China Reveals First Chang’e-2 Photos! November 10, 2010
Posted by Nick Azer in : Chang'e, Chang'e-2, China, selenography, Sinus Iridium (Bay of Rainbows), Wen Jiabao , 5commentsChina has released the first photos from it’s recently-launched Chang’e-2 lunar orbiter!
Released with some fanfare (that’s the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, there. [Editor's note: originally had Jiabao as the "head of state"; that would actually be the president, Hu Jintao, not the premier, Jiabao]), the images get more or less straight to the point: they’re of the Bay of Rainbows (Sinus Iridium), which China has slated to be the potential landing location of it’s Chang’e-3 rover mission.
The images include a 3-D map, and have a resolution of ~1.3 meters (for comparison, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has resolution up to 1 m [PDF]).
Check out the official Chinese release page for all the images :) (A rough translation notes the last image is labeled as “antarctic”, so it’s unclear if that’s also a Bay of Rainbows crater, or one near the lunar south pole.)
LRO Image of the Week: The Rolling Stones Wish You Were Here? May 23, 2010
Posted by Nick Azer in : Apollo, LRO Image of the Week, Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter, Schmitt, selenography , add a comment
For this edition of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Image of the Week, we summit the central peak of Tsiolkovskiy– a conspicuously dark crater on the far side of the Moon.
The location of Tsiolkovskiy, via Google Moon.
The darkness, like the mare, comes from a floor that filled with lava. The unusual nature of Tsiolkovskiy led it to be considered as a landing site for Apollo 17 or the later Apollo missions that were cancelled. As no Apollo missions ended up going to the far side, that’s still a cookie left to be had—the first man to ever reach the far side of the moon. (Side note: the dark side of the moon and the far side are actually separate concepts; the Moon does rotate, just perfectly in sync with Earth, so the far side does have day and night, with the lunar night at any given time being ‘the dark side’.)
The LRO image at top shows a litany of boulders, many with trails behind them visible (rolling stones on the far side…all we need are beetles and a zeppelin-shaped craft, and we’ve got a true rock odyssey). For these locales where no man has gone before, the incredible hi-def eye of the LRO can finally take us deep into the places we longed to explore 40 years ago.
LRO Image of the Week #3: It's a Zoo Out There May 16, 2010
Posted by Nick Azer in : LRO Image of the Week, Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter, Moon Zoo, selenography , add a comment
This week’s image is the most interesting selection I received upon my initial perusings for Moon Zoo. Moon Zoo’s a new citizen science project, recruiting you to help sort through images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and identify items of interest in them.
This section, near the notable crater Aristarchus (brightest on the Moon by a wide margin), is brimming with all kinds of rocky activity! A rather unusual landscape.
Check out my post from this week on Moon Zoo and head over there to get your own selection of images (and the interactive lunar map made from LRO images—super hi def!—under the “My Moon Zoo” section).
Moon Zoo Launched—Help Map the Moon :) May 12, 2010
Posted by Nick Azer in : Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter, Moon Zoo, selenography , 2commentsAn awesome new citizens science project from Zooniverse has now launched— Moon Zoo!
[vimeo vimeo.com/11583128]
Using images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Moon Zoo project recruits you to help point out significant lunar craters and items of interest from a wide variety of landscapes. Randomly selecting LRO images for each user to analyze, Moon Zoo gives you a chance to pick up some cool lunar geology (and selenography) expertise on the fly while hunting for everything from boulder fields to the remains of spacecraft :)
You can even see on the “My Moon Zoo” page where the images you’ve inspected are located—on a map that, being from hi-def LRO images, gives some spectacular zoom! Crack open Google Earth’s Moon View and get a headstart on your mental lunar atlas :) (Turns out some of the most interesting images from my first batch were from near Aristarchus!)
