| Piú viste - SMART-1: the Moon from ESA |
11-Rima Hadley.jpgRima Hadley105 visiteCaption ESA originale:"Hadley Rille is the sinuous depression running across this image.
Beneath it are the 1 to 2 Km high Apennine mountains.
The large crater in the center of the image is the 30 Km diameter "Hadley C".
Location: The feature is centred at: 25,0° N and 3,0° E
Naming: In honour of the English scientist John Hadley who built telescopes in the eighteenth century".
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10-Glusko Crater.jpgGlushko Crater103 visiteThis image, taken by the Advanced Moon Micro-Imager Experiment (AMIE) on board ESA’s SMART-1 spacecraft, shows Glushko impact crater on the Moon. AMIE obtained this image from a distance of about 1600 Km, with a resolution of 150 mt per pixel. The field of view of this image is 80 Km.
The crater is located at 8,4° North and 77,6° West and has a diameter of 43 Km. The crater is attached to the western rim of Olbers crater was previously designated 'Olbers A' before being renamed in honour of Valentin Petrovitch Glushko, a Russian rocket scientist, by the IAU. It is very close to the western limb as seen from Earth.
This crater possesses a relatively high albedo and is the focus of a prominent ray system that extends in all directions across the nearby surface. Very clear impact features indicate that it is very young, unusual for this size of crater (compared to the 800-million year old Copernicus crater). It is possible to see a sharp impact wall and rim, unaffected by erosion (by later impacts). In the inner part of the rim, terraces and wrinkles correspond to collapsed material.
Signatures of ejecta include a blanket surrounding the crater, but also fine radial rays. For this size of crater, the ejecta layer does not seem thick enough to swamp nearby features. In the centre of the crater, there is a rough surface, in morphological terms somewhere in between the smooth ‘bowl’ shape seen in smaller craters, and the defined central peaks in craters larger than 60 kilometres.
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12-CassiniCrater-SMART-1_AMIE_CassiniCrater_H.jpgCassini Crater103 visiteOriginal ESA caption:"This image of Crater Cassini was taken on 19 January 2005 with the highly compact, lightweight and rugged AMIE camera on board ESA's SMART-1 spacecraft - note: AMIE stands for the Advanced Moon Micro-Imager Experiment (AMIE) experiment. Cassini has a diameter of 57 km and is located at 40º North, on the edge of Mare Imbrium".
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01-P-SMART1-hires_34602.jpgThe Moon from SMART-1: a little geography100 visiteCaption ESA originale:"On 29 January 2004, between 20:00 and 21:19 UT, images of the first quarter moon were taken through several filters by the AMIE instrument. The result is a small, but impressive, image revealing, clockwise from the top: Mare Serenitatis, Mare Tranquillitatis, Mare Fecunditatis and Mare Nectaris, with Mare Crisium also visible near the limb".
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28-Zucchius-2.jpgThe Central "Peak" of Zucchius Crater (HR - extra detail mgnf)98 visiteQuesto extreme detail mgnf del rilievo anomalo di Zucchius non aggiunge molto alle nostre considerazioni e ne siamo consapevoli; tuttavia, per chi ha un "occhio" uso alle Stranezze Lunari (e non solo...), la regolarità sostanziale della forma più chiara (che possiamo chiamare "basamento") ed il rilievo circolare che lo sovrasta - se si osserva con attenzione - non Vi potranno sfuggire.
Certo, da qui a dire che si tratta di un rilievo "artificiale" ce ne passa e, credeteci, nessuno di noi sta inferendo nulla del genere. L'unico dettaglio che desideriamo sottoporre al vaglio critico dei Lettori attiene la curiosa (ed apparente) "regolarità" del rilievo ripreso e la costante "deficienza" (nel senso di "mancanza", ovviamente...) delle Agenzie Spaziali le quali, tutte le volte in cui ci si imbatte in una possibile Anomalìa (da Cydonia, a Giapeto a Zucchius etc.), producono immagini di qualità indecente.
Ecco: perdonateci l'ironia, ma forse quest'ultima riflessione costituisce la vera - e la più grande - "stranezza" di qualsiasi Programma Spaziale!
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00-Closing-in-on-theMoon410.jpgThe Moon, from 600.000 and 60.000 Km!96 visiteLa Luna: non ci siamo dimenticati della Luna, anzi! Da oggi, 26 Aprile 2005, inizieremo a raccontarVi la "Luna Dimenticata" (o quasi...) attraverso le immagini che ci arrivano dalla Sonda ESA SMART-1.
