there was some good coverage of the missions in a few magazines such as Spaceflight, Aviation Week or Flight International (usually reprinting info from Novosti or TASS) but nothing to see with the flood of info we have today.

Olivier, did you ever met with Albert Ducrocq? He was reporting Lunokhod's progress on Air & Cosmos, ok, no pictures, but I remember reading interesting infos.

Oh, yes : a lot. But much more about Mars and each time when I was back to France from JPL (for VLs and MPF)

New lunar pits - well, a new discovery anyway, not reported elsewhere. Like several others they are in western Tranquillitatis.

Phil


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Phil,
Is this your discovery? Did you read the paper “Lunar Caves In Mare Deposits Imaged By The LROC Narrow Angle Cameras” to be presented at the First International Planetary Cave Research Workshop? http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/caves2011/pdf/program.pdf
They say they have documented >140 "negative relief" features. I have sent in an inquiry to Mark Robinson as to either the location of these or the general regions. They also include an image of the cave/pit H1 I found back in April. Although I got no attribution, perhaps they found it independently.
James

Hi James - That abstract is talking about skylight-type features. I'm looking at what I think are small Ina-like features. Here's another one, the 5th I've found in Tranquillitatis.


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With Ina and the similar features in Hyginus crater there are seven known examples (single pits or groups of them). I have not found any in other parts of the Moon yet.

Phil

Those are quite interesting and different. May I ask you how you handle discoveries of this type? In peer review science, it seems a long process before such discoveries are released via expensive journals. There does not seem to be an international lunar feature registry to post the discovery to (correct me if I am wrong). I mean, its nice to be recognized for the discovery since it takes alot of time or luck or both to find something. Do you feel that by posting to a site like this one, then this is good enough for priority? At MoonZoo for instance most posters seem anonymous which I find odd since I thought they might want some credit for a finding/discovery.

I will write up something on this soon. I'm not concerned about priority, I'm just enjoying the search and the pleasure of finding something not previously reported. Moonzoo would be another option, but I prefer UMSF. The ideal place for cataloguing various items like this would be the Moon Wiki, I think. It's linked to from LPOD.

Phil

In a similar and related topic, MESSENGER is discovering extensive Ina-like features on Mercury:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...mp;#entry178851

--Bill

I now have 13 distinct sites on the moon with these curious 'hollows' - writing something up for LPSC.

Phil

Very cool! One question- is it possible that these features (or some of them) are simply kipukas - regions that happened not to be covered by the most recent lava flows and so are surrounded by a flow margin? I don't *think* they look like kipukas, but I wondered if you'd considered that possibility?

John

Yes, considered, - but they don't seem to surround high points, even very subtle ones, in fact they sometimes surround depressions. To my amazement Pete Schultz said exactly the same about the few seen in lunar Orbiter images in his book 'Moon Morphology'.

Phil

A new cluster of 'hollows' has now turned up in Mare Serenitatis, just north of Sulpicius Gallus. Here is one part of it.

Phil


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I notice that several of the fresher craters in that view seem to expose a layer of bright material partway down their inner slopes. In fact at first glance the depth to the bright layers looks not dissimilar to the depth of the hollows. I wonder if the two things could be related??

Something similar was pointed out in one of the Mercury cases. Maybe there is a link.

Phil

Hey, a new digital elevation map has been released!!! Global maps with nearly 100m/pixel resolution!


http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/?archives/48...efore!.html

Whohoo, I've been waiting so long for such a map. What a great day! Lunartastic!

Would anyone care to comment on the difference between the stereo pair map just released and the LOLA map? Is there any reason to prefer one to the other? Does the data from one instrument help making a map with the other? Is there going to be a single grand unified map made from both laser and stereo pair data?

The LROC team anticipated most of your questions. Carefully read the text at the link, and you'll find out how LOLA data was used to aid the production of the LROC map.

It looks from the description that LOLA was used only to (1) refine the LRO orbit solution and (2) fill in the map at the poles. So apart from the poles, the two topographic products are completely independent. Comparison of the two will indeed be interesting. I'm impressed that stereo alone can produce a map of this apparent fidelity.

