Japanese Probe Returns First HD Video of the Moon

Riding with Robots writes "The Kaguya probe, now in lunar orbit, has sent down the first footage of the moon's surface from its onboard high-definition TV camera. The Kaguya mission, which consists of a main orbiter and two smaller satellites in a 100-km-high, polar orbit, is slated to officially begin its science phase in December."

And while up there. . .

[Apple Acolyte (517892)]

it caught a glimpse of a Transformer.

Re:

[joshv (13017)]

If only they were able to take about 24 pictures per second with their Hasselblad's, you might have a point.

What! - No audio?!?!?!?

[spineboy (22918)]

I'm just ticked off that they didn't bother with any audio. I was looing foward to hearing the zooming/swooshing spaceship noise, and the eerie background tone that I always heard on Trek (TOS)

I don't see any stars is this a fake video of the.

[Joe The Dragon (967727)]

I don't see any stars is this a fake video of the moon.

Re:I don't see any stars is this a fake video of t

[Smidge204 (605297)]

Idiot or troll? Can't decide.

Just in case of "idiot": Stars are not that bright and require a longer exposure time. The moon is actually very bright and a short exposure time is required to prevent the image from being washed out. The result is the stars don't appear because the camera has been desensitised to take clear pictures of bright things.

Take a picture of any brightly lit object on a starry night and you'll likely find the stars aren't in the photo.
=Smidge=

P.S. Whoever gave the parent an "Insightful" mod was definately an idiot.

Re:I don't see any stars is this a fake video of t

[by Anonymous Coward]

Irony [wikipedia.org].

Hand in your geek card

[dazedNconfuzed (154242)]

explain that einstein?

He just did.
This is "News for Nerds".
If you don't understand why he's right, /. is not for you.
You're looking for USA Today [usatoday.com].

Re:I don't see any stars is this a fake video of t

[sarahbau (692647)]

Why is this modded insightful? There are no stars in the video because their luminosity is very low compared to the light reflected from the moon. The moon would be overexposed if stars were visible, which would make the video pointless. They wanted to video the moon, not a big glowing white ball with stars behind it.

Re:

[corifornia2 (1158503)]

Its a farse on all the douchebags that say the moon landing is fake.

Re:

[bcat24 (914105)]

Maybe, but many people mod humor as insightful, not funny. This probably has something to do with the fact that a funny mod doesn't add to a user's karma.

Re:I don't see any stars is this a fake video of t

[GodfatherofSoul (174979)]

*WHOOSH!*

Re:I don't see any stars is this a fake video of t

[Speare (84249)]

I don't see any stars is this a fake video of the moon.

I don't know why this is modded at least +2 Insightful. It's either very poorly informed, or a reference to a common misconception. You generally don't see stars in space images, unless there's NO other sun-illuminated object in the near foreground (a moon, a satellite, etc.), because of the sensor's dynamic range. Any moonshot on the sunny side is like a very bright sunny day on off-white snow, and the stars just can't compete for exposure.

The stars are a millionth the brightness of any nearby object

Re:I don't see any stars is this a fake video of t

[drakaan (688386)]

I don't know why this is modded at least +2 Insightful. It's either very poorly informed, or a reference to a common misconception...

...or, the <humor> tag was missing and certain people are *way* too serious sometimes.

Re:I don't see any stars is this a fake video of t

[moranar (632206)]

Reflections are all wrong. Definitely photoshopped. [xkcd.com]

mod parent up

[arsheive (609065)]

This is +5 funny. The people responding to it as a serious post must have never heard any of the moonlanding hoax arguments, or are the kind of assholes that just can't keep themselves from correcting things for long enough to consider the possibility of irony. If they're the former... new to slashdot?

Re:

[mevets (322601)]

I disagree - 'not getting it' is as slashdot as, well, / and .

Re:mod parent up

[toadlife (301863)]

"Whenever you want information on the net, don't ask a question. Just post a wrong answer."

-- Cancer Omega

Re:I don't see any stars is this a fake video of t

[hondo77 (324058)]

I believe this is an improvement of the original fake with a better set and special effects. I can't get over how well this was filmed.

Funny thing is, if it actually was a product of Hollywood it would look a lot better...and have explosions.

nuked

[blhack (921171)]

Don't we have a rule against linking directly to videos? The video is almost dead already, and as of now there aren't even any comments yet!

on another note.

I can has space race?

flag

[Noishe (829350)]

So when to we get a picture of the american flag that's implanted on the surface somewhere.

