James, look at the Apollo or Surveyor images taken on the surface and you will see that rocks are actually quite rare, outside of specific locations: the rims of fresh craters, or at the foot of a slope where they collect after rolling. Apollo images (later missions especially) are in fact a bit misleading, since many sampling stations were chosen to be in groups of rocks (Apollo 17 Station 5 and Station 6, or Apollo 16 at North Ray being good examples). I've been having this discussion with some Google Lunar X Prize teams, who have greatly exaggerated the danger of landing on rocks and maybe under-rated the danger of landing on sloping crater walls.

To me the LROC images match very closely what the surface images lead me to expect.

Phil

Don't forget that on Earth we have incremental boulder creep downslope, as well as rolling boulders. These are seen as "ploughing boulders" in mountain areas, which leave a trench behind them in the soil as they move downhill. In Scotland at least, this thought to be the result of freezing and thawing effects since the end of the last Ice Age, circa 10,000 years ago.

Scottish mountain boulder movement

On the Moon, perhaps thermal expansion and contraction of the moving rock could offer a mechanism. As the rock warms up in the lunar day, it will be easier to expand downhill where movement is less constrained by the regolith slope, than uphill. The net effect over millions of years could be the apparent movement and tracks we now see - a much slower effect than the Earth mountain analogy, but with a similar outcome.

I thought Apollo sites were selected to reduce landing risk by picking flat, hazard free places.

What is your estimate of frequency of 1 m diameter boulders? 1 per square kilometer? 1 per 100m^2?

The Apollo landing sites were rock-free to the extent possible, but the sampling stations were often at much more interesting and hazardous locations. Nobody would try to land on the rocky rim of Camelot crater or North Ray.

But as an excellent example, consider Surveyor 7, which landed on the ejecta of a fresh impact crater, Tycho. The surface images show rocks, but most of the surface is fairly rock-free. Here's an image of it:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&id=9690

Rock distributions - just guesses:
On a typical mare site I would guess 50 to 100 1m rocks per square km, but heavily concentrated in the rim deposits of fresh craters. Away from those craters, only 5 to 10 per square km.

On typical highland terrain, maybe 25% of those figures.

Phil

LRO has done a full longitude circuit of the Moon since the release of the Apollo site images... so an Apollo 12 release may not be too far away. Not to mention a few other sites if we're lucky. The sun will be noticeably higher now.

Phil

I'm thinking that the biggest and therefore most easily resolvable INTACT NON-APOLLO OBJECTS on the Moon are 2 Lunokhod rovers, their delivery descent stages, and the descent stages of the sample-return Lunas. I suppose it's also possible that some of the failed Lunas (such as Luna 15) got down without breaking apart completely.

The tall delivery stages of Lunas 9 and 13 might be lying fairly intact on their sides, near the landing sites of the little capsules. And Luna 8 was of the same design and almost made it, so might be still in one piece.

I suspect the tallest object currently sitting on the Moon's surface, and therefore casting the longest man-made shadow on the Moon, is Luna 23 in Mare Crisium. It still has its ascent stage attached due to failure after a successful soft landing.

Kenny

I think you're right, and I look forward to seeing all of these things. The early Luna (8, 9, 13) locations are very uncertain - a, area 50 km across might have to be searched, so they will be very difficult to nail down. The Lunokhods should be a lot easier because we can compare their published route maps with the images to nail down the areas better.

Phil

And, of course, there are five Surveyors on the surface that ought to be visible to LRO's camera. We'll get Surveyor III when the A12 site is imaged, but I'm more looking forward to seeing SI and SVII. We've seen a decent image of SI on the surface from one of the early Lunar Orbiters (LO2, IIRC); I'd like to compare that image with an LRO image. And it will be very, very useful to see the SVII site from orbit at LRO resolution, since we may someday want to land manned or unmanned probes in similar terrain; it'll be nice to be able to characterize "safe" landing areas in such apparently rugged terrain.

-the other Doug

My special interest among the Surveyors is Surveyor 5, because it was the only one not precisely located by Ewen Whitaker at the time. I have a prediction, but it will be nice to see if it's correct. Surveyor 7 will also be really nice, as you say. Will Surveyor 6's 'hop' blast marks be visible?

Phil

Is this the image you refer to? (from LO3).
Surveyor Programme Results
(down there on what it considers page 8)

Here's a little finding guide for Surveyor 1, based on the scanned LO images at LPI:

Click to view attachment

The LOIRP version will show the shadow better.

Phil

Is the LRO team indeed hiding something from us? I noticed something interesting at NasaWatch.com and this makes me wonder - the website hasn't been updated for about 11 days.

I'm having LRO image withdrawl symptoms too, but I'm sure they're not hiding anything. We have been so spoiled by the rapid release of MER and CASSINI images these past few years that we take it for granted, and sometimes expect too much of the people behind these missions.

