explorer Kaguya on Halloween. Breathtaking. I would love to see this footage at full resolution on a huge screen. From JAXA:
...It is the world's first high definition image data acquisition of the Moon from an altitude about 100 kilometers away from the Moon.Link
The image taking was performed twice on October 31. Both were eight-fold speed intermittent shooting (eight minutes is converged to one minute.) The first shooting covered from the northern area of the "Oceanus Procellarum" toward the center of the North Pole, then the second one was from the south to the north on the western side of the "Oceanus Procellarum." The moving image data acquired by the KAGUYA was received at the JAXA Usuda Deep Space Center, and processed by NHK.
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Is the footage good enough to zoom in on the remnants of the Apollo lander, perhaps debunking all those "moon-landing-was-a-hoax" theorists?
(Yeah, I know, even that wouldn't prove anything for most of them).
Usuda space center is up in the hills above the city I teach in english. I went there at night and it is quite an impressive dish. Here is a so-so pic of the dish at night. It is HUGE!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8046739@N07/1687455741/in/set-72157602603352892/
Ill Lich:
No. From Wikipedia:
What's left on the moon (from Apollo) are lander bases, and they're about 9.5 meters across. So at best, Selene will give you one gray pixel that you can point to and say, "that's Apollo." Maybe they can get a picture of a long shadow, but even that will only be two or three pixels.
The resolution is estimated at about 12m per pixel.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:SELENE )
Also, the Apollo 15 lander was spotted by the Clementine probe in 2001.
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/apollo15_touchdown_photos_010427.html
http://www.tass-survey.org/richmond/answers/lunar_lander.html
However, if the original photos are faked, then why can't more photos be faked? With conspiracy theories such as the moon landing, finding evidence that disproves it only increases the complexity of the conspiracy, to no end.
10m per pixel? Isn't that small for a HDTV recording from 100km up? I assume that's at full telephoto.
So when are countries that are not the US sending up 1m per pixel resolution camera orbiters so the naysayers can finally be put to bed? ;)
This footage is fantastic - but it's amazing how stark black the shadow areas are on the second part of the vid, just a total contrast from defined mountains and craters to.... black. I'd almost expect the non-sunlit surfaces (ie, the shadow areas) to still be lit by some reflection of the sun-lit sides of the crater holes.
Holy beautiful, Batman!
This is beautiful....
I can't believe that since we have had so many human beings blast off from this neighborly rock,... that NOBODY has gotten closer than this in 30 years.... I mean,....yeah,.. "I want to know what spring is like on Jupiter & Mars". Let's finaly make a begining and create Clarke's Cylinder and Heinlin's Sphere!
Oops,. I guess I meant DYSON...
...The sad thing is that over on the sci.space groups, the anti-NASA trolls have already started off on how this sort of spectacular video is a waste of tax dollars, scientific bandwidth, and/or causing the ozone layer to melt and give whales and albino salamanders skin cancer simply by providing pretty pictures.
Screw'em. JAXA did good on this one. All they need to do is to expose the Tycho Monolith, and all will be well...:-)
to OM:
Couldn't agree more, this is brilliant stuff. :)
I think the near-future of space exploration and astronomy are going to see amazing advances (and we have a front row seat). This is a great send-off for the renewed interest in the moon shown by many countries and science agencies.
Big mistake to do it in HD - now you can totally see the black scrim in the background.
So how can I download this?
I want a high rez version so i can play it on my DVD player.
someone have a torrent?
This is indeed AWESOME but where is the downloadable version? I want to see this on a size larger that the couple of inches across...
I don't mean to be fussy, but the title of the article says the video is in HD. In fact, the camera at the moon is HD, but the video on the Web site is far less than DVD quality. It's still beautiful, but I was *really* hoping for some nice 1080p AVC video... Guess I'll have to wait for NHK to release a Blu-ray Disc or somethin'.
Watch part of the HD video online in actual online HD:
http://www.discoverychannel.ca/shows/showdetails.aspx?sid=5180