Re:flag

[heretic108 (454817)]

So when to we get a picture of the american flag that's implanted on the surface somewhere.

Be another few hours yet - Weta Digital have just received the raw footage, and a spec and a letter of credit from the NSA - they've done the wireframes, fills and colour correction, now they're working on the gentle waving movements, and tweaking the lights to make the edges realistic. Next, the discarded bottom half of the Lunar Excursion Module...
</conspiracy-theory>

Re:

[david.given (6740)]

That thing's been there for 40 years, it's not going anywhere. Though by the looks of it, it'll be another 40 years before another American astronaut even comes close to touching it.

That's okay --- just ask the Chinese to take a picture of it for you...

but the video clip is SD rez?

[VMaN (164134)]

That's like benchmarking picture quality of a HDTV thrugh an SD tvshow.

Re:but the video clip is SD rez?

[click2005 (921437)]

I couldn't read the kanji & was waiting for a fansubbed version.

Psh, obviously fake

[Mayhem178 (920970)]

This was filmed in the desert in Arizona. Everyone knows the Radar Men don't allow spacecraft to fly near their moon.

Re:

[davidsyes (765062)]

This time it won't be so "windy" in Arizona. Either they will put up wind breaks, or the flags will be made of steel.

Note to JAXA

[ColdWetDog (752185)]

Needs subtitles....

Nice images, though.

Re:Note to JAXA

[aksenkto! (997298)]

"Kaguya" HD Camera footage.
Titled: "Ocean of Storms", western side

Filming Start Time: 20:51 (GMT) October 30, 2007
Filming End Time: 20:59 (GMT) October 30, 2007

Filming Start Location: 250degN, 275-282deg E
Filming End Location: 49deg N, 275-283deg E

"Kaguya" altitude: 110km (68 mi) above moon surface
8 minutes of footage edited down to 1 minute (8x speed).
---
Located in the left section of the Northern hemisphere of the moon, the western-most part of "Ocean of Storms" was filmed while navigating a South to North direction. The right side of the screen show the shadowy "dark oceans" and the sun-lit areas are the highlands.

---

"Kaguya" HD Camera footage.
Titled: Lunar North Pole

Filming Start Time: 19:07 (GMT) October 30, 2007
Filming End Time: 19:15 (GMT) October 30, 2007

Filming Start Location: 66deg N, 274-288deg E
Filming End Location: 87deg N, 26-161deg E

"Kaguya" altitude: 110km (68 mi) above moon surface
8 minutes of footage edited down to 1 minute (8x speed).
---
The following was filmed while navigating from the northern area of "Ocean of Storms" to the north pole of the Moon. Due to the higher latitude of this voyage, the lower angle of the sun caused the crater formations to cast long shadows.

Real Time?

[cecilgol (977329)]

Is there anyway to find out if this video is sped up, or is that thing just flying over the surface really fast?

Re:

[Overzeetop (214511)]

According to another poster here, it's a 8x speed.

Above the movie, it says:

[diesel66 (254283)]

Above the movie, it says:

Moving image of the Moon shot by the HDTV camera (no audio)

No audio? That sucks. I really wanted to hear the 'whooshing' noise of the probe speeding through the moon's atmosphere!

(In space, nobody can hear your sarcasm.)

Re:Above the movie, it says:

[MiniMike (234881)]

> (In space, nobody can hear your sarcasm.)

That wasn't sarcasm, that was a vacuous joke...

Re:Above the movie, it says:

[moco (222985)]

No audio? That sucks. I really wanted to hear the 'whooshing' noise of the probe speeding through the moon's atmosphere!

Not only that, the video is recorded in black and white...

Speed?

[sqrt(2) (786011)]

How fast is this video played at? How long does it take the probe to complete a full orbit? It might say that at the beginning of the film, but I can't read moon-runes, maybe someone here could translate. Pretty cool video anyway.

It almost looks as if...

[athloi (1075845)]

The moon was once inhabited by an intelligent but thoughtless species that developed technology, covered the planet in concrete, and then died of their own selfishness, leaving behind a barren gray wasteland that resembles an asteroid-pocked version of Houston, Texas...

Re:It almost looks as if...

[plover (150551)]

Could you please write a coherent statement that distinguishes between "a [concrete covered] barren gray wasteland that resembles an asteroid-pocked version of Houston, Texas" and "Houston, Texas"? 'Cause I'm having trouble telling the two apart.

No Audio?

[Danathar (267989)]

The site says there is no audio. I thought there was at least a hissing sound like in 2001 and maybe some "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"

Roads on the moon?

