Chandrayaan-2 views Apollo

[onebigmonkey]

India's release of Chandrayaan-2's data has been frustratingly slow, with annoyance at the ever-increasing delays compounded by a really naff website that can take days to download images that fail repeatedly and don't allow resuming. Most of the Apollo coverage misses the landing sites, but a closer look at Apollo 14's location showed that the calibrated images did catch it. Here's the view in the calibrated fore and aft images of Antares, complete with astronaut trails:





I'm checking pretty much daily to see if any more have been released, but so far the only other coverage of interest is a small part of Hadley Rille photographed and filmed during Apollo 15, and areas covered during the return to orbit from Apollo 14 and 15. Apollo 17's SIV-B impact crater is on one of the images, as is Luna 21 (Lunokhod-2's launch vehicle).

[bknight]

India's release of Chandrayaan-2's data has been frustratingly slow, with annoyance at the ever-increasing delays compounded by a really naff website that can take days to download images that fail repeatedly and don't allow resuming. Most of the Apollo coverage misses the landing sites, but a closer look at Apollo 14's location showed that the calibrated images did catch it. Here's the view in the calibrated fore and aft images of Antares, complete with astronaut trails:





I'm checking pretty much daily to see if any more have been released, but so far the only other coverage of interest is a small part of Hadley Rille photographed and filmed during Apollo 15, and areas covered during the return to orbit from Apollo 14 and 15. Apollo 17's SIV-B impact crater is on one of the images, as is Luna 21 (Lunokhod-2's launch vehicle).

I'm viewing this on a cell phone, bug is the descent stage NE of bright crater?

[onebigmonkey]

Yes - if you draw a line from the centre to the top right corner it's  about half way.

[BertieSlack]

The initial data release from ISRO in December was better quality than these. I was hoping for better resolution than LRO, but this doesn't look like it.

[onebigmonkey]

The initial data release from ISRO in December was better quality than these. I was hoping for better resolution than LRO, but this doesn't look like it.

This is from the initial release, but what I've mostly been looking at was the orthographic/DEM pairs, which is just the nadir image (but could be combining all sources into a derived composite). The derived orthographic just missed the edge of the Apollo 14 site, so I figured maybe the aft/fore view might just overlook it. I was right

To be fair to the TMC, it is viewing the ground from roughly double the height of the LRO shots of Apollo, but yes, it's disappointing. The resolution offered by the OHRC is superb, but I think they're focussing the targets for that on polar regions.

What's annoying me more at the moment is that ISRO have got the wherewithal to get a very good camera to orbit the moon, but can't hire a decent web designer or keep a server connection alive for more than 10 minutes.

The inability to do a proper spatial search is hugely irritating, but I've managed to work out how to get Google Earth's moon view to import the derived geotiffs and thus show the spatial extent of what they've released. That was fine for latitudes up to 180 degrees, but as they use a coordinate system that is 0-360 degrees, not -180/+180 either side of the meridian Google Earth threw an error for half of them. Luckily I have access to ArcGIS on a work laptop, which exported the images as kmz files with corrected longitudes that GE could deal with!

[BertieSlack]

To be fair to the TMC, it is viewing the ground from roughly double the height of the LRO shots of Apollo, but yes, it's disappointing. The resolution offered by the OHRC is superb, but I think they're focussing the targets for that on polar regions.

Phew - I thought these were OHRC. Should've read your post properly. So hopefully we will get some better images at a later date.
I tried to download one of the images from the website - just wasn't gonna happen.

[onebigmonkey]

To be fair to the TMC, it is viewing the ground from roughly double the height of the LRO shots of Apollo, but yes, it's disappointing. The resolution offered by the OHRC is superb, but I think they're focussing the targets for that on polar regions.

Phew - I thought these were OHRC. Should've read your post properly. So hopefully we will get some better images at a later date.
I tried to download one of the images from the website - just wasn't gonna happen.

