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Japanese Probe Returns First HD Video of the Moon
Riding with Robots writes "The Kaguya probe, now in lunar orbit, has sent down the first footage of the moon's surface from its onboard high-definition TV camera. The Kaguya mission, which consists of a main orbiter and two smaller satellites in a 100-km-high, polar orbit, is slated to officially begin its science phase in December."
I don't see any stars is this a fake video of the moon.
So when to we get a picture of the american flag that's implanted on the surface somewhere.
That's like benchmarking picture quality of a HDTV thrugh an SD tvshow.
Is there anyway to find out if this video is sped up, or is that thing just flying over the surface really fast?
Above the movie, it says:
Moving image of the Moon shot by the HDTV camera (no audio)
No audio? That sucks. I really wanted to hear the 'whooshing' noise of the probe speeding through the moon's atmosphere!
(In space, nobody can hear your sarcasm.)
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
The moon was once inhabited by an intelligent but thoughtless species that developed technology, covered the planet in concrete, and then died of their own selfishness, leaving behind a barren gray wasteland that resembles an asteroid-pocked version of Houston, Texas...
technical writing / development
Idiot or troll? Can't decide.
Just in case of "idiot": Stars are not that bright and require a longer exposure time. The moon is actually very bright and a short exposure time is required to prevent the image from being washed out. The result is the stars don't appear because the camera has been desensitised to take clear pictures of bright things.
Take a picture of any brightly lit object on a starry night and you'll likely find the stars aren't in the photo.
=Smidge=
P.S. Whoever gave the parent an "Insightful" mod was definately an idiot.
Irony.
Reading these comments you'd think we're a bunch a sad obsessed geek tosspots always looking for a cheap laugh. Sheesh.
On a more serious note, congratulations to the team for a real achievement and kudos for the excellent movie.
If only they had aligned it slighter further to the right we could of seen the giant "Kilroy was here" on the darkside of the moon, now that would of been cool..
Why is this modded insightful? There are no stars in the video because their luminosity is very low compared to the light reflected from the moon. The moon would be overexposed if stars were visible, which would make the video pointless. They wanted to video the moon, not a big glowing white ball with stars behind it.
It's shot at 8-fold speed, the following is from: http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/11/20071107_kaguya_e.html
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" (SELENE,) which was injected into a lunar orbit at an altitude of about 100 km on October 18, 2007, (Japan Standard Time. Following times and dates are all JST.)
The image shooting was carried out by the onboard high definition television (HDTV) of the KAGUYA, and it is the world's first high definition image data acquisition of the Moon from an altitude about 100 kilometers away from the Moon.
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.
The satellite was confirmed to be in good health through telemetry data received at the Usuda station.
@AlexSheive
I saw that same spot and actually paused it and rewinded it a few times to get a better look.
It's very possible a collapsed lava tube, they call them sinuous rilles.
http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/planet_volcano/lunar/sin_rilles/Overview.html
Reflections are all wrong. Definitely photoshopped.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
This is +5 funny. The people responding to it as a serious post must have never heard any of the moonlanding hoax arguments, or are the kind of assholes that just can't keep themselves from correcting things for long enough to consider the possibility of irony. If they're the former... new to slashdot?
@AlexSheive
...or, the <humor> tag was missing and certain people are *way* too serious sometimes.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
I thought the second half of the footage was better, where the probe flies over the terminator into the dark side of the moon. The funny thing was at first in that segment I had the illusion of inverted relief, as though the craters were bumps. I kept telling myself that the sun was shining from over my right shoulder but I couldn't see it. Then suddenly as we get very close to the terminator and things were quite dark below, the terrain "popped" into correct relief and craters looked like craters again. An amusing optical illusion which often shows up when viewing alien landscapes, rather rare to see it disappear spontaneously like that.
"Kaguya" HD Camera footage.
Titled: "Ocean of Storms", western side
Filming Start Time: 20:51 (GMT) October 30, 2007
Filming End Time: 20:59 (GMT) October 30, 2007
Filming Start Location: 250degN, 275-282deg E
Filming End Location: 49deg N, 275-283deg E
"Kaguya" altitude: 110km (68 mi) above moon surface
8 minutes of footage edited down to 1 minute (8x speed).
---
Located in the left section of the Northern hemisphere of the moon, the western-most part of "Ocean of Storms" was filmed while navigating a South to North direction. The right side of the screen show the shadowy "dark oceans" and the sun-lit areas are the highlands.
---
"Kaguya" HD Camera footage.
Titled: Lunar North Pole
Filming Start Time: 19:07 (GMT) October 30, 2007
Filming End Time: 19:15 (GMT) October 30, 2007
Filming Start Location: 66deg N, 274-288deg E
Filming End Location: 87deg N, 26-161deg E
"Kaguya" altitude: 110km (68 mi) above moon surface
8 minutes of footage edited down to 1 minute (8x speed).
---
The following was filmed while navigating from the northern area of "Ocean of Storms" to the north pole of the Moon. Due to the higher latitude of this voyage, the lower angle of the sun caused the crater formations to cast long shadows.
Here.
*WHOOSH!*
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!