"I noticed something interesting at NasaWatch.com "

Noticed something silly might be a better way to put it. There's a difference between not having released something yet and refusing to release something. (Idle thought... what would Perez Hilton call Keith Cowing? It could only be K-Cow!)

I have no doubt the images will be released, and the mosaic too. As it was made for Constellation, they would probably be the people to release it. Another point - image release isn't an essential service, so the staff responsible may be short-handed due to vacation time etc. Very little ever happens at my university in August. The mission is flooding the team with data, they have their hands full.

Phil

Have they release every single image taken?
No.

Have they released plenty of images given that they're still in a comissioning phase?
Yes.

We know they intended to make a quick and dirty polar mosaic for the LCROSS team. It's not going to be a nice outreach product. It's not going to be especially earth shattering ( as we have polar mosaics from several missions already, at similar resolutions). Quite what grounds for bitching Cowing has this time, I don't know. But he doesn't usually need a reason.

I would call it a negative criticism. Knowing that he's a major contributor to Lunar science (restoring old Lunar Orbiter photographs), he probably has the right to do so.

Anyone has the RIGHT to. But that doesn't mean it's right to. Given the number of images released whilst LRO is still commissioning - the LROC team has more than ticked all the boxes for outreach. Bitching at this point is unjustified.

Would it be nice to see every LROC image make it to the web in near realtime like MER. Sure. But we're not even in the final orbit yet. Give them time.

Yes - I also remember that very few images from MRO were released before they reached the final orbit We have much more LROC images compared to that.

By the way - I read somewhere that a teleconference is scheduled for today. Probably something may come out later today.

I can't help giving a little head shake and "humph!" whenever this comes up. We are SO spoiled nowadays. Back it t'olden days when a probe saw something new we had to make do with a couple of pictures on that night's News At Ten, then we had to wait literally months to see any others, when they'd be shown on a special episode of HORIZON or reproduced in ASTRONOMY or SKY AND TELESCOPE. I have rather less than fond memories of recording the TV news and Sky At Night coverage of the Voyager 2 Uranus and Neptune fly-bys then photographing my tv screen, after pausing the tape, and using the slides in my schools and community Outreach talks.

Now... well... raw image galleries, downloadable hi-res jpgs, Quicktimes, animations, all available days if not hours after the event...

Patience, young Jedis, all will be well.

... and as if by magic, a new LROC image appears - lovely view of a sinuous rille on the Aristarchus Plateau.

Phil

You don't want to know what I would call him.

Thanks for the tip, Phil!

Is anybody else having trouble getting the Zoomify version to load?

--Emily

Yep, that's the one -- I see that Surveyor I was actually imaged by LO1 and LO3, with the LO3 picture the better of the two.

I remember the image from the classic "Exploring Space with a Camera" by Edgar Cortwright. Here's the image I recall, a three-shot zooming in on the SI site:

Click to view attachment

Many of my early Surveyor image memories come from this book.

-the other Doug

Yes - me... Actually, I succeeded in cropping two frames from the big image. Here they are:

I couldn't get it last night but I can now.

There are some nice rolling rock trails on the walls of the main valley, both north and south sides. I'm also struck by how smooth the surface looks compared with typical mare surfaces. This is a place that would be easy to land on.

Phil

Had collaged together an image about these trails on Chuck's LPOD this morning check it out

John
-------------
A Moon Site

Yes, some nice ones. Here is what I found. Click to view attachment

Nice trails. We're starting to see the Moon like never before.

I find it difficult to evaluate the size of the blocks. The LROC image browser lacks a scale bar. Even if the pixel size is mentioned, I don't find it very useful. I suppose I could download the TIFF files and count the pixels, but they are large files. Sometimes with Photoshop (version 7) I could not open them.

If you have the luxury to download the actual tifs, it can still be a bother to try to load them and view them. I use PCI Geometica Freeview Version 10.0
http://www.pcigeomatics.com/index.php?opti...7&Itemid=12
It is nice because it is free, can load 1 Gb files easily and has many different kinds of visual enhancement tools which the LROC image browser lacks/ makes it hard to resolve some features.

I zoomed in by a factor of 2 the LRO image to capture my rolling boulder images and presented all images at the same scale (the LRO raw image is 1.46 m/pixel so if my images are viewed at 100%, then every two by two pixels is 1.46 m by 1.46 m). It is somewhat lossy due to jpeg storage economy. So, for my lower left image boulder (the largest), it is 16 by 21 magnified pixels which is 8 by 10.5 standard pixels or 12 m by 15 m.

A new image on the LROC image browser: Necho crater. This looks like a really recent crater. Blocks, cracks everywhere.
http://wms.lroc.asu.edu/lroc_browse/view/M103703826LE

'We have been so spoiled by the rapid release of MER and CASSINI images these past few years that we take it for granted, and sometimes expect too much of the people behind these missions.'


