Selene-Apollo Moon Panorama Comparison

The Japanese Space Agency's Selene moon orbiter is equipped with a stereoscopic camera. They used to create panoramic images of some of the Apollo moon landing sites and put them besides the original photos taken by the Apollo astronauts:

wms.selene.jaxa.jp...

Apollo 15 landing site:

The JAXA Image:

The Apollo Image:


Apollo 17 landing site:

The JAXA Image:

The Apollo Image:


My comments:

• Draw your own conclusions. ;-)
  
• Wasn't there some discussion about the Apollo mountain backdrop appearing in different photos taken at different locations?
  
• Did they do this with the Apollo 11 site as well? If yes, why no comparison? ;-)
  

Show mercy, this is my first post. Thank you!

[edit on 31-7-2008 by Xingili]

Have a star for a great find

If you dont mind im going to shamelessly steal your post to throw it in a mates face who says apollo was faked

Cheers

Am I missing something?

Is there something particular I should have in my PC so that the JAXA images don't look like, well, computer rendered video game screenshots?

I have a friend who thinks we never went to the moon. I will have to show him the footprints and the lander.

nice thread.

Originally posted by Misfit
Am I missing something?

Is there something particular I should have in my PC so that the JAXA images don't look like, well, computer rendered video game screenshots?

Well their steorscopic imager takes two photos from above, each from a slightly different angle. By making some calculations the height of the individual pixels can be determined. The height information and the color data of the terrain can then be used to create a three dimensional photo with an artificial point of view.




So no, your computer is not missing something, because the image has been computer generated though by using real photographic data.

I find it amazing/confusing/irritating/... that the resulting terrain features look pretty much the same like the Apollo images. So either the..

...Apollo images are authentic images.

or

...the Selene images are made to "please".

Btw.: The problem I am having is, that non computer generated Selene images look computer generated as well.

[edit on 31-7-2008 by Xingili]

[edit on 31-7-2008 by Xingili]

Originally posted by network dude
I have a friend who thinks we never went to the moon. I will have to show him the footprints and the lander.

nice thread.

Thanks. But as the resolution of the stereoscopic terrain imager is not high enough you cannot see footprints or lander.

Nice find man, the 'man never stepped foot on the moon' crowd will be pretty peeved with this.

Originally posted by Xingili
My comments:

• Draw your own conclusions. ;-)
  
• Wasn't there some discussion about the Apollo mountain backdrop appearing in different photos taken at different locations?
  
• Did they do this with the Apollo 11 site as well? If yes, why no comparison? ;-)
  

Show mercy, this is my first post. Thank you!

To your first question, that is something brought up by CT'ers, but if you compare the images they show as being proof of "reused backdrops in front of new foregrounds" you find they actually comprise a stereoimage of the distant mountains. The images were actually taken during the same mission from locations separated by kilometers, establishing a good baseline for a stereoimage.
i14.photobucket.com...

To your second question, there'd be no point to doing it at the apollo 11 landing site since apollo 11 landed on flat boring relatively terrain devoid of any mountains or valleys. To Selene it would look like a flat plain. The point of 11 was to establish that a landing could be done safely. They did not attempt to land on more "interesting and dangerous" terrain until later.

Originally posted by ngchunter
you find they actually comprise a stereoimage of the distant mountains. The images were actually taken during the same mission from locations separated by kilometers, establishing a good baseline for a stereoimage.

Thanks for the information, I did not know this.

heh thats really amazing. Shows how accurate that jaxa probe is at mapping the surface. Nice find

I extracted the following additional information regarding Apollo 17 from the JAXA Kaguya Flash Website:

(c) JAXA/Selene

On December 11, 1972 (GMT), Apollo 17 landed on the Moon at the Taurus-Littrow Valley, which was located on the southeastern rim of Mare Serenitatis. This flat valley is surrounded by mountains (Massif), which were made of ejecta rocks from the deep crust excavated when Mare Serenitatis was formed by collision of a small asteroidal body.
Dr. Harrison H. Schmitt was the first and only scientist-astronaut for geology (astro-geologist) to the Moon. He investigated the big boulders fell down from these mountains, and brought back some pieces of these rocks to Earth. Only a few samples (among 110 kg rocks) brought back by them were found to be formed in the deep primitive crust and had crystallization age of approximately 4.5 billion years ago, just after the birth of the Moon. The Apollo 17 crew also sampled “orange soil”, which was composed almost entirely of glass spherules about 3.5 billion years ago. The spherules might have formed by quenching lava fountains, after the eruption of mare basalts in Mare Serenitatis 3.7 billion years ago.
Since Apollo 17 was in a low latitude inclination orbit and KAGUYA is in a polar orbit, KAGUYA flies over the Apollo 17 landing site from/to north to/from south and KAGUYA can observe the landscape by prospecting the Valley from the south to north. The photograph looks down at the Apollo landing site on the north side above the East Massif.

