Starship Asterisk*

Sunrise at Tycho

Explanation: Tycho crater's central peak complex casts a long, dark shadow near local sunrise in this spectacular lunarscape. The dramatic oblique view was recorded on June 10 by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Shown in amazing detail, boulder strewn slopes and jagged shadows appear in the highest resolution version at 1.5 meters per pixel. The rugged complex is about 15 kilometers wide, formed in uplift by the giant impact that created the well-known ray crater 100 million years ago. The summit of its central peak reaches 2 kilometers above the Tycho crater floor.

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Simply awesome!

Is it me, or is the LRO producing better images than it used to?

-Noel

All I get is a rex "X" when I click on the image for the high resolution version...

Scott Holder wrote:All I get is a rex "X" when I click on the image for the high resolution version...

Never mind...seems to be my leaky browser...

Awesome picture, but it reminds me of a model moonscape from the 60's puppeteer show, "Thunderbirds".

It looks so clear, clean, and crisp, it doesn't look real. But it's coooool!!!

:-------======== <-smiley with a telescope.

Wow a 3D zoom movie! Neat; I loved it! http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/lunar_fly ... ho_crater/

The shadow from the central peak seems to be doing the same thing as the shadow of Mt. Teide in yesterday's APOD.

from the APOD above :: ... Shown in amazing detail, boulder strewn slopes and jagged shadows appear in the highest resolution version at 1.5 meters per pixel. ....

Photography is sort of amazing when you stop to think that light from a 1.5 meter length part of an object can be compressed into 1 pixel and all the pixels put together can give such a sense of vivid detail - especially when copies of all those pixels have been transmitted from the moon.

Looking near the peak in the high res version, one begins to wonder about the erosion processes, however slow... Note the lighter material there. Maybe from moonquakes, or small impacts dislodging things, resulting in landslides? Or is this just such a steep place that the meteoritic gray dust just hasn't been able to accumulate?

And given the nearly nonexistent erosion on the Moon's surface, one also is both reminded that there must have been impacts like this on the Earth, and of the size of such impacts (noting this is a relatively large mountain in the expansive space of the impact basin).

I love the way such a crisp, detailed image makes you think about things.

-Noel

Measuring a bit... The central peak looks to be about 200 pixels high in the large image... At 1.5m / pixel that should mean it's about 1000 feet high, right? Just trying to get a sense of scale.

I wonder if in the 1/6G (and assuming a proper space suit) it would make a person tired to climb that 1000 foot peak.

I met Charlie Duke (an Apollo astronaut) a couple of weeks ago. He said the lunar dust smelled a bit like gunpowder.

-Noel

Can the LRO spot the lunar landing hardware ? and the US flag placed there ?

Wolf Kotenberg wrote:Can the LRO spot the lunar landing hardware ? and the US flag placed there ?

Per WIKI, the lunar lander base is 29' long on a side or 9 meters. At 1.5m per pixel, the base would cover 36 pixels in the image so it should be very visible in a similar Hi-res image

Wolf Kotenberg wrote:Can the LRO spot the lunar landing hardware ? and the US flag placed there ?

Check this out: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/m ... sites.html

Enjoy!

flash wrote:

Wolf Kotenberg wrote:Can the LRO spot the lunar landing hardware ? and the US flag placed there ?

Check this out: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/m ... sites.html

Enjoy!

You do realize that if a satellite can see the Luna Modules, and Apollo Sites on the Moon. That means.....WE WENT TO THE MOON!!!!!! AND ALL THE CONSPIRACY THEORIES HAVE JUST BEEN BUSTED BIG TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FINALLY I HAVE WANTED TO SAY THAT FOR THE LONGEST TIME!!!!!!!!!! IT IS NOT A MYTH THAT WE WENT TO THE MOON! IT IS THE TRUTH!!!!!!!!!!!!
Which I knew all along, but these insane people keep saying we did not. This site with the pictures of the landing sites, proves that it is not just a model on a sound stage! So THERE, you big bunch of BS'ers!!!!!!!!!!!!! Have a beer on me!!!
Thanks for that page.
,.
:------====== <-Smiley with a Refractor telescope. :--|||||| <-Smiley with a schmidt casgrain. <-(Me) |||||||||^|| <-Smiely with a Newtonian Reflector.

A smilie for us 'normal' folks

The shadow of Tycho crater is very dark.
The imagination fly.

Boomer12k wrote:You do realize that if a satellite can see the Luna Modules, and Apollo Sites on the Moon. That means.....WE WENT TO THE MOON!!!!!!

You're assuming that a loser who believes men on the moon was a hoax will believe the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is real?

-Noel

That is a superb image. The detail that can be seen in the zoomable version is utterly amazing.

NoelC wrote:

Boomer12k wrote:You do realize that if a satellite can see the Luna Modules, and Apollo Sites on the Moon. That means.....WE WENT TO THE MOON!!!!!!

You're assuming that a loser who believes men on the moon was a hoax will believe the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is real?

-Noel

Absolutely! With Photoshop, any image can be created or combined. The only way to silence huxters and hoaxers is to keep banning them
or simply accept their ignorance and ROFLYAO

BMAONE23 wrote:The only way to silence huxters and hoaxers is to keep banning them
or simply accept their ignorance and ROFLYAO

Not at all. There is one absolutely guaranteed way to silence them: take them to one of the landing sites on the Moon. And, realizing that they might have a concern that there was some sort of heads-up display or other virtual reality device in their helmets, those would need to be removed. The silence would be deafening.

Chris Peterson wrote:... The silence would be deafening.

So, is that an excellent reason to continue with manned space flight?

Rob

NoelC wrote:Measuring a bit... The central peak looks to be about 200 pixels high in the large image... At 1.5m / pixel that should mean it's about 1000 feet high, right? Just trying to get a sense of scale.

Wow, I was WAY off.

I just downloaded the actual 1.5m/pixel TIFF file, and find that the mountain is in the neighborhood of 2000 pixels high, meaning it's about 3000m or 10,000 feet.

-Noel

NoelC wrote:I just downloaded the actual 1.5m/pixel TIFF file, and find that the mountain is in the neighborhood of 2000 pixels high, meaning it's about 3000m or 10,000 feet.

Various references give the height of the central mountain complex as 1600-2000 meters. In order to estimate this from the APOD image, you'd need to know the viewing angle.

I guess I over-guesstimated. I measured the face, which is nearly face-on in the photo. I guess I should have divided by the square root of 2, which would put my later measurement in about the right ballpark (i.e., 3000m / 1.414 = 2121m).

So this peak rises from the floor some 6,000 feet. Any way you measure it, that's no small mountain! And this is just the "splash back" that happened after the big impact.

Anyone have any good video simulations of a massive impact that would produce a result like the one we're seeing as Tycho? It would be interesting to see.

-Noel

biddie67 wrote:
The shadow from the central peak seems to be doing the same thing as the shadow of Mt. Teide in yesterday's APOD.

The shadow from the central peak seems to be doing the same thing as all normal shadows tend to do:
accurately outlining the object being shadowed (with some elongation or foreshortening thrown in).

The shadow of Mt. Teide in yesterday's APOD would have appeared as just a grossly elongated column from a satellite perspective but this was is turned into a triangle due to ground based perspective.[/quote]