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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) have successfully performed the world’s first high-definition image taking of an Earth-rise* by the lunar explorer “KAGUYA” (SELENE,) which was injected into a lunar orbit at an altitude of about 100 km on October 18, 2007 (Japan Standard Time. Following times and dates are all JST.)
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/11/20071113_kaguya_e.html
The Apollo project was the first mission to take images of Earth rising over the Moon. The KAGUYA successfully shot high-definition images of the Earth-rise showing an impressive image of the blue Earth which was the only floating object in pitch-dark space. These are the world’s first high-definition earth images taken from about 380,000 km away from the earth in space.
The image taking was performed by the KAGUYA’s onboard high definition television (HDTV) for space use developed by NHK. The moving image data acquired by the KAGUYA was received at the JAXA Usuda Deep Space Center, and processed by NHK.
The satellite was confirmed to be in good health through telemetry data received at the Usuda station.
* Note: we use the expression “Earth-rise” in this press release, but the Earth-rise is a phenomenon seen only from satellites that travel around the Moon, such as the KAGUYA and the Apollo space ship. The Earth-rise cannot be observed by a person who is on the Moon as they can always see the Earth at the same position.
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Just HD of the moon.
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Bonus!
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And some popcorn!
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And for all you annoying bastiges who complain about the lack of flight attendant humor in the blogosphere…
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make me feel short-sighted, why doncha…
Awesome!
And starkly beautiful!
Thanks Buhdy!
Heh! I never use that word – it sounds too… like, totally! You know?
But these are awesome videos.
If George hadn’t spent a trillion bucks killing people that could have been a US orbiter up there – with people in it… or we could even be walking around up there instead of watching videos of it.
to figure out Funkalicious Friday! My mind. It is boggled. Are there consolation prizes for us losers?
…it’s still “Concentration Moon, over the valley….”
[Zappa]