India's Chandrayaan 2 Reveals Highest Resolution Images Of The Moon From Orbit

India's Chandrayaan 2 has been orbiting the moon for over a year but hasn't been sharing the data with the world until just before Christmas. I'd been hoping that the high resolution camera would let us see things on the moon in a detail we'd not seen before, but it appears that they've only shared 3 images and 2 of those are blurry.

Still I hope this is a start and we'll be seeing more data in the future.

Data is available from:

[aritrabiswas]

I live in India and I've had the opportunity to meet some scientists from ISRO. Really friendly people, even the chairman was nice enough to hang around with us schoolkids for quite a long time. They work so hard but for whatever reason don't show off the results of their work. Hopefully in the future we'll get better communication from them.

[benjaminsmith]

For fun I did some quick Fourier analysis on the Chandrayaan 2 images vs. the LROC images. The analysis confirmed that the max resolution of the LROC camera is 1.0 m, which is the same value published by NASA.

The Chandrayaan 2 OHR images have a resolution of at least 0.45 m. I say at least because the optical resolution was higher than the pixel resolution, so we can't measure the full optical resolution, but can say with certainty that it is at least 2x better than LROC.

That said, the Chandrayaan 2 OHR images also show a classic signature of a small amount of motion blur in the vertical direction. Fortunately, if measured carefully, the motion blur artifact can be deconvolved from the original image, producing an image without motion blur. My guess is this is something they are working on right now.

One other thing I noticed is that the pixel values (i.e. dynamic range) of the Chandrayaan 2 OHR images is around 10x higher than in the LROC images.

[canis]

My grandfather built his own telescope and would be amazed by these lunar images. He gave me my lifetime love of astronomy and I know he’d be a subscriber to your channel if he was still living.

[StevenAndrews]

It was a crater...until you told me it could be a mountain.

[chrisc]

"a crater with a depressed object in the middle"
how did they get a picture of me on the moon?

[SauerlandSlackliner]

These Images are amazing, i love just looking at them ...

[mjproebstle]

i haven’t seen craters of that resolution since i last looked at my face in the mirror

[John.z]

That is remarkable resolution, and an amazing recording process.
Thank you Scott, and happy new year.

[deborahduthie]

That does look like a perfect square etched onto the surface at the very beginning. There’s is certainly archeology up there. One crater grows deeper in the middle with straight lines showing the steepness of the 3photo crater. Brilliant stuff India.

[micaiaskauss]

3:14 "HD, which is 1920 pickles across"

[AlexanderBatyr]

7:42 ...this is a crater with a depressed object in the middle...
- Yeah, absolutely, nice crater!
7:45 ...unless you got your eyes reversed and it looks like a mountain coming up!
- WTF, I don't see crater anymore, my eyes are reversed now. What did you just do to me?

[PrajjalakChattopadhyay]

Some of my seniors from department of astronomy & astrophysics work on this. They've much more data, which isn't in the public domain (to the best of my knowledge). (I'm a grad student in the department of high energy physics)

[LangstonJordan]

It wasn't a failure. Just a rapid unscheduled impactor mission.

[TheZoltan-]

When you said at the three-phase picture that "depending how you look at it", I consciously "inverted" my view, but I did not see a high mountain... I saw a black&white picture of a chameleon inspecting its surroundings.

And musing on its menu: "Hm... fly good... fly safe..."

[paulbugnacki]

Thanks for taking the time to put those images together. It didn’t sound easy. Incredibly sharp images.

[nethascotx]

Am from India, I’m so proud how much ISRO has evolved from moving parts on bicycle to the VAB to international recognition and surpassing!

[mybluemars]

Thank you Scott for your hard work and great explanations! I love push-broom imaging techniques that come in huge data sets such as this 94K by 12K.

[jamesstenhouse]

I am hoping that they get some new images of the Apollo mission sites. Great work once again Scott. Cheers from Canada l*l

[DeathValleyDazed]

Scott, your technical skills and analysis are so much appreciated. Thanks for translating space stuff into “understandable” for an average dude like me!

[Dylans_astro]

We to see the Apollo landing sites through this!