What did China's Chang'e 3 moon rover take a picture of ?

Ove38
If the rocks were white and not gray and the ground was brown and not gray, the Apollo astronauts would have said so wouldn't they ?

Are you familiar with Apollo guys' accounts of what they saw on the Moon? They saw white rocks, grey rocks, bluish rocks, greenish rocks, black rocks. At some point, the terrain looked "golden" to Jim Irwin due to sun angle.

The Moon has a very varied geology and terrain, so it's not all grey rocks on grey ground.

Apollo 17 transcripts:
"Cernan: Oh, look at that blue! Look at the white fragments in there."
"Schmitt: Big white clast in the two-cy(cle)...(correcting his terminology) in the gray-matrix breccia."
"Schmitt: (To Houston) Okay, this is a fine-grained, but crystalline, white clast in the (blue-)gray breccia; and it's mixed with soil."

One of the white rock samples from Apollo 17: www.hq.nasa.gov...

Here's an interesting article to peruse: the-moon.wikispaces.com...

ArchAngel_X

bobs_uruncle
These clowns should put a 3D/stereoscopic camera on these damn rovers

I guess the Chinese space agency is also run by a load of narcissistic, autistic nearsighted morons.

So when is your rover headed to the moon?

I wish, but I still have to get the inertial propulsion system into a commercially workable form LOL.

Cheers - Dave

wildespace
reply to post by bobs_uruncle

 

Regarding using colour film on the Moon, here's a quote from ALSJ:

The fact that all color film shot on the moon was made for an Earth-based chromatic spectrum of light, not that of a vacuum -- the film 'saw' color differently in space than it would on Earth. The colors that it recorded are thus not to be trusted in the same way that we trust color film on Earth. You are perhaps familiar with the fact that many scientists argued for not even taking color film to the moon, citing spectral inaccuracy and the fact that it has less acutance (sharpness) than black and white film, as well as a narrower latitude, or range of capturing relative brightness and dimness. It did, however, have great public-relations value.

But the Chinese images are digital. And we apparently haven't seen any images themselves, only the tv and photo camera footage of the images displayed on the big screen in mission control. Hence the low resolution, uneven brightness, and odd colouration.

If the actual images come out with odd colouration, I think it will be due to the digital cameras struggling with the white-balance, or due to some other technical issues (like transmission and decoding).

edit on 24-12-2013 by wildespace because: (no reason given)

I would certainly agree with that statement, the amount of light in a daylight condition on the moon would probably require extreme iris contraction, f22 or higher. On the film, yes as well, film was developed for atmospheric conditions on earth at semi reasonable temperature ranges, not the extremes of space in an almost vacuum, so yes, the colour would probably be off. The digital visual sensors however on new craft should be quite good and there are sensors available from Texas Instruments and others that can actually produce reliable colour scaling using their output signal as a spectral reference. We've used them in colour mapping along with the Stellaris M4 Cortex ARM processors and they work quite well even in extreme conditions, but since it is a single sensor, it could be heated or cooled, condition dependent for application in extreme vacuum conditions.

There are solutions to every problem and I guess we'll get to them eventually ;-)

Cheers - Dave

Regarding the big pyramidal rock (or object, if you like), Yutu is going to take a closer look at it: www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by Ove38


Its a Wigwam of course.

wildespace
Regarding the big pyramidal rock (or object, if you like), Yutu is going to take a closer look at it: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Ok, first of all let's call it what the Chinese scientists now calls it "a pyramid-shaped stone" or as they say "a large stone pyramid southwest about 42 meters from the lander, like they have never seen before"

If this picture was taken about 40 meters from the pyramid-shaped stone, how big would the stone pyramid be ?

Phage
reply to post by Ove38

 

A rock. Lots of rocks.
Next question.

edit on 12/22/2013 by Phage because: (no reason given)

I agree with Phage on this. Although I like how the Chinese take the time to look around and examine these things unlike the American moon missions.

darkbake

Phage
reply to post by Ove38

 

A rock. Lots of rocks.
Next question.

edit on 12/22/2013 by Phage because: (no reason given)

I agree with Phage on this. Although I like how the Chinese take the time to look around and examine these things unlike the American moon missions.

edit on 25amWed, 25 Dec 2013 11:58:15 -0600kbamkAmerica/Chicago by darkbake because: (no reason given)

Yes, it probably looks like something in between the one they found on Mars and the one they found on earth