John

i just got done making a Celestia VT 64 k map using the LRO-WAC
for a compassion see:
http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=16522

a cleaned up version of the 256 ppd lola

and the 256 lro-wac dem

an example of the NOT cleaned up lola

and a NEW LRO-WAC dem ( same crater as above )

Volume 8 of the LRO data is available from the PDS Imaging Node. This should contain the latest Apollo landing site images that were taken from the lower orbit.

http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/data/LRO-L-LROC-3....0/LROLRC_0008/

Those spectacular low orbit images can be seen (and the raw files linked to) from here:


http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/index.php?/a...n.html#extended

http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/index.php?/a...s.html#extended

http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/index.php?/a...s.html#extended

Phil

(not to mention almost daily releases of spectacular images here:


http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/

There are a number of blobs of saturated pixels in the vicinity of the Apollo 11 descent stage, particularly downrange (to the left). Some appear to be boulders, in that they also cast shadows. However, others are just small areas of saturated pixels that resemble the reflection from the discarded experiment cover near the LRR and PSE. Could these be pieces of Mylar/Kapton blown out when the ascent stage took off?

I see one big piece almost exactly due west at the extreme edge of the image. I think your explanation is correct -- there must have been a lot of that stuff blown off. We saw it in the lift-offs on TV for 15, 16 and 17 but not the earlier flights. Of course, the effect must have been exactly the same although not witnessed on 11.

LRO recently imaged the Luna 17 lander (that delivered the Lunakhod 1 rover - also imaged)
Here is a processed image of the lander.
The rover's circular tracks (to take 360 pans) are quite nice!
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(... are the complete Lunakhod 1 images available someplace?.... Mr. Stooke? ...)

http://www.planetology.ru/panoramas/lunokh...anguage=english

I thought there were ramps on both sides of the lander, but if I am interpreting the image right, there appear to be only on one side. Can someone explain this?

Here is the LUNOKHOD 1 rover from the same recent LROC image

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(Note: Image of lander 2 posts ago....
Hungy4info... my guess as to why we see the east ramps (so bright) is the sun angle and the reflected light from them. The westward ramps are in shadow and are 'averaged out' by the camera. You can see 2 dark appendage shadows on the west part of the lander. These are the darkened ramps, they don't return enough photons to the camera to be imaged properly. The bright ramps are screaming photons upwards, and over-imaged (they are not that big), the camera sees them as blurry ... just a guess)

i have been doing this for other images so in a break a TOPO "bump/height map" of the above "Luna 17" image

the text was software in-painted
the 32bit float then converted to a jpg

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the above lunakhod
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There are, but they are also pretty narrow, so I imagine the ramps in the shadow are below resolution limits and not seen while the ramps in the sun are seen by their glare only.
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John VV - nice topos!
Centsworth -- you said in half the words, what I meant (!) Nice lander image!

Here is a zoomed image of the Luna 17 lander.
Reoriented (left becomes right) so that sun seems to come in from the top left corner
(it seems to give more perspective? or it could just be my internal preference for light coming in from the left!)
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notes on processing:
I tried something new... in order to try to reduce the blackest shadows and whitest glares, I found the median DN in the base image, and then for each pixel, added box-mueller noise (mean +10, sigma 7) if the pixel was below the median, or b-m noise (mean -10, sigma 7) if it was above the median. The +10/-10 on the b-m mean, increases/decreases the overall brightest below/above the median. I made 12 images with this stochastic noise (computed for each pixel). I then did a 3x zoom (each pixel, with rational noise, now becomes 9, based on the DN info of many noisy neighbors, i.e. a b-spline zoom) and then I stacked the 12 resulting images. This averages the pixels towards their new means (shifts the histogram), normalizes the added noise, and 'hallucinates' new (but probable) info into the zoom. It wont change the shape of the glare, but it should add detail into the whitest and darkest areas. (... we now return you to your regularly scheduled forum!)

My God - it's full of stairs!

Sorry...it's early morning...

Here is the LUNA 24 sample and return lander.
It landed 2.4 km form the failed LUNA 23 lander and completed the mission!
Luna 24 collected 170 grams of layered material from the edge of a crater (bottom right)
The top 1/3 of the image in the top right corner is the ascent stage.
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I would like to introduce you to one of the most interesting things I have found on the Moon in a long time...

