Spectacular LROC Northern Polar Mosaic (LNPM) allows exploration from 60°N up to the pole at the astounding pixel scale of 2 meters [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]. |
Mark Robinson
Principal Investigator
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera
Arizona State University
The LROC team assembled 10,581 NAC images, collected over 4 years, into a spectacular northern polar mosaic. The LROC Northern Polar Mosaic (LNPM) is likely one of the world’s largest image mosaics in existence, or at least publicly available on the web, with over 680 gigapixels of valid image data covering a region (2.54 million km2, 0.98 million miles2) slightly larger than the combined area of Alaska (1.72 million km2) and Texas (0.70 million km2) -- at a resolution of 2 meters per pixel! To create the mosaic, each LROC NAC image was map projected on a 30 m/pixel Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) derived Digital Terrain Model (DTM) using a software package called the Integrated Software for Imagers and Spectrometers (ISIS).
Principal Investigator
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera
Arizona State University
The LROC team assembled 10,581 NAC images, collected over 4 years, into a spectacular northern polar mosaic. The LROC Northern Polar Mosaic (LNPM) is likely one of the world’s largest image mosaics in existence, or at least publicly available on the web, with over 680 gigapixels of valid image data covering a region (2.54 million km2, 0.98 million miles2) slightly larger than the combined area of Alaska (1.72 million km2) and Texas (0.70 million km2) -- at a resolution of 2 meters per pixel! To create the mosaic, each LROC NAC image was map projected on a 30 m/pixel Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) derived Digital Terrain Model (DTM) using a software package called the Integrated Software for Imagers and Spectrometers (ISIS).
Figure 1. LNPM superposed on map of the United States. |
A polar stereographic projection was used in order to limit mapping distortions when creating the 2-D map. In addition, the LROC team used improved ephemeris provide by the LOLA and GRAIL teams and an improved camera pointing model to enable accurate projection of each image in the mosaic to within 20 meters. Almost exactly 3 years ago the LROC team released a Wide Angle Camera (WAC) mosaic of the same north polar region, the pixel scale was 100 meters.
The new NAC mosaic is 50x higher resolution!
The new NAC mosaic is 50x higher resolution!
LNPM with three levels of zoom down into Thales crater [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]. |
Three collar mosaics illustrating how the images were acquired over time to build the LNPM [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]. |
Printed at 300dpi (a high-quality printing resolution that requires you to peer very closely to distinguish pixels), the LNPM would be larger than a football field. |
Dive right in HERE, and explore each of the 681 Gigapixels.
LNPM by the numbers:
Square image: 931,070 pixels across and down
Total pixels: 866,891,344,900 (867 billion)
Pixels with image data: 680,808,991,627 (681 billion)
NAC images: 10,581
Image tiles (256x256): 17,641,035 (18 million)
Mass storage of tiles: 950 Gigabytes
Acknowledgments: The LOLA team provided the high resolution topography used to map project the NAC images and improved spacecraft ephemeris that allowed accurate placement of the images on the lunar latitude longitude grid. Gigapan provided mass storage and a web interface. The United States Geological Survey Astrogeology Science Center provided the ISIS image processing software. The NASA LRO project collected the data and funded the processing effort. The LROC imaging suite was developed and built by Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS).
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