China’s moon probe sends its first full resolution picture to Earth
November 28, 2007 – 10:22 pmSome time ago I reported about Chang’e: Chinas first mission to the moon. It has been quite a while since Chang’e made her way to the moon. The satellite has been orbiting moon for quite a while now. Today the first picture was released. Here is a small part of the full picture in reduced quality:
Chang e moon picture full resolution (1.0mb) This is amazing stuff!
China wants to image the whole moon surface with chang’e until mid January. Hopefully they will release more pictures from this mission. During former mission they didn’t do much public relation work. However with the latest TV coverage about China’s step to the moon in Chinese TV we can be positive about this. I expect more moon pictures to come.
Congratulations China!
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4 Responses to “China’s moon probe sends its first full resolution picture to Earth”
I’m glad China is making progress but this seems kinda “been there, done that”. Frankly, photos of the moon from Earth’s telescopes seem better. Why doesn’t China do something new? Other countries did this 40 years ago.
By jay on Nov 30, 2007
Thanks for Your comment Jay
Have You checked the full resolution picture that is linked in the text?
The picture shows an area of 280 x 460 kilometers. The pictures size is 2300 x 3800 pixels. The moon has a diameter of about 3500 kilometers. If You want to place the moon on a picture with the same resolution that would be a picture of 28000 x 28000 pixels.
At the same time it’s not really the highest resolution, just because it’s a jpeg. In the archives of the Chinese space agency they probably have the same thing in a raw picture. Would be quite a waste of bandwidth to put a 100 megabyte raw on the net.
By YoLearnChinese on Nov 30, 2007
Did you ever consider that a possible reason why the detailed pictures have not been published yet (and may never be), is because it proves that the u.s. never went there. There are no foot prints, lunar rovers, u.s. flags, or remains of lunar module in these photos. The u.s. owes china billions if not trillions in debt and I believe that the photos are being used as “leverage” to encourage the u.s. to pay back the loan. China could be using the threat of exposing a huge u.s. hoax to the moon to force the u.s. to pay.
By doug nickason on Apr 4, 2008
So far there are no missions sent to the moon which are able to deliver pictures in a good enough resolution to confirm or deny anything.
October 2008 there will be a mission sent to the moon called LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter). It will be able to deliver pictures with a resolution of 0.5m per pixel. On these You can see things like the lunar rovers and the landing stage modules of the previous human lunar explorations.
By Junjie on Apr 5, 2008