NASA Lunar Orbiter Image Restoration Project.

[3488]

This is sometrhing I have been getting more interested in.

NASA Lunar Orbiter Restoration Project. Images from the five pre Apollo Lunar Orbiters are being reread through modern euipment & are being restored. We are actually seeing the quality of what the Lunar Orbiters actually returned for the first time.

It's astonishing, 1960's spacecraft returned imagery of the moon that is almost comparable to the LRO HiRISE. Incredible.

Lunar Orbiter Imagery Restoration Project.

Earthrise Lunar Orbiter 1 full res.

Copernicus Crater Lunar Orbiter 2 . The media dubbed "The Picture of the Century" IMO this is still a classic, one of the finest luner images ever returned from Lunar Orbit.
High res here

Lunar Orbiter 2 restored imagery of the 1,200 metre tall central peaks of Copernicus Crater.
High res here.

Boulders on the central peak of Copernicus Crater Lunar Orbiter 5 full res

A 220 metre wide area at 0.62 North, 24.58 East. Lunar Orbiter 2. Boulders as small as One Metre across can be seen.

Andrew Brown.

 

[MarkStanaway]

Yes I agree that the Lunar Orbiter photographs were a great achievement for their time.
It is great to see them revamped with modern digital techniques. I posted this explanation on how the original photos were processed awhile back and for those who missed it here it is:

According to a NASA Fact Sheet of the time on Lunar Orbiter's camera system:
....'Its camera system, housed in a temperature controlled container, snaps pictures, develops film, and converts the images on the negatives into electrical signals for transmission to earth.'

From a May 1968 Scientific American article some extracts of how the process worked:
'The exposed film was developed in a processor using the Bimat technique devised by Eastman. In the Bimat method the exposed film is pressed against a special processing web, or rolled strip, with a gelatin layer that has been soaked in a solution that soaks and fixes the film in one step. The film was then separated from the processing web and was dried by being passed over an electrically heated drum. The developed film was read out by an electronic scanner that worked with a rapidly moving spot of light. One band of film was scanned at a time and this required 17000 horizontal movements by the spot of light and took 22 seconds. Each band occupied 0.1 inch and the film was advanced after each band had been scanned. It took 43 minutes to scan the 11.6 inches of film taken up by one wide-angle and one telephoto exposure.
The strips of 35mm film each representing one scanned band of spacecraft film, give the Lunar Orbiter photographs their characteristic striped appearance.'
Mark