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This array of hollows is in addition to the ones I reported on at the LPSC, a new observation. They are absolutely pristine, the sharp edges unaffected by any later impacts. And the amazing thing is, they are right in the ejecta blanket of Aristarchus, itself one of the youngest craters on the Moon. They have to post-date Aristarchus. Whatever form of activity created them, it was active in the last few hundred million years. Rover target anyone? The location is given at the bottom right corner of this Quickmap screenshot.

Phil

Excellent find Dr. Stooke! They looked like plateaus to me until I looked at another image M142570512. On second thought, I am having trouble visualizing them again. Are these plateaus or indentations? The craters around them indicate indentations, but then the mind wants them to be plateaus. Odd.

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Sorry I missed your talk at LPSC, Phil, but I just checked out your abstract. Nice work! These hollows are fascinating. There seems to be a difference from the Mercury hollows, because those on Mercury are exclusively associated with impact craters, while the Moon ones are often associated with volcanic areas instead. Do you agree? I liked the suggestion at LPSC by Vaughan that the Mercury hollows were due to sublimation of some volatile "scum" that floated to the top of impact melt sheets, but I'm not sure how to apply that idea to lunar volcanic features.

John

I wouldn't volunteer to drive it for fear of triggering subsidence and being engulfed. That surface looks poorly supported to say the least.

It's the lighting! We are used to light coming from above in a scene. Print out the picture and flip upside down. --Well worked fine for me for one look, but turned it and now can't get my mid to let go of plateaus regardless of angle--darn visual cortex is not under voluntary control.

[edit] Put the picture on my wall and went for a 20 minute walk. Brain processed image correcty when I returned..

They are depressions, for sure.

Phil

Would be a fun shape-from-shading image. Pretty neat.

John - I agree about the difference between Mercury and Moon hollows... though some Mercury hollows are up on the central peaks or peak rings of craters and basins, and I'm not sure if that works with the impact melt idea. Hyginus and Sosigines craters contain hollows, but none other that I've found yet.

Phil

A standard optical illusion

light from the upper left corner or from the lower left
can invert the way the brain "sees" it

The cure: Arrange for the lighting in your room to be from the same direction as the lighting in the image. Conscious control over the visual cortex is thereby reasserted.

(Sorry - I've posted this before but I couldn't find where.)

The voids remind me of what you see when a viscous liquid tries to flow across a rough surface, like paint on concrete or water spilling across hard-packed dirt. I'm not proposing that an analog process is occurring, just pointing out that's what it looks like -- particularly the boundaries inside the hollows the way they sort of curve downward and appear to pull back.

The out gassing reminds me of what salt looks like on the concrete after the ice/water has evaporated
I live in the NORTH so ....(N 42.38841 )

Nice new pic from LRO for the Apollo 16 anniversary. Here's Shadow Rock (Station 13) above left of centre with footprints around it, and LRV tracks at lower right.

Phil

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I have added the Apollo 16 traverse map (at the LPI website) to the above map to show how accurate it was. The plotted Station 13 was about 50 m off its real location.

Phil

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They look more like hollows/indentations in the inverted image -- I think the bright regolith-free(?) surfaces in the original image make them look like plateaus. I can almost convince myself of subtle raised aprons around the hollows, as if the regolith were removed upward and outward. Imaging these hollows at different sun angles might be...illuminating.

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Apollo Lunar Surface Journal on Apollo Flags as seen by LRO.

Hope you don't mind tooting my own horn, but I am pleased to be able to post something in the "nasa.gov" domain (it wasn't easy) on something I hope some people find of interest. See following link:
Apollo Lunar Surface Journal Apollo Flags Link

Toot away James, this is great.

But I would take issue with you on one point. At Apollo 15 you say there is no clear evidence of a flag shadow, and that is true in the first frames, but not in the last three where a very dark shadow appears and moves as expected. Maybe the orientation of the flag is such that the early frames are casting a very thin shadow (i.e. the sun is in the plane of the flag in the mid-morning).

Phil