Starship Asterisk*

The Shadow of Surveyor 1

Explanation: Fifty years ago, Surveyor 1 reached the Moon. Launched on May 30, 1966 and landed on June 2, 1966 with the Moon at full phase it became the first US spacecraft to make a soft landing on another world. The first of seven Surveyor missions intended to test the lunar terrain for the planned Apollo landings it sent back over 10,000 images before lunar nightfall on June 14. The total rose to over 11,000 images returned before its second lunar night began on July 13. Surveyor 1 continued to respond from the lunar surface until January 7, 1967. Captured in this 2009 image from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the first Surveyor still stands at its landing site, a speck in the Oceanus Procellarum (the Ocean of Storms). With the Sun low on the western horizon the lonely, 3.3 meter tall spacecraft casts a shadow almost 15 meters long in the late lunar afternoon.

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This image does not at all seem correct to me. The other features of the moon and the corresponding shadows suggest a setting Sun on the right of the image. However...., the Surveyor 1 shadow suggests that the Sun is mysteriously now on the left of the image. I know that I am new to this...but please help me understand what I am viewing here. In other words, what gives? Thanks, Todd

dying_gunfighter wrote:This image does not at all seem correct to me. The other features of the moon and the corresponding shadows suggest a setting Sun on the right of the image. However...., the Surveyor 1 shadow suggests that the Sun is mysteriously now on the left of the image. I know that I am new to this...but please help me understand what I am viewing here. In other words, what gives? Thanks, Todd

Your brain is doing the best it can with the information it has. The pattern presented to it looks a lot like bumps, so it likes to see it like that, even if you know they're actually craters. Sometimes I've been stuck seeing craters as mounds and have had to give up for the moment. I have then looked at the same image a day later and had it register properly as craters.

I had the exact same problem with the image. The image is full of craters, but my brain interpreted them as hills.
But when I rotate the image upside down I immediately see the craters!
When I rotate the image back the craters immediately turn into hills.
Why does it work this way...

It was such a circus, poor JPL trying to launch a rocket to the Moon and failing again and again, missing each time. And then, finally, one hit the Moon! Straight in, taking pictures every second, the last one .... giving us our first ever in human history close-up view of a small area of the surface of the Moon! A miracle! And then, on to Surveyor.... and then, three humans looping the Moon, and returning to Earth! And then two humans walking on the surface of the Moon! And then five (5) repetitions of that miracle! And then ... it was all over. Goodbye Moon!

Lasse wrote:
I had the exact same problem with the image. The image is full of craters, but my brain interpreted them as hills.

But when I rotate the image upside down I immediately see the craters!

When I rotate the image back the craters immediately turn into hills.

Why does it work this way... ?

One normally expects things to be lit from the top rather than from the bottom.

I don't know why right and left would be a factor (unless you usually have your lamp on your right hand side).

Since there is still a sizeable cottage industry out there convinced that humans never walked on the Moon, I
wonder if all of the obviously human-made track-ways left behind on the Moon might now be visible at very
high resolution limits and low Sun angle?

Ann wrote:And they say that the only human-made structure that can be seen from space is the Great Wall of China.

UT: Can You See the Great Wall of China from Space?

It's puzzling to me that the camera on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has lines on its digital sensor (CCD?) registering differing brightnesses. My digital camera from 10 years ago had a more even light registration.

dying_gunfighter wrote:This image does not at all seem correct to me. The other features of the moon and the corresponding shadows suggest a setting Sun on the right of the image. However...., the Surveyor 1 shadow suggests that the Sun is mysteriously now on the left of the image. I know that I am new to this...but please help me understand what I am viewing here. In other words, what gives? Thanks, Todd

The shadows of the craters are all on the LEFT side... which is exactly where you would expect them to be... the Sun is low and to the left... the lit crater walls are lit from the left... not right... there is nothing wrong with the image... only your interpretation of it... sometimes the brain creates an optical illusion. I do the same thing with some pictures...

:---{===} *

Soooo, what causes the shadow in the largest crater? It's something about six feet tall, on the left rim of the crater. Probably just a rock.
Something more mysterious to me, are the smoothed-out craters. It looks like several yards of dust landed on them, but based on what the Apollo astronauts found there, that is not the case. Can the solar winds blast away dust as well as solid rock?

@Ann : «And they say that the only human-made structure that can be seen from space is the Great Wall of China. »

Excuse me, I fail to understand the meaning, or at least, relevance, of your quote, Ann. You do not think the APOD photograph of the day was taken from Earth, do you ? Nothing could be more wrong !

Quoting its own caption, the APOD was captured in 2009 « from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter»

There's of course no hope to catch see such a small object from a telescope on the Earth (angular dimension of the order of 4 ? meter/ ditance 400,000,000 meter ~ viz 10^-8 rad ~ viz 2 thousandths of arc seconds !). Incidentally, you probably couldn't discern the Great Wall from the Moon, either. Although it is a long structure, it's not wide enough.

It was a joke, Czerno.

neufer wrote:

---

Lasse wrote:
I had the exact same problem with the image. The image is full of craters, but my brain interpreted them as hills.

But when I rotate the image upside down I immediately see the craters!

When I rotate the image back the craters immediately turn into hills.

Why does it work this way... ?

One normally expects things to be lit from the top rather than from the bottom.

I don't know why right and left would be a factor (unless you usually have your lamp on your right hand side).

https://books.google.fi/books?id=p5VCHW ... on&f=false

Anyone see EM at 2:00 from image?