NASA Probe Captures 1st Video of Moon's Far Side

reply to post by Phage
Is the altitude in these images this Orbiters flying altitude or is it the altitude zoomed in?
Did that make any sense?

reply to post by WeekendWarrior

I'm not sure what you mean. The Lunar Orbit cameras did not have a zoom.
The images from Lunar Orbiters were taken at altitudes of about 40 and 50 km.

Originally posted by Tutty
Has anyone realised no stars and lack of earth in this video?

Of course no stars appear. If your camera exposure is set to properly photograph a sun-lit object (such as our Moon, any moon, planet, Shuttle, ISS, etc.) stars will be too faint to show-up.

No, being outside the Earth's atmosphere doesn't help. The atmosphere only blocks 25 - 40% of the light.

>>> Edited to add: I just notice that at the beginning of the OP video, when the Moon is coming into view from the bottom of the image, the exposure is set so that you can see stars. However, this setting totally over-exposes the Moon. After a few seconds, the settings change - the image darkens so that we can see details on the lunar surface, but at the same time, the stars fade from view.

reply to post by Phage
So they were to find a smooth and safe landing spot for LM? And yet they are in 40-60km height. How can you see from that distance if the moon surface is smooth enough to land?
Unless they had a zoom and zoomed in photos are not available for public. And why would that be?

Anyway, where are all the real close shots from the moon..have not seen any

reply to post by WeekendWarrior


By "zoom" I meant an adjustable focal length. The high resolution images did use a telephoto lens. You can see the level of detail for yourself.

Here is one way to see the images from LROC, with images down to .25 meter resolution. That's the best you'll find and it's better than any satellite images you'll see of Earth.
wms.lroc.asu.edu...

Originally posted by WeekendWarrior
reply to post by Phage

 

So they were to find a smooth and safe landing spot for LM? And yet they are in 40-60km height. How can you see from that distance if the moon surface is smooth enough to land?
Unless they had a zoom and zoomed in photos are not available for public. And why would that be?

Anyway, where are all the real close shots from the moon..have not seen any

If you can't see adequately what you want from 40-60 km away, then how do you expect the Hubble ST to see from 360,000 to 400,000 km away? Seems you are just throwing darts to see what sticks.

reply to post by Illustronic
Same system it uses to see other planets.. Dumb*ss


Or bodies or galaxies..whatever!

reply to post by Phage
Sure. And Hubble high res images? And I think there was not all of the Lunar orbiter photos..
And how does this all have to do with OP? I think those Lunar orbiters should had photos of the far side too.

Where are all the hollow caverns and machines and alien bases and towering structures. Where, I ask!

reply to post by WeekendWarrior

And how does this all have to do with OP?

I don't know. You're the one that brought it up.

I think those Lunar orbiters should had photos of the far side too.

They do.

Originally posted by WeekendWarrior
reply to post by Phage

 

So they were to find a smooth and safe landing spot for LM? And yet they are in 40-60km height. How can you see from that distance if the moon surface is smooth enough to land?

It was a challenge. For Apollo 11 they chose the smoothest area they could find based on the resolution of the Lunar Orbiter photos. However, as luck would have it, this wasn't good enough. The autopilot tried to bring the Eagle down in a jagged crater & boulder field (Murphy's Law!). Neil Armstrong had to manually fly past it to find an acceptable area (and he nearly ran out of fuel doing so).

With experience, we learned that although the surface is mostly saturated with craters, just about any area had some smooth spots where a skilled pilot could safely land. Still, they had other close-calls. Dave Scott landed Apollo 15 with one leg in a crater, causing a substantial tilt after thay shut-off the engine (picture). This left the front footpad a couple of inches off the ground and wobbly. This caused Jim Irwin to lose his balance when he first came down the ladder, as seen in this video clip.

Anyway, where are all the real close shots from the moon..have not seen any

Phage's link to the LRO site will give you access to over 200,000 high-resolution (better than 70cm/pixel) images of the lunar surface. I would say that's a good start, wouldn't you?

reply to post by Phage


Thats actually a pretty impressive resource..Thank you for the link!
wms.lroc.asu.edu...

reply to post by azulejo


Pretty cool, how to pick the right forum...click on forums at the top then click on which category you think you thread would fit in. Then you click on New thread.

Originally posted by r3axion
How strange, the far side looks remarkably similar to the near side....

Really? Aside from it being round and generally crater-y, I think it looks remarkably different. The "front" side of the Moon has those large, dark maria sea areas which allow you to see the Man in the Moon. The backside is mostly craters and there are only a couple of smaller seas. Also, the far side of the Moon doesn't have Bob's Big Boy on it.

reply to post by Tutty


Unless someone already answered you.

The lack of stars is because the exposure is set for the very bright moon. Dark side does not mean that this side of the moon does not see light or reflect light it just means we on the surface of earth never see it directly. So in this image it is nearly a full moon on the other side, so to bright to see any twinkle stars...

So, some Lunar orbiter photos are missing, the "sky" and many parts of the photos very conviniently a big mess. And Hubble high res images of the moon missing.. Thats enough for me of the subject.
So I keep on waiting for the truth, hopefully russians get their moon programs going on full throttle and have balls to show us whats really going on there! NASA isnt going to do it.

Originally posted by WeekendWarrior
So, some Lunar orbiter photos are missing,

No they're not. All of them are available here. The highest-resolution images (

What I still dont understand is, they have crystal clear, color, sharp images of the earth, but every moon picture I see looks like a crappy black and white cartoon pic from a 1970's news paper.

The photos on the LRO website also look like low resolution digital reproductions. Am I asking too much? The moon as no atmosphere, the pictures should be spectacular even if they are taken from 40-50kms up. Maybe they used the camera from the old Star Trek series which they used to film the pretty women. Wasn't the lens coated in Vaseline to make them all dreamy?

Hasn't the military had satellite technology that can read a newspaper from space since the early 70's? The Hubble can see nearly to the end of the known universe (10's of thousands of light years?) but cant take a crisp hi-res photo of something as close as its door step?

If I wasn't so lazy I'd post a picture taken of the earth from the ISS and post it beside a "High Resolution" LRO photo of the moon.

Its no wonder people think there's a conspiracy going on.

reply to post by NOrrTH

You haven't been looking at the right images of the Moon.

The best satellite images we are allowed to see (by the DoD) have a resolution of .5 meters/pixel. The images from LROC meet and exceed that.

No. The military has no technology which can read a newspaper from space. The things that Hubble takes images of are very far away but they are also very, very large.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

The satellite picture on your link, compared to the Apollo 14 pic, looks sharper for some reason, even though its nearly the same resolution. Do you think the difference is color and/or the very unusual texture of the surface of the moon?