Thursday, December 10, 2009

LOIRP: Boulder Trails on the Moon



An update to our post Wednesday from Keith Cowing and the Lunar Orbiter Image Restoration Project (LOIRP), demonstrating the tremendous progress that group has made creating new images of the Moon from restored 40 year old telemetry.

"Keith's note: This image was taken on 21 November 1966 by Lunar Orbiter II at an altitude of 44 miles. The image is taken from frame 92, Framelet 445 and has resolution is 0.98 meters/pixel. As such the large boulder that has left a trail is around 6-7 meters in diameter.

"The image on the left shows the highest resolution image available online at (the Lunar and Planetary Institute). On the right is the raw unprocessed image we retrieved this afternoon.

"While the large boulder's trail is seen in both images, the details of that trail and the rest of the boulder field are much sharper in our newly retrieved image."

Read the details HERE, and witness a clever demonstration of the resolution of this latest wholly new Lunar Orbiter imagery.

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