A three-dimensional (3D) terrain image into which the aspect is freely changed can be made from the Terrain Camera (TC) stereo-pair data.
Three-dimensional image of the same landscape as that of the picture taken by the Apollo 17 crew came into view when it approached the Apollo landing site and the aspect of the binocular vision image was lowered.
In the Apollo picture, bouldersare scattered on rim and inner wall of Camelot Crater, and Mons North Massif is seen in the far left hand side greatly. The hill on the right hand side of the picture is Sculptured Hill, whose elevation is 1,260 m from the bottom of the valley.
The samples that the Apollo 17 crew brought back revealed that these mountains composed of complex breccias, which was an aggregate of various rocks deconstructed by meteor impact.
Although the small object (e.g. boulders) cannot be shown in this TC image because their respective sizes are less than the spatial resolution of the TC of 10 meters from 100km orbit above the Moon, the shape of the mountains is almost the same, indicating the spatial resolution of the TC is very high.

*Prof. Hiroshi Takeda, LISM/TC editorial group member, gave his comments:
My memories of Apollo 17
Apollo 17, the last mission of the Apollo program, was really memorable for me because I came back to the Univ. of Tokyo the day after the Apollo 17's liftoff from the Moon, after two years stay for researches at Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), Houston, USA. Because we had many unsolved subjects by the Apollo program, I felt that Japanese lunar exploration should be undertaken. After 38 years trials, KAGUYA (SELENE) is finally orbiting the Moon.
Before the mission of Dr. Schmitt to the Moon, we had a chance to request him much about the lunar samples at the Geochemistry branch meeting. Since we found a rusty rock in the Apollo 16 samples (including a hydrated iron oxide mineral, Akaganeite, first found at Akagane-mine in the northeastern region of Japan), it was expected that the dark mantle material on the mare plane was ejected from one of the young fumaroles at the Apollo 17 site. Apollo 17 crews found orange-colored layers at the Shorty Crater, but the orange soils they collected were turned out to be volcanic orange glasses which formed by quenching lava fountains 3.5 billion years ago. It was 2005, when I met Dr. Schmitt again by his visit to Japan just before Aichi-Expo.

Dr. Harrison Schmitt, the Apollo 17 astronaut, kindly gave his comments for this TC 3D-image of the Apollo 17 landing site.
----------------------------------------------------
Thank you so much for allowing me an advance viewing of the image captured by Terrian Camera on Kaguya.
By zooming in, one clearly can see the light fingers of the regolith avalanche deposit from the South Massif（figure A); the dark ejecta blanket of Shorty Crater (figure B), the site of the orange pyroclastic glass deposit I discovered (figure C) ; the light albedo spot of the Challenger landing point (figure D); and many geologic features studied and sampled by Gene Cernan and me on Apollo 17(figure E). Thank you for the memories!
Best regards,
Harrison (figure F)

And at the Apollo 15 landing site they apparently managed to find traces from the lunar lander engine exhaust:

(c) JAXA/Selene

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) reported on the "halo" generated by the Apollo 15 lunar module engine exhaust plume that was detected in the data from Terrain Camera (TC) image.
This was an image processed by the SELENE mission instrument team from the observation data of the Apollo 15 landing site on the moon (the foot of the Apennine Mountains encircling the Mare Imbrium close to Hadley Rille). This is the world's first report on the detection of the "halo" through observations after the end of the Apollo program.
The enlarged image where the area of the potential "halo" exists. (left image: 1 square kilometer in size. The red circle encloses the potential "halo").The reflectivity of the "halo" area became brighter than the original one by the Apollo 15 lunar module engine exhaust plume and the probable "halo" area was confirmed. Right two images show the reflectivity change of the surface before and after the landing of the Apollo 15. At right-top, oblique view as taken from the lunar module on descent approach: at right-bottom, view taken from command-service module two revolutions after the landing. The circle encloses the landing site in both views, the latter having a bright halo.

Unfortunately I cannot link to the images taken by the terrain imaging camera. So please go to wms.selene.jaxa.jp... and compare the Selene images with the images taken by the Apollo crew before and after landing. They both do show the exhaust traces in the same place.

Hmmm...I should have chosen

"Proof that Apollo 15 and 17 landings were real!!!!"

as title and not something boring like "Selene-Apollo Moon Panorama Comparison", because not many people seem to be interested in this thread.

They rather like to...

...talk about spirit catchers on the moon.
...see pyramids in JPEG-artifacts all around.
...think that bumps from the mars rover airbag landings are plants.
...think that rocks behind rocks are aliens.

Unfortunately they seem to miss the more scientific/logical things. That's sad.

[edit on 6-8-2008 by Xingili]

[edit on 6-8-2008 by Xingili]

[edit on 6-8-2008 by Xingili]

reply to post by Xingili


It's all a good find. I've brought this up to hoax believers recently. They don't seem to believe that a "smudge" is enough to prove apollo happened. Personally I think the image is stunning for what it represents. It's further proof that a die-hard hoax believer will never accept any level of proof that we actually went, and they have nothing but blind faith for their disbelief. You could send a camera capable of resolving the lander as one or two pixels, which would be technologically impressive, and they still wouldn't get it. They'd just claim that the photo or probe was fake or even claim that the artifacts were sent there robotically later to fool future probes, and to add insult to injury they'll mock the quality of the image for being too "pixely".

