Imaging Team Achieve World Record Image

An incredibly ambitious project to create the largest ground-based mosaic image of the Moon, and enter the Guinness Book of Records, has finally delivered a staggering final shot.

A team of people, comprising of some of the world's foremost astro imagers, gathered at the home of Sir Patrick Moore in April this year. Using specialist astronomy cameras with high-end amateur telescopes and special software to compile and mosaic the frames, they have created an image which has eclipsed any other so far taken of the Moon by ground-based astronomers.

The team submitted close to 1000 panes from the individual image runs, with close to 1.2 million frames of video captured, totalling 1.1 terabytes of data. These image panes were individually stitched by each team member who then submitted their region to David Mason for final compositing into the final image. The images which make up the final master were selected based on their overall quality. A significant amount of overlap was used. In total, the image shown here utilises a total of 288 high resolution panes. The end result is a high resolution 87.4 megapixel image of the Moon, larger even then previous images taken by some of the world's largest observatories, allowing features as small as 1km to be clearly seen.

www.lunarworldrecord.com...

Features as small as 1km ???? WOW !!!
Does that mean we ill finally get to see the Lunar landing sites way before the planned NASA attempt to photograph these areas?

What other images could we find on this new scale?

Will this debunk or prove many of the threads here on ATS and other internet sites?

Just what will this reveal about our orbiting neighbour?

I think this is a monumental achievement and should get more credit than just an entry in the record books...

No doubt ATS will make massive use of this image..

I am yet to have a look at it... Couldn't resist posting about it...

reply to post by Extralien

1 km is not very high resolution. The lunar rovers are 3 meters long. There is no telescope on Earth (or in space) which can resolve any sign of the lunar landings.


[edit on 7/11/2009 by Phage]

Originally posted by Phage
There is no telescope on Earth (or in space) which can resolve any sign of the lunar landings.[edit on 7/11/2009 by Phage]

Which is odd considering we can take images of distant galaxies, so why not things that are a little closer to home?

reply to post by warrenb

Again?

The best telescope built by humanity to date is the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) currently in orbit around Earth. This telescope has a maximum resolution of 0.014 arc seconds. If the HST were aimed at the Moon, it would be able to resolve objects no smaller than 27 meters (88.5 feet) across. Each of the Apollo landers is only about 5 meters (16.5 feet) across and much too small to be seen by Hubble. An example of the resolution that the HST can provide is shown in the following image taken of the crater Copernicus.

www.aerospaceweb.org...

Just because it can see things that are far away doesn't mean it can see things that are small and far away.

[edit on 7/11/2009 by Phage]

Here you can view the image by zooming in at any area of it, very cool btw.

www.lunarworldrecord.com...

There are other ways of detecting lunar rovers or whatever, such as, spectrometry. If you analyze the light coming from that particular area, you will find peaks corresponding to materials used in its body.

reply to post by rocksolidbrain
I agree rock,I've just been downloading some pics from there,super detail.

reply to post by Extralien


This is a pretty picture of the Moon, and how they pieced this photo together is impressive -- but as ATS member Phage has indicated in his post, 1 km resolution is not that great.

The LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter), which is taking pictures of the Moon right now, has the capability to take pictures in a resolution 1000 times better than this. The LRO will be able resolve objects less than one meter in size, rather than a kilometer.

Here is a link to the official website for the people who are running the LRO's camera, including some of the first images from LRO. When LRO becomes fully operational, the cameras should be able to resolve the equipment left by Apollo.:
lroc.sese.asu.edu...


[edit on 7/11/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

[edit on 7/11/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by Extralien


This is the best closeup of the moon i'v seen so far until we get some images from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter so thankyou for that

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


23 days and still no pics of the lunar landing sites. NASA certainly isn't in a hurry to provide us with any proof of their most incredible achievement. Everyone was saying the camera's had to warm up or something before.. they seem to be working ok now.

Have NASA even hinted when they intend to finally provide us with some visual proof of how they spent all our money 40 yrs ago?

reply to post by VitalOverdose


Well, they have said they were going to photograph the Apollo sites -- I suppose that's a "hint" that they will do it.

The fact that they are not tripping over themselves, clamoring to get the Apollo sites photographed in a hurry to appease a conspiracy-minded portion of the public does not mean that they won't do it.

The Moon is big and the Apollo equipment is small. Perhaps there are other targets higher on their list of priorities. Perhaps the LRO's orbit has not yet carried it over a landing site that is bathed in the proper light. Perhaps they have taken a photo of a landing site, but are waiting until July 20th (the 40th anniversary of Armstrong's and Aldrin's moonwalk) to release the photo.

