A three-dimensional (3D) terrain image into which the aspect is freely changed can be made from the Terrain Camera (TC) stereo-pair data.
Three-dimensional image of the same landscape as that of the picture taken by the Apollo 17 crew came into view when it approached the Apollo landing site and the aspect of the binocular vision image was lowered.
In the Apollo picture, bouldersare scattered on rim and inner wall of Camelot Crater, and Mons North Massif is seen in the far left hand side greatly. The hill on the right hand side of the picture is Sculptured Hill, whose elevation is 1,260 m from the bottom of the valley.
The samples that the Apollo 17 crew brought back revealed that these mountains composed of complex breccias, which was an aggregate of various rocks deconstructed by meteor impact.
Although the small object (e.g. boulders) cannot be shown in this TC image because their respective sizes are less than the spatial resolution of the TC of 10 meters from 100km orbit above the Moon, the shape of the mountains is almost the same, indicating the spatial resolution of the TC is very high. (Apollo 17 image, AS17-145-22183 are from The Apollo Gallery of NASA)
*Prof. Hiroshi Takeda, LISM/TC editorial group member, gave his comments.
- Adobe(R) Flash Player(R) is required to view this site.
- Copyright (c) 2007 JAXA/SELENE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.