[OzPeter (195038)]

Just near where the first part of the movie blanks out, there is a very interesting linear feature that spreads across a good quarter of the shot. If I was on a plane flying over a terrestrial desert and saw something like that I would say it was a road. Can anyone give a better explanation than Moon Highway #1?

Re:Roads on the moon?

[Liquidrage (640463)]

I saw that same spot and actually paused it and rewinded it a few times to get a better look.

It's very possible a collapsed lava tube, they call them sinuous rilles.

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/planet_volcano/lunar/sin_rilles/Overview.html [und.edu]

sheesh.

[apodyopsis (1048476)]

Reading these comments you'd think we're a bunch a sad obsessed geek tosspots always looking for a cheap laugh. Sheesh.

On a more serious note, congratulations to the team for a real achievement and kudos for the excellent movie.

If only they had aligned it slighter further to the right we could of seen the giant "Kilroy was here" on the darkside of the moon, now that would of been cool..

Where's the HD?

[heroine (1220)]

This is not HD. It's a tiny 480x272 Web 2.0 flash movie.

The press release

[arsheive (609065)]

It's shot at 8-fold speed, the following is from: http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/11/20071107_kaguya_e.html [www.jaxa.jp]

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) have successfully performed the world's first high-definition image taking by the lunar explorer "KAGUYA" (SELENE,) which was injected into a lunar orbit at an altitude of about 100 km on October 18, 2007, (Japan Standard Time. Following times and dates are all JST.)

The image shooting was carried out by the onboard high definition television (HDTV) of the KAGUYA, and it is the world's first high definition image data acquisition of the Moon from an altitude about 100 kilometers away from the Moon.

The image taking was performed twice on October 31. Both were eight-fold speed intermittent shooting (eight minutes is converged to one minute.) The first shooting covered from the northern area of the "Oceanus Procellarum" toward the center of the North Pole, then the second one was from the south to the north on the western side of the "Oceanus Procellarum." The moving image data acquired by the KAGUYA was received at the JAXA Usuda Deep Space Center, and processed by NHK.

The satellite was confirmed to be in good health through telemetry data received at the Usuda station.

480 x 272 is not HD

[btempleton (149110)]

Hello? Earth to Kaguya. Earth to Kaguya. That's not HD. 272 lines is not even SDTV resolution! The HD specs require 720 lines, and frankly I would like to see 1080.

Second half is better

[SiliconEntity (448450)]

I thought the second half of the footage was better, where the probe flies over the terminator into the dark side of the moon. The funny thing was at first in that segment I had the illusion of inverted relief, as though the craters were bumps. I kept telling myself that the sun was shining from over my right shoulder but I couldn't see it. Then suddenly as we get very close to the terminator and things were quite dark below, the terrain "popped" into correct relief and craters looked like craters again. An amusing optical illusion which often shows up when viewing alien landscapes, rather rare to see it disappear spontaneously like that.

WTF? No Audio??!!

[alta (1263)]

Can someone let me know when they get the damn Mic fixed? We're living in a multimedia age, there's just no excuse for this half ass attempt at entertainment.

Stereo at a minimum, preferably 7.1 THX Dolby noise reduction AC3 FLAC Lossless Acustimass full dynamic range phonographed...

I'm hoping that they didn't have the bandwidth for the audio too and they'll upload that when they get back with the tapes. I hope it's on DAT, the only true way to record.

Worked for me

[SuperKendall (25149)]

Stereo at a minimum, preferably 7.1 THX Dolby noise reduction AC3 FLAC Lossless Acustimass full dynamic range phonographed...

I got perfect 7.1 THX dolby in my player. Sounded exactly like a satellite passing through space above the moon, I felt as if I were there with my eyes closed.

The audio was even more pristine than my 7.1 copy of 4'33"...

Youtube link

[chris411 (610359)]

Here. [youtube.com]

Re:

[Mayhem178 (920970)]

Hope the probe is made of dolamite, though. It's that righteous mineral that doesn't cop out when there's heat all about.

Re:

[Pojut (1027544)]

Definately the most funny of the recent rash of goatse ascii art (puns both intended)

Re:

[geekoid (135745)]

we went there because it was hard to do.

Do you know how much money people have made because of the Apollo program? are still making today?
You know as well as I do many new technologies were developed specifically because of a need for the mission. many of those technologies allow whole industries to be born. Industries that need people to work for them;which in turn gave people more money to spend on thing like helping people. The tax return on the Apollo investment is many, many times it's cost.

To advance,