Why are the LROC images so lousy?

reply to post by Gorman91

There's a lot of stuff packed on that little bugger:

Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER)
Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment (DIVINER)
Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP)
Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector (LEND)
The Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA)
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC)
Mini-RF is a technology demonstration of an advanced single aperture radar (SAR)
www.planetary.org...

Taking pictures is really a small part of the mission.

reply to post by Phage


Yes but all that is specialized to find a site to colonize. As I said. Mars, because it's further away, has equipment on it designed to last long term.

EDIT

Just take a look at the cost difference.

Moon: $583 milion
Mars: $1 billion + 20 mil a year

You can see which is more important



[edit on 19-7-2009 by Gorman91]

reply to post by Gorman91


Yep, different missions.
But even the best imaging from HIRISE is only a little better resolution than LROC.

reply to post by Phage


A little better?

They manages to see a stream roughly the size of a car's width in the crater, remember?

The mars ones are far better. Trust me. You cant compete with the massive quality and wide spectrum images that they can take.

reply to post by Gorman91

MRO orbits at about 300 km above the martian surface, giving the HiRISE camera a 30 cm/pixel ground scale and about 1 m resolution*. For comparison, many google maps images were taken with a scale of about 0.6 m/pixel, with a resolution of about 1.8 m.

www.wired.com...


[edit on 7/19/2009 by Phage]

reply to post by Point of No Return


These aren't the final images. Once the prope goes to it's final orbit we will see higher resolution images.

This argument is a major major fail. You're comparing a low resolution 96dpi image to a high resolution 300 dpi image? And the moon image is not 96dpi, it has been resampled to 96dpi

If you need 'fake images' to look more real you lower the resolution to blend the pixels. The is a major fail on nasa's part and even more of a fail to compare those 'two' images. I am sorry but this type of stuff annoys me because it is so painfully obvious.

Originally posted by Point of No Return

Is this the best they can at this moment?

Google earth can zoom in much further than that.

Google Earth uses airplanes for the very high-res images (for example, the images that show a close-up of your home). Humans don't have craft on the Moon flying as low as airplanes.



[edit on 7/19/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by Phage


1 and 1.8 are still large differences in terms of camera quality.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Gorman91

 

There's a lot of stuff packed on that little bugger:

Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER)
Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment (DIVINER)
Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP)
Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector (LEND)
The Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA)
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC)
Mini-RF is a technology demonstration of an advanced single aperture radar (SAR)
www.planetary.org...

Taking pictures is really a small part of the mission.

Phage,

When I read "Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter", that sounds like they are making a topographical map of the moon. That is the sort of instrument they would use for that kind of map correct?

On a separate matter, I wish they'd offer some new images of the far side of the moon.

reply to post by epete22

dpi is irrelevant.

DPI is a measure of how a image is printed to a medium such as paper (or conversely, scanned from paper). Many software programs call DPI a measure of "resolution" which leads to more confusion since it is the resolution of the printed output, not anything to do with the "resolution" of the digital image.

www.rideau-info.com...


What is important is the ground resolution.
The LRO ground resolution is about 1 meter. The Ikonos ground resolution is .8 meter.





[edit on 7/19/2009 by Phage]

reply to post by bpg131313


You're exactly correct. LOLA (l.o.l.a, Lola! Thanks, Kinks.) will produce very accurate digital elevation maps of the Moon.
lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov...

[edit on 7/19/2009 by Phage]

reply to post by Phage


You did a great job, it helped put things into perspective. Those pickin on your example just were not getting they whole picture. Like the guy asking if this was as good as NASA could do, missing the fact that better pics are still to come. So I for one thought you did a find job in this post, keep it up.

Originally posted by bpg131313
On a separate matter, I wish they'd offer some new images of the far side of the moon.

I suspect that because the Moon is soon entering the "new moon" phase, we are going to start seeing images of the far side.

However, even though it will eventually photograph all of the Moon, don't forget what LRO's primary mission is -- and that is to investigate potential landing sites for future Moon missions. Those landing sites will almost certainly be on the near side of the Moon -- or at least on a portion of the Moon with a direct line-of-site to Earth -- to allow for communication between the astronauts and the Earth.

Perhaps someday, humans may have a series of communication relay satellites set up in Lunar orbit that would allow communication between Earth and the far side of the Moon, but I suspect for the foreseeable future the landing and exploration sites will be limited to the near side and the polar regions.


[edit on 7/19/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by Pappie54

Like the guy asking if this was as good as NASA could do, missing the fact that better pics are still to come. So I for one thought you did a find job in this post, keep it up.

According to Phage himself, those pics won't be much better, so I think you're missing the point here.

Tiny right? Well yes. But is that the best we can do? Pretty much. The LRO will be getting into a lower orbit and the resolution will improve but there still isn't going to be a whole lot to see.

reply to post by Point of No Return

I didn't say the images won't get much better. I said there isn't going to be much more to see. The landers are tiny. Look at the cars in the Rio image. That's the what the landers will look like. The craters and rocks will still be craters and rocks. But the alien bases will show brilliantly like the buildings in the Rio image.

The point is that the LROC is giving us satellite images of nearly, if not the same or in some cases better, quality as the satellite images on Google Earth.


[edit on 7/19/2009 by Phage]

reply to post by Phage

I didn't say the images won't get much better.

No? I must've comletely misinterpreted this part then:

But what is easy to not get is the scale of what we're looking at. The resolution of the Apollo 14 image is about 1 meter per pixel, so the LM occupies 3, maybe 4 pixels. Tiny right? Well yes. But is that the best we can do? Pretty much.

You weren't commenting on the images there?

The point is that the LROC is giving us satellite images of nearly, if not the same or in some cases better, quality as the satellite images on Google Earth.

I just checked some cities in Iran on GE, I could make out cars etc. very clearly, way better than the lunar pic.

Do you think the Iranians provide aerial imagery for Google Earth, or do you think the Iranians let Google fly a cameraplane over their country?

Seems satelite imagery to me, and way, way, better than LROC, currently at least.

reply to post by Phage


Please look at this piece of Google Maps, it's North Korea:





Now I'm pretty sure this is satellite imagery, I can't imagine North Korea cooperating with Google Earth and providing them with, or letting them take aerial photo's.

You can measure with the ruler that there are some little buildings there, about the same size as the LM.

Yet you can see them very clearly, Google Earth let's you zoom in even further than Google Maps does.

Unless I'm mistaken about this being satellite imagery, this comment:

The point is that the LROC is giving us satellite images of nearly, if not the same or in some cases better, quality as the satellite images on Google Earth.

is false, GE satellite imagery is much better.

[edit on 19-7-2009 by Point of No Return]

reply to post by Point of No Return


I said nearly.
Perhaps I should have said "as some of the satellite imagery in Google Earth". The best satellite imagery in Google Earth comes from GeoEye and can reach a resolution of up to .5 meters. This will be the best from LROCand is better than the image of Rio.

GeoEye plans to begin selling images from GeoEye-1 later this year, it said. Although the satellite can collect images that show details at .41 meters, it can only sell images that show details at .5 meters because of US government restrictions.

www.techworld.com.au...

reply to post by Phage


Still, that's not needed for what the LROC is doing. It doesn't need such details. It only needs the basics for where to land.

Why us quad screen support on your computer, when you can play good enough on 1 screen?