‘Earth-rise’ from moon orbit — in high-def
What happens when American tourists go to the moon? They play golf. What happens when Japanese tourists go to the moon? You get high-resolution photographs, HDTV broadcasts and YouTube videos of “earth-rise” and “earth-set” as seen from their orbiting tour bus.
These pictures were taken from the lunar orbiter Kaguya, operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Of course, they could only be taken from an orbiter, since the moon always shows the same face to the earth, so there’s no such thing, really, as an “earth-rise” or “earth-set” on the moon.1 Click through for full-size (1920×1080) photographs.
The crater in the foreground of the second image is Shackleton crater, the permanently-dark and cold polar area where the next NASA moon mission intends sending a lander in the hope of finding ice of some description. If all goes according to plan, it will touch down on the mound to the left of the crater (see annotated image), which, unlike Shackleton crater itself, always receives sunlight (and consequently, solar power). If you look at the earth carefully, you’ll note that Australia is not down-under, it’s onnnn… TOP!
The images, along with diagrams and movies can be downloaded from JAXA’s website. A news report is here.
Update: Added a footnote about lunar librations, and added an annotated image showing features in the earth-set image.
- It’s been brought to my attention that though strictly true, this statement isn’t strictly true. The inclination of the moon’s axis relative to that of the earth, and the perspective change due to the moon’s rotation around the earth means that we can see 59% of the face of the moon, so there’s a significant part of the surface of the moon from which apparent “earth-rise” or “earth-set” would be visible. For more, see this animation and explanation of “lunar libration”. [↩]
Hi Ivo,
never knew you had a passing interest (?).
I dont know if yu know, htere is a man “buried” there. His name is Eugene Schumaker,a colleague in the NEO group and co-discoverer of the famous Shumaker-Levy comet that hit Jupiter.
Long story, but willing to write it, if you interested.
His wife Caroline is still involved with NASA and the project.
Great day 2 U
I have a passing interest in a lot of things, including Gene and Caroline Schumaker’s work. I don’t know the story of his “burial” on the moon, though.
…well, the photos taken by the Apollo Astronauts were with a medium format Hasselblad- they weren’t exactly “low resolution” (they enlarged some to wall-size- much larger equivalent than 1920 x 1080); we just had to wait ’till they brought the film back..!
Fair comment, but analogue is so, well, seventies :-)