It’s a lot of fun! Check out that video above for a tutorial, go sign up, and get your lunar nerd on :)
LRO Image of the Week #1!: Good Morning April 29, 2010
Posted by Nick Azer in : LRO Image of the Week, Mare Nubium, selenography , 1 comment so farToday, I’m starting up a new weekly feature here at Luna C/I: The LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) Image of the Week!
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is an ongoing NASA mission, which as a part of its goal to prepare NASA (or, as the case may now be, private space or international interests) for eventual moon bases by scouting the moon in new detail has taken tons and tons of groundbreaking photos. Detail never before seen has probed scientific mysteries, found lost property, and even disproved a hoax or two.
Each week, I’ll pick an image with a good story or item of interest to it and explore its tale in brief.
So, without further ado, here’s the first image of the week. Which, fittingly, is the first image the LRO took:
This first image is of an area near Mare Nubium, which is the southernmost of the great near side maria (about 350 miles south of the Apollo 12 and 14 landings).
What’s interesting here is, as LROC Principal Investigator Mark Robinson puts it best below, is the time of day at the location:
“Our first images were taken along the moon’s terminator — the dividing line between day and night — making us initially unsure of how they would turn out. Because of the deep shadowing, subtle topography is exaggerated, suggesting a craggy and inhospitable surface. In reality, the area is similar to the region where the Apollo 16 astronauts safely explored in 1972.”- LROC Principal Investigator Mark Robinson, “LRO’s First Moon Images”, NASA
The Apollo astronauts reported the striking differences the landscape took on as the sun came around the surface, creating dramatic sights. The lunar dawn is a unique sight, and a perfectly fitting study for the dawn of a new chapter of lunar understanding :)
Check back next week as I delve into an important discovery that came about in part by way of those long shadows…
Orbiting Atlas #1!: Sinus Iridum (The Bay of Rainbows) December 15, 2009
Posted by Nick Azer in : Chang'e, China, Google Moon, Orbiting Atlas, selenography , 2commentsWelcome to my brand new weekly feature—Orbiting Atlas! Each Monday, I’ll break out my lunar globe and trek to a different selenographic point of interest, giving you a tour of each location’s features, history, and potential :)
The first entry gets the honor for being in the news recently…so without further ado:
Sinus Iridum—The Bay of Rainbows
China announced a few weeks ago that the destination for it’s first lunar rover (and mission of any kind on the surface), Chang’e-3, will be Sinus Iridum. NASA and private enterprise have focused more on the solar-soaked South Pole and helium-3-happy Mare Tranquillitatis, so Sinus Iridum is an interesting choice, and something of a departure.
What about it may have caught China’s eye? Let’s look at the details…
The circular “Bay”—given its name by Italian astronomer Giovanni Riccioli–is ringed by the Montes Jura, with the cape-like Promontorium Laplace jutting out along the northeast. The Bay has a diameter of ~149 miles, and lays at the northwest corner of the large, western plain Mare Imbrium, about 1,225 miles northwest of the Apollo 11 landing site and 620 miles northwest of the Apollo 15 site.
Mare Imbrium’s lava plains are nearly flat, extending into Sinus Iridum (once a crater, with the southeast wall having been eliminated in an Imbrium event). These plains are prime territory for helium-3, and that stretch where there was once the southeastern wall may make for a revealing geological study.
It’s figured there’s a large amount of helium-3 on the Moon, but the distribution is unknown—so by scouting out a different mare, China could dig up valuable information on a region not already targeted for ‘gold rush’. Perhaps we’ll see a private company follow the Chinese lead, and scope it out for themselves…
Sinus Imbrium was a location filmed in 2007 by Japan’s orbiter, Kaguya, and it’s HDTV camera. Check out the amazing video below (and also be sure to explore the Bay in Google Earth 5.0′s spiffy Moon view!):
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Check back next week, and every monday, for more selenographic exploration :)
Moon Now Available in Google Earth! July 26, 2009
Posted by Nick Azer in : Google Lunar X Prize, Google Moon, selenography , add a comment
As of the Apollo anniversary, the Moon is now available in Google Earth 5.0! Great news for any apsiring selenographer :)
Google has put some great above-and-beyond features into their lunar globe—not only markers and photos from historical sites, but you can find and view Japan’s Kaguya orbiter HD videos of lunar landmarks from within the program! Really neat to have that integrated into the program, and have the reference of the globe right there as the video plays.
