New Earthrise and Earthset Movies from Kaguya

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