There are plenty valid reasons why we haven't seen a landing site yet. I know if I was someone in charge of the LRO, my first priority would not necessarily be to simply appease someone. The future of manned visits to the Moon is riding on the science that LRO will perform...let them do that science.

LRO's primary mission is not simply to take pretty pictures for the public to see (although the ones I've seen so far have been very nice).

Does anyone have an explanation for the object in the middle of the crater at the bottom right? It is casting a very long shadow to the left.

Originally posted by rocksolidbrain
Here you can view the image by zooming in at any area of it, very cool btw.

www.lunarworldrecord.com...

There are other ways of detecting lunar rovers or whatever, such as, spectrometry. If you analyze the light coming from that particular area, you will find peaks corresponding to materials used in its body.

I wanted to quote this so that it would possibly be read again. This is a very good point.

Apply this same logic to "airbrushing". You would suppose that you might be able to find similar traces that would indicate when an area is falsely colored or masked, right?

reply to post by rocksolidbrain

Minor, but still important point. You would actually look for troughs, not peaks. Since a spectroanalysis from Earth would use reflected light you would be looking for absorption rather than emission spectra. This is why the LROC impact will be much more useful than simply doing a spectrographic analysis of the surface. LROC will vaporize the material at the impact site, causing it emit energy. The spectral analysis of that energy will tell us what the material in that specific (and very limited) area is composed of. Maybe they should drop the impactor on Tranquility Base, that would surely be more interesting than some crater at the south pole (kidding).

In attempting an analysis of reflected light from the moon you end up with the same problem as in visual imaging, the matter of resolution. The light which you are analyzing comes from a large area. The results of the analysis are going to be no more than an average of the materials found in that area. The predominant minerals simply overwhelm the evidence of any small deposits (or objects) within the field of view.


[edit on 7/11/2009 by Phage]

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


Thanks, im dying to see them. I wonder just how many hits NASA are going to get the day they make them available for download?

Originally posted by John Matrix
Does anyone have an explanation for the object in the middle of the crater at the bottom right? It is casting a very long shadow to the left.

If you are talking about this crater...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/6f88ec70e733.jpg[/atsimg]
...then that's Moretus Crater. Moretus Crater has a 2 km tall mountain in the center of it, and that's what is casting the shadow. The shadow is long because the crater is located at one of the poles (the South Pole). Therefore the sun's rays will be at very oblique angles there, creating the very long shadows. There are many other long shadows at the poles, and along the terminator line.

The shadow cast by the mountain in the middle of Moretus doesn't seem much longer than the shadow cast by the crater walls to the east, therefore the mountain is probably about the same height as the crater walls.


[edit on 7/11/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by Phage


Yes, thats right, absorption spectrum would imply troughs.
If I'm not wrong, I read of a method where the light from a broader area is passed through a very very fine slit, similar to scanning, which pinpoints the emitting object and gets rid of noise from surrounding area. (For moon, the area would be few squares of Km).

So one scan across and one down, and you have the coordinates. If they find signatures of rubber, plastic and such (man made stuff), within error limits, its there, else things remain inconclusive.

Why is it necessary to detect rover from ground independently ?
Because the moonlandinghoax crowd can always say the images from LRO are also manipulated and the rovers were photoshopped in.

When I pulled this up, I immediately noticed and found it interesting that roughly 25-50% of the larger craters have objects in their direct center.

I then figured these could be objects rolling into the divots, but ruled that out because of the gravity situation on the moon (why would objects roll on the surface?).

Then I read about them being mountains- and I'll admit I figured them to be "rocks", not taking into account the resolution of the photos.

However, my inquiry still stands- why is it that these mountainous formations are coming into fruition at the direct centers of these huge craters??

reply to post by ninecrimes

It's sort of a rebound effect of the impact which creates the crater.
www.lpi.usra.edu...

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by ninecrimes

 

It's sort of a rebound effect of the impact which creates the crater.
www.lpi.usra.edu...

...just like a water droplet:



[edit on 7/13/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


Wow that LROC has amazing image quality, but its all dark pictures. First picture I looked at I found something odd in this pic:

wms.lroc.asu.edu...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/382fcfcbd1dc.jpg[/atsimg]
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/866eae10b829.jpg[/atsimg]
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/945172cdd733.jpg[/atsimg]

So intresting what shadows can uhh.. create.