Friday, October 02, 2009

A Collection of Lunar Images From Planetary Missions

This is a collection of lunar images taken by spacecraft not normally associated with the moon.  It is far from comprehensive, but provides an interesting sampling.

First is an image taken by Deep Impact in February of 2005, showing Mare Orientale on the terminator.  It has been deconvolved to reduce the effects of Deep Impact's camera being out of focus.

This is another view showing Mare Orientale and taken in 2005.  It was taken by the Messenger spacecraft on its way to study Mercury.

This image is a distant view from January of 1998.  It was taken by the Near Earth Ateroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft during a flyby of the earth.   NEAR was looking down on the south pole.
The final image was taken by the Stardust spacecraft during its earth flyby in January 200l, looking down on the north side. Unfortunately, Stardust suffered from a foggy camera (a problem that was largely resolved before its comet flyby.  Here is the version of the image on the Stardust website http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/photo/lunar.jpg  
Here is amy version of the image, with the fog removed.
 Processed images Copyright Ted Stryk, Raw Data For Stardust and Deep Impact Courtesy NASA/JPL, Raw Data for Messenger and NEAR Courtesy NASA/JHU/APL

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