Lunar Orbiter Imagery Presented on NASA Ames Hyperwall 2

On Thursday one of the images retrieved by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) was presented on the NASA Ames Hyperwall visualization system.
According to NASA Ames “Our in-house developed hyperwall-2 visualization system–one of the largest and most powerful in the world–provides a supercomputer-scale environment to visualize and explore the very large, high-dimensional datasets produced by NASA supercomputers and instruments. The hyperwall-2 helps researchers display, analyze, and study high-dimensional datasets in meaningful ways, allowing the use of different tools, viewpoints, and parameters to display the same data or datasets.”
The image that was presented was a portion of the floor of crater Copernicus taken by Lunar Orbiter 5 on 11 August 1967. Specifically frame 5151_H1.
FYI at the native resolution of this restored image and the resolution of the individual monitors used in this hyper wall, we’d need 50 – yes fifty – hyperwall 2 set ups to show this LOIRP image at its full resolution.
Click on images to enlarge

Lunar Orbiter V’s Mountains: Improving The View (Update)


Update: Compare our image (left) with the best quality USGS image (right) – Click on image to enlarge. Here’s the full resolution TIFF image (caution: over 600MB). By the way the odd craters in the middle are Messier A and B.


Dennis Wingo: I love looking at the Moon. It is one of my little joys in doing the LOIRP project that I get to look at amazing images of the Moon that we get that look so incredible. Just by chance yesterday I was looking through some processed framelets because I had a discrepancy between what I was recording in my log book of the Lunar Orbiter sequence numbers and the framelets on the tapes as recorded by NASA. I happened upon image LOV-041M from tapes W5-154, 155.
I started looking at the framelets and found the super cool oblique shots interesting when looking at them on the 30″ Apple high res monitor. We just had to get that image and so we found that we were missing a few framelets due to a tape change and thus we got the rest off of a Goldstone tape (G5-145).
Last night Austin ran the framelets through our assembly and image processing program and left me the frame. I loaded it on my computer this morning and was just simply blown away by it when zooming in. It seriously looks like you are on a spacecraft about 50 km above the surface looking down. The first image here is a zoom into the upper right quadrant of that image. The second image is from the Arizona State Quickmap looking straight down into the same area.
One thing that is just so fascinating to me is how much more I get out of the oblique images when trying to get a sense of an area. You can actually see how high a mountain is that just looks like a bump when looking down on it from a vertical perspective. This is making me revise my estimation of the value of many of the LO images because it is extremely difficult for the LROC camera, if not impossible, to get images like this.
Today the full res frame will go up on the NLSI web server and we will provide the link to the 691 megabyte image. Hope you have a good network connection! I will post the link to the high res image when Teague gets it on the server! Update: Here’s the full resolution image (over 600MB)
Click on images to enlarge

Lunar Orbiter V View: Mountains on The Moon


Dennis Wingo: These two images here were captured from a frame let of our W5-155 tape, which is from image LOV-041M. The original image, at LPI is here. This is what our tiny blow up of that region looks like. We have both the raw (bottom) and the inverted (top) positive image, but with no other processing. We are blown away with what it looks like on the screen. Click on images to enlarge. We are looking forward to start seeing some image output!

LOIRP Status Report 22 July 2013


Dennis Wingo: We are running tape today. Here is a scan of a document that I am using to plan the sequence of tape runs. at the top of the page it shows the proportion of the time one ground station was in range of Lunar Orbiter V. Woomera had the majority of the time so we are starting with it. Then Goldstone, and then finally Madrid. There was some duplicate scans during the final readout that overlapped the priority readout data. Thus it is our hope that we will get most of our scans from Woomera and Goldstone and will have to run only a few Madrid tapes. Time will tell. Click on image to enlarge.

High Resolution Lunar Orbiter V Mosaic of Crater Copernicus


This mosaic of the floor of crater Copernicus was created by combining the following 24 high resolution images taken by Lunar Orbiter V on 16 August 1967: 5148_H1, 5148_H2, 5148_H3, 5149_H1, 5149_H2, 5149_H3, 5150_H1, 5150_H2, 5150_H3, 5152_H1, 5152_H2, 5152_H3, 5153_H1, 5153_H2, 5153_H3, 5154_H1, 5154_H2, 5154_H3, 5155_H1, 5155_H2, 5155_H3, 5156_H1, 5156_H2, and 5156_H3.
One of the later Apollo missions was originally planned to land inside Copernicus crater. The last three Apollo missions were eventually canceled.
[Larger image] [Much larger image] [Very large image at NLSI] [ 10% size image exceptionally large]
[Full resolution, This image is 24 GIGABYTES. This is probably the largest image of planetary data ever put together into one mosaic. If it were blown up to full size at 300 DPI it would still be 37 feet wide by 18 feet tall.]

Messier A and B As Seen by Lunar Orbiter 5

According to Wikipedia: Messier is a relatively young lunar impact crater located on the Mare Fecunditatis. The crater has a discernible oblong shape that is not caused by foreshortening. The longer dimension is oriented in an east-west direction. Just to the west lies Messier A, a similar-sized crater with an oblong, doublet form. The longer dimension of this crater is oriented north-south, at right angles to Messier. This crater also has a curved bulge extending to the west. Messier A and B were photographed at high resolution by NASA’s Lunar Orbiter V spacecraft In August of 1967. The oblique angle view is the best available view of the craters.

This newly retrieved high resolution image, frame 5041_H3, was taken by Lunar Orbiter 5 on 10 August 1967 at 16:11 GMT LPI reference. Images: [large at LOIRP] [Very Large at NASA NLSI] Note: the large line arcing across this image is a photographic processing artifact that occurred during automated film processing in lunar orbit.

This newly retrieved high resolution image, frame 5041_H2, was taken by Lunar Orbiter 5 on 10 August 1967 at 16:11 GMT LPI reference. Images: [large at LOIRP] [Very Large at NASA NLSI]

This newly retrieved high resolution image, frame 5041_H1, was taken by Lunar Orbiter 5 on 10 August 1967 at 16:11 GMT LPI reference. Images: [large at LOIRP] [Very Large at NASA NLSI]

A Typical Day at LOIRP and McMoons


Original analog data tape from Lunar Orbiter 5 recorded live as data was sent back from lunar orbit in Aug 1967 being played back today (4 Feb 2013) for data recovery and enhancement. Video clip below shows data capture under way.

Video of data collection of #lunarorbiter 5 image at LOIRP ri... on Twitpic

High Resolution Lunar Orbiter Imagery of Central Uplift Features Inside Copernicus

On 11 August 1967 Lunar Orbiter 5 took one medium resolution and three high resolution images of the central uplift features inside crater Copernicus. These photos exhibit some processing artifacts (splotches) resulting from the film development process aboard the spacecraft. The imagery comparison discussed in the LOIRP poster presentation The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) Comparison of LO Copernicus Central Uplift with LRO LROC Mosaic at the 2012 Lunar Science Forum is taken from frame h1 – lower right hand portion.

This newly retrieved high resolution image, frame 5151_H3, was taken by Lunar Orbiter 5 on 11 August 1967 at 11:18 GMT LPI reference. Images: [large at LOIRP] [Very Large at NASA NLSI]

This newly retrieved high resolution image, frame 5151_H2, was taken by Lunar Orbiter 5 on 11 August 1967 at 11:18 GMT LPI reference. Images: [large at LOIRP] [Very Large at NASA NLSI]

This newly retrieved high resolution image, frame 5151_H1, was taken by Lunar Orbiter 5 on 11 August 1967 at 11:18 GMT LPI reference. Images: [large at LOIRP] [Very Large at NASA NLSI]