Finally, the PRC delivers, a stream of excellent analysis and the first full lunar photographic image since Clementine's albedo tapestry of 1994. The best full-resolution image of the Chang'e map can be rendered HERE. CNSA is to be congratulated, and the Pioneers take back all we wrote concerning the deafening silence from the Party regarding any actual science coming from their outstanding engineering achievement Chang'e 1. As Chuck Wood points out in the November 26 LPOD, there are new things about the Moon to be found in this Map.
The Inset shows a portion of the best yet available full-rez Chang'e mosaic, centered on the Near Side. North is up, with Copernicus to upper left, southwestern Mare Tranquillitatis in the upper right and the central Near Side Highlands in the south, where a great deal of the wonderful relief available in the image is well-illustrated.
The albedo contrast brings out previously unseen rays, as Chck also points out, in small-scale beauty in the portion showing South Pole-Aitken. This new map should be appreciated as just that, an outstanding, unprecedented small-scale wonder.
If you're looking for detail on the large scale, however, secondary craters and especially the haunting swirls, then this is not your map. It is designed to appreciate the global structure of our noble natural satellite. It delivers.
But, if you are a Reiner Gamma, Descartes, Mare Ingenii sort, as the Pioneers obsessively, and most definitely are, at the moment, you'll have to wait. She's a whopper and a keeper, suitable for the Great Hall of the People.
Isn't it great, after such a famine of lunar data, to have a competitive choice of galleries from Japan, India and China? NASA has a pretty hard act to follow with LRO, next year.