Conspiracy theorists never admit defeat. There is always a bigger and crazier conspiracy to counter any logical argument. Painted backdrops? No. Holograms? Yes.

Thanks for the support. ;-)

Well, I am myself having a scientific background. Nevertheless I have reson to doubt everything happened in the Apollo program like advertised. So I was really surprised that the Japanese space agency did use their tools to check something. While I do think that they would not have published negative findings, I do think that the positive result of the comparison is a proof you cannot neglect. It should at least create some major discussions, maybe even someone from the JAXA team would have liked to join in...

Anyways, for anyone new to this thread a short summary:

• The Apollo 15 and 17 scenery visible on the Apollo photographs is apparently the real scenery.
  
• The Apollo 15 and 17 landing sites apparently do show a change in color due to rocket exhaust plumes.
  

Remaining questions for me:

1) While Apollo 11 landscape was boring, why no comparisons for Apollo 12, 14 and 16?
2) Could anyone access the raw data and recreate the synthetic view?
3) What happened with the plans of the ESA moon probe doing a real low altitude flybe of the Apollo 11 landing site while taking some photos before crashing on the surface? It was never done, why?

To Do List in order to answer these questions:

1) Someone please ask the JAXA team.
2) Someone working in the remote sensing field should be able to do this.
3) Who knows the answer? Who want's to ask?

[edit on 6-8-2008 by Xingili]

[edit on 6-8-2008 by Xingili]

Originally posted by Xingili
Remaining questions for me:

Seem like fair questions, I'll try my best at providing some answers.

1) While Apollo 11 landscape was boring, why no comparisons for Apollo 12, 14 and 16?

Apollo 12 was also pretty boring terrain. 12 was the first to attempt a precision landing by compensating for problems found during 11 and parking next to a known target, surveyor 3. The result was a very accurate landing and it allowed future missions to attempt landings in more dangerous terrain.

Apollo 14 landed where Apollo 13 should have landed, Fau Mauro highlands, which was believed to be interesting for geological reasons (monthly moonquakes as the moon reaches perigee). The only "3 dimensionaly" interesting feature near the landing site is cone crater, but since it's just a single crater it's nothing more than a hole in the ground. Confirmation of cone crater's appearance would therefore be fairly meaningless.

Apollo 16 landed in a more "3 dimensionally" interesting highland area so I would expect that Selene will eventually map that area and that the team will eventually generate a 3d model of the landing site. I believe they did 15 first, then 17, so it wouldn't surprise me if 16 was next. We'll get there, Selene is still early in its mission.

2) Could anyone access the raw data and recreate the synthetic view?

Beats me. I frankly don't like the selene website nearly as much as NASA's sites for things like the MERs and SOHO. With NASA, getting the original files is pretty painless. With JAXA, it's like pulling teeth. I can't even access their gallery on this computer properly since it's apparently flash driven. My guess is you'd have to contact the PI for the terrain camera. His name is Jun'ichi Haruyama.

3) What happened with the plans of the ESA moon probe doing a real low altitude flybe of the Apollo 11 landing site while taking some photos before crashing on the surface? It was never done, why?

Which probe, SMART-1? I wasn't aware of those plans, only that they hoped to be able to see the flash of impact, and as it turned out, an amateur did manage to catch the impact flash. Anyway, smart-1 didn't have terribly great resolution, it was poor even compared to SELENE. According to their press releases SMART-1 would have to be only 11 kilometers above the moon to see the apollo equipment. That effectively means being only a very short time from actual impact, especially considering how the moon's gravity is not evenly distributed. Lastly, smart-1's cameras were not at an optimal angle for photography once it dropped below about 150kms altitude in orbit, and as its speed increased the images started becoming blurred, further reducing the maximum altitude that you'd need to see the landing sites.

Lot's of information. Thank you!

So my first question has been answered. There is really only a comparison for Apollo 16 missing. We will probably get this as well.

The JAXA site is indeed flash based. But sometimes it links to static content. I put links to this content into the "quoting posts" above.

Which probe, SMART-1?

Yes it was the SMART probe. The strange thing was that the director of the SMART probe told the public that they would try to make a very low pass over the Apollo 11 landing site so that the could take photos. Either they were not successful or they were successful but did not dare to show their results. Anyways I wonder why the did not tell anbody what they did.

reply to post by Xingili


Well I hadn't heard that about a low pass over tranquility before. It may have been the original plan, but according to some diagrams of the final orbits it doesn't look like periapsis was anywhere near tranquility, meaning they couldn't have been all that low when flying over apollo 11, certainly not the 11 kms altitude they'd need to see any of the equipment. Camera orientation was also fouled up close to the impact.

Here's a picture of smart-1's periapsis approaching impact:
sci.esa.int...
Apollo 11 is located at about 0 degrees N, 23 degrees E on the moon. As you can see, the locations of the final periapsis points are nowhere near there.