You can click placenames, too, and get a little info about where, say, Mare Moscoviense’s name came from (“Sea of Muscovy”).
Google has a significant stake in moon colonization— they are the sponsors of the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, which has been a huge driving factor in spurring a plethora of commercial efforts to the Moon. With the X PRIZE likely to be won around 2011, we could see a lot more lunar goodies from Google (both in and out of Google Earth) over the next few years…
To view the lunar globe in Google Earth 5.0, go to the “View” menu, and under the “Explore” submenu is a Moon suboption. There’s also Mars (!) and the night sky (constellations). So, put on some Sinatra and fly yourself to the Moon…
Picture of the Week: Sweet Seventeen December 16, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Apollo, Google Moon, NASA, rover, selenography , add a comment
That is a NASA file image of astronaut Harrison “Jack” Schmitt (now an active supporter of helium-3 mining on the Moon) in Mare Serenitatis alongside he and Eugene Cernan‘s rover during the Apollo 17 mission, in which astronauts spent by far the most amount of time exploring the surface, roving for 21 miles instead of the hundreds of yards previous astronauts had been limited to.
– Eugene A. Cernan, Apollo 17 Commander. Last man to walk on the moon, December 14, 1972.
Chandrayaan-1 Payload Spotlight #1: Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) November 9, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Chandrayaan-1, Chandrayaan-1 Payload Features, Chang'e, European Space Agency, Indian Space Research Organization, Kaguya, Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter, NASA, selenography , add a commentToday is the first in a series of features on each of India‘s recently-launched Chandrayaan-1‘s scientific payloads.
As I cover each of the eleven payloads in individual posts over the next few weeks, I’m going to alternate between the Indian and foreign payloads.Without further ado, here’s your spotlight on the Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC).
Terrain Mapping Camera
An Indian instrument, the first payload being featured here was also the first one to be tested.
It’s mostly as it sounds: a high-resolution camera that can take black and white photographs of the lunar surface (with a 5m spatial resolution–”the ability to distinguish between two closely spaced objects on an image“–in 20km swaths[PDF] ), with the intent to map the entire topography of the moon (including the dark side and the poles) at that 5m resolution; creating the most high-resolution, detailed map of the lunar surface to date. Such maps exist of Mars, but not of the Moon.
NASA’s Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission set for next year will have similar, if more powerful, camera and mapping systems. These kinds of maps will clearly be useful for the planning stages of the eventual lunar colonies and for other efforts.
The power of the TMC could well be enough to finally settle one thing for NASA ahead of time, though: it could photograph the Apollo and other NASA craft on the Moon’s surface, hopefully putting all those conspiracy theories to rest. :)
Here’s a picture from the ISRO of the TMC itself:
And, last but not least, one of the test images the camera took of Earth (high resolution here):
For every technical detail you ever wanted to know about the TMC, see this PDF.
Check back within the next couple of days for the next feature, on one of the Chandrayaan-1′s foreign payloads, as well as for any other updates on the moon mission’s progress that may come along :)
Chandrayaan-1 Update: Terrain Mapping Tested November 2, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Chandrayaan-1, Indian Space Research Organization, selenography , add a comment
Click that image above for the whopping full-size image of Earth that the recently launched Indian lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1 took with one of its 11 payloads, the Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC).
Check out the press release for the official take, as well as these neat articles. This was a test of the TMC, which is one of five Indian payloads on the Chandrayaan-1 (the other six being international, including two through NASA).
I’m going to be doing a series of individual spotlights on all eleven payloads as the Chandrayaan-1 makes its way out of its current Earth orbit and towards the Moon, so keep an eye here for the first installment of that very soon :)