I've downloaded all of the Ortho/DEM pairs, and a chunk of the calibrated/raw img files. If there's any you're specifically after I could dump them in a drop box or something?

[TippedIceberg]

Amazing! Gives me hope we'll eventually see OHRC images of an Apollo site.

Is there an associated ISSDC Chandrayaan-2 image ID you could share? I'd attempt to download the whole set, but the site gives 56k modem flashbacks.

[onebigmonkey]

These are the file names for the fore and aft calibrated images:

ch2_tmc_nca_20200207T0122596445_d_img_m65
ch2_tmc_ncf_20200207T0122596445_d_img_m65

and these the raw:

ch2_tmc_nra_20200207T0122596445_d_img_m65
ch2_tmc_nrf_20200207T0122596445_d_img_m65

The imaging orbit was 2026, which is probably the easiest way to search.

It literally took me over 24 hours to get a couple of files - they were pretty reliable last month but it seems to have fallen apart in the last couple of weeks. To ease your pain I picked one of those files and added it to a dropbox here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rsvmc36aazlnmzq/ch2-a14.zip?dl=0

You'll need software capable of opening .img files (the instructions on their website suggest a couple but they aren't that good - https://pradan.issdc.gov.in/pradan/protected/downloadFile/tmc2/ch2_tmc2_data_products_user_guide.pdf). I used photoshop, for which you'll need to:

- Use "open as" then pick 'Photoshop raw' as the filetype.
- Select the .img file.
- Use the values in the accompanying xml file for height and width.

It'll look black when you open it, so go to Image, Adjustments, and HDR toning. Increase the 'Detail' option to maximum and fiddle with Exposure and Gamma until it looks OK.

The image is upside down to start with, rotating it and then cropping out all but the top quarter before you do the HDR toning will cut down on processing time.

The files covering the western part of Hadley Rille all contain 20191212T20043269568 in the filename, and those showing the area west of Taurus-Littrow 20191210T1903498259, which were done on orbits 1339 and 1315 respectively. They both show areas overflown by the ascending lunar module but not the landing site itself.

If you have QGIS, you can use the orthographic and dtm geotiffs to make cool 3D models. The catch there is that you need to modify the DTM vertical exaggeration by 0.00004 or so in order for the 3D plugin to make sense of them!

[JayUtah]

If you have QGIS, you can use the orthographic and dtm geotiffs to make cool 3D models.

...which now I want to do this weekend instead of planting the garden as the spouse intends.  I need to practice faking a back injury so it seems authentic.

[TippedIceberg]

Thanks for sharing the Dropbox files and guide! Great work tracking these down.

It literally took me over 24 hours to get a couple of files - they were pretty reliable last month but it seems to have fallen apart in the last couple of weeks.

I had a similar experience attempting to download OHRC files. I wonder if the connection is any faster inside India, maybe it's bad global routing or something.

[bknight]

If you have QGIS, you can use the orthographic and dtm geotiffs to make cool 3D models.

...which now I want to do this weekend instead of planting the garden as the spouse intends.  I need to practice faking a back injury so it seems authentic.

Tsk tsk I wouldn't put that in writing.

[bknight]

Yes - if you draw a line from the centre to the top right corner it's  about half way.

Thanks, my guess was correct.

[onebigmonkey]

While the official data release from C-2 has been patchy and slow anbd the website unreliable, the unmanned splaceflight forum has linked a youtube presentation from the Gujarat Council on Science and Technology, featuring a view from the OHRC of Apollo 11

Attached is my screengrab of their low resolution version. It's also interesting because the OHRC data released so far has all been aimed at the south pole region, so it's good to know they've also been looking elsewhere. Very much looking forward to them releasing the actual files!

[Mag40]

That Apollo 11 image is actually really good, but you know what the HBs are going to say, where are the footprints? I would reckon that no argument about light angles, size or resolution would placate them.