KAGUYA records lunar surface in high def
Wednesday, November 7 2007
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) have successfully performed the world's first high-definition image taking by the lunar explorer KAGUYA, which was injected into a lunar orbit at an altitude of about 100 km on October 18, 2007.
The imaging was carried out by an onboard high definition television (HDTV) camera on the KAGUYA, and it is the world's first high definition image data acquisition of the Moon from an altitude about 100 kilometers.
The image taking was performed twice on October 30 (UTC). 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.
The satellite was confirmed to be in good health through telemetry data received at the Usuda station.
See the movie here.
Image Credit: JAXA/NHK
High resolution image
This is a still image taken out from the first moving image shooting when the KAGUYA flew from the northern area of Oceanus Procellarum to the center of the North Pole.
As the altitude near the North Pole is high, the angle of the coming sunlight was lower, thus the shade of the crater topography looks long in the image. The moving image was taken at 19:07 UTC on October 30, 2007 by eight-fold speed intermittent shooting (eight minutes is converged to one minute) from the KAGUYA, and the data was received at the JAXA Usuda Deep Space Center on the same day.
| Source: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency | |
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