Is the release of raw JPEGS something we are 'spoiled' by or should it be regarded as standard PR outreach for missions that should be routinely done? Is there any plan to release quantities of raw jpegs of Lunar orbit images once the mapping orbit is finalized?

Don

Clearly the release of raw JPEGS is something we would all like to see for every mission, but over the years - thanks to the input of people here - I've... yes, possibly grudgingly... come to realise that that's not always practical/possible, for a Tardis-ful of reasons. It still sticks in my craw that ESA sits on images like a dragon hording gold, almost as if we "little people" wouldn't appreciate them, but I think that will change, in time, as the dinosaurs start dying out and are replaced by people who are as into this stuff as we are. It would be fantastic if it became routine, or even a requirement, for all umsf missions to let us see raw images asap, but in the real world that's not gonna happen.

That Necho image is just about the most amazing yet. Emily wrote about bouncing rocks on her blog - well, check out the chains of pits - must have been bouncing! - at the southernmost part of the visible wall of Necho in this image. And the melt textures - really beautiful.

Phil

Um, yeah -- my swear jar overfloweth!

The thing that strikes me, though, is that you could land a LM (or a Constellation lander) on the floor of that crater! There are lots of places that are flat and smooth enough for a vehicle to land. You'd have to be real careful where you walked and/or drove, but it could easily be done. And would be incredibly spectacular!

And check out some of those rocks! There are rocks in there (and especially on the rim) that make House Rock look like a pebble!

-the other Doug

It would be fantastic if it became routine, or even a requirement, for all umsf missions to let us see raw images asap, but in the real world that's not gonna happen.

I hold American missions to a higher standard in PR outreach than ESA. How hard or expensive is it to release raw jpegs? If it is a matter of expense I certainly understand, if it is a matter of policy I do not.

Don

And now a stealth LROC release... if I can call it that. This page for the MiniSAR instrument has an LROC image of Erlanger, the crater used for the bistatic radar experiment yesterday. - and the MiniSAR mosaic which is also the new LPOD.

Phil

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Mini-RF/...edia/index.html

There have been some wonderful images released to date. The ones I'm really looking forward to though will be those that cover the other four sites chosen along with the site that became Tranquility Base as the possible location of the first Apollo landing.

Re: Necho

Wow...wow -- at highest zoom level on the crack(?) regions one gets the impression of looking at crevases on an ice-sheet.

Coincidentally, had been looking up Necho in relation to its ray systems yesterday (where it meets another ray system from Giordano Bruno to its north-west), so came across some other info and images (no comparison to LROC's, obviously).

LPI image.

Apollo 10 oblique view image.

Interesting 1979 paper on Necho by Gifford, Maxwell and El-Baz.

John

TY for great Necho links (I've got iterested in today), John!
SB

http://wms.lroc.asu.edu/lroc_browse/view/M10463421LE

This was released just prior to the Necho one and on the same day. As can be seen it has really nice resolution/contrast tracks visible at the Apollo 14 site. Of course, these were also imaged on a prior pass and discussed, but they still are impressive. The various images I have seen to show these tracks do not do them justice so I magnified them by 2X and used the Geomatica Freeview palette adjustments to improve the contrast.

Click to view attachment

That 'stealth release' of a few posts back is now on the main LROC site:

http://wms.lroc.asu.edu/lroc_browse

Phil

Thank you James the image is fantastic and so detailed.

http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/?archives/97...eo-Results.html

NEW image!

To give people just a LITTLE bit more information - this is the first LROC DEM from near the A16 landing site.

It isn´t new this image was taken 12 july 2009 combined with the image is made from apollo 16 http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/

Yes it is - it's made from two LROC NA images, M102064759 and M102057602

Whatever - sorry, I had to be more specific. This DEM image looks much better than Chandrayaan's DEM images.

A little curiosity from someone who doesn't have the tools to be able to plot LRO's orbit, etc...

All of the images I've seen seem to be taken under mid- to late-afternoon sun angles. All of the images I've seen at low sun angles from other probes (especially LO) were, if memory serves, taken under early- to late-morning sun angles. Is this being done purposely by LRO to vary the lighting angle from other resources? (If so, it makes it that much harder to do photo comparison for detection of new craters.)

Also, why the heck have we yet to see the Apollo 12 landing site, when we've seen multiple takes on a couple of the other Apollo sites? Is it possible that A12 visited a *different* Surveyor than the one advertised...?

-the other Doug

Or maybe.... the mission was faked
[ducks and runs]

I would never, ever seriously suggest such a thing. But for the only mission where the TV camera wasn't able to transmit any panoramic images from the surface... to keep the idiots and such at bay, they really need to get this image soon.

-the other Doug