New Earthrise and Earthset Movies from Kaguya

By Nancy Atkinson - April 14, 2008 at 6:30 AM UTC | Planetary Science
kaguya_earthrise_20080405.gif

Ian reported yesterday on the

high definition topographical maps

recently released by the Japanese SELENE mission, also known as Kaguya, which will provide exact locations of essential minerals to future lunar explorers. And now, via

Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society

comes more from Kaguya -- movies of an Earthrise and Earthset from the moon. While the movies don't provide much as far as scientific data, they are off the charts as far being aesthetically pleasing and just tremendously magnificent. Emily grabbed individual frames from the longer, but smoother high-definition movies that the Japanese Space Agency JAXA created from the HD Camera on board the moon-orbiting Kaguya to create quick little movies. Above is the

Earthrise

quick movie.

Here's the quick Earthset movie Emily created. And here's the links to the hi-def versions at JAXA for

Earthrise

and

Earthset.

However, these longer and smoother movies are still only 25% of the full resolution of the movies. JAXA has not been releasing the full resolution Kaguya data on the internet, as they are "saving" the really high-def stuff for commercial and educational purposes.

Emily reported that HD camera on board the Kaguya spacecraft generates too much data for live transmission; instead the video is compressed and stored within the camera system. Then, it takes about 20 minutes to transmit a 1-minute video to Earth. See

Emily's post

for more info.

Original News Source:

The Planetary Society

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com