Individueremo nuove "Singolarità"?
Incontreremo nuovi enigmi?
La Luna è davvero (e solo) "...del padiglion del ciel, la Gran Frittata..."?!?
Staremo a vedere...
Caption ESA originale."These 2 images show the Moon as seen by SMART-1 during the approach phase. The image on the left was taken on 28 October 2004, at a distance of about 600.000 Km from the Moon, when the spacecraft was in its last orbit around the Earth. The image on the right was taken on 12 November 2004, about 15 days later, at a distance of about 60.000 Km. At that time, the Moon was facing the Earth with its unlit side (new Moon).
The slightly illuminated part at the top of the Moon (right image) shows a 'slice' of the Moon's far side at about the latitude of the Lunar North Pole. The North Pole far side is seen for the first time by a European spacecraft, and only for the second time in the history of lunar exploration".
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15-Bond&Mayer Craters.jpgBond-Mayer Crater96 visiteAn image of craters Bond - after an American Astronomer - (large feature marked by two smaller crater on left of image) and Mayer - after a Czech Astronomer (large isloated crater on lower right) located in Northern Central Region of the Moon, near Mare Frigoris. The image is a composite of 5 AMIE images acquired on 5/6 February 2006, from altitudes ranging between 2685 (bottom of the composite) and 2709 Km (top). Each individual snapshot, taken with the AMIE clear filter, is a square of side about 135 Km. The whole composite covers approximately 270 Km. The outer rim of the original Bond Crater has been eroded and reshaped, and now it basically consists of an outline of hills and mounts.
The interior floor is relatively flat in comparison with the rim region, although there are sections of rough terrain near the northern rim. In the centre of the walled plain is a rille that runs toward East.
To the southeast of this formation is Bond-B, a circular, simple bowl-shaped crater.
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0-SMART-1.jpgSMART-1 and the Moon95 visiteThe solar electric primary propulsion on-board SMART-1 is a Stationary Plasma Hall-effect thruster, the PPS-1350 developed by SNECMA, France. Using Xenon gas as propellant and the power from the spacecraft's solar arrays, the thruster is capable of providing a thrust of something like 70 milliNewtons. Using the thrust of the electric propulsion system, SMART-1 progressively expanded its orbit, spiralling out from Earth and was caught by the Moon's gravitational field on 15 November 2004, nearly 14 months after launch. In order to enhance the capture opportunities and to save precious fuel, SMART-1 also made use of celestial mechanics, including Moon resonances and swing-bys. The spacecraft exploited the unstable regions of space where the gravity field of Earth and Moon compete and which are normally avoided by conventional trajectories. It passed through the L1 point of the Earth-Moon System which allowed for the spacecraft to be caught by the Moon's gravity.
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18-imageL,142.jpgMouchez Crater90 visiteOriginal caption:"This image shows an area of the Moon featuring the Mouchez crater near to lunar zero longitude".
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23-ReinerGamma-anaglyph.jpgReiner Gamma: a Moon "Magnetic Anomaly" (2)87 visiteVersione tridimensionale del rilievo Reiner-Gamma, solo per possessori di occhialini speciali, con colorazione giallo-arancio e verde (comunque un leggero effetto 3D si riesce a cogliere anche con gli occhialini rosso/verdi e/o rosso/blu).
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27-Zucchius Crater.jpgZucchius Crater86 visiteThis image of the central peaks of crater Zucchius was obtained by AMIE on 14 January 2006 from a distance of about 753 kilometres from the surface, with a ground resolution of 68 metres per pixel.
The imaged area is centred at a latitude of 61.3° South and longitude 50.8° West. Zucchius is a prominent lunar impact crater located near the southwest limb. It is 66 kilometres in diameter, but due to SMART-1's proximity to the surface, the AMIE field of view covers only the central 35 kilometres of the crater in this image.
Because of its location, the crater appears oblong-shaped due to foreshortening. It lies just to the south-southwest of the Segner crater, and northeast of the much larger Bailly walled-plain. To the southeast is the Bettinus crater, a formation only slightly larger than Zucchius.
Zucchius formed in the Copernican era, a period in the lunar planetary history that goes from 1200 million years ago to present times. Another example of craters from this period are Copernicus (about 800 milion years old) and Tycho (100 million years old). Craters from the Copernican era show characteristic ejecta ray patterns - as craters age, ejecta rays darken due to weathering by the flowing solar wind.
The hills near the centre of the image are the central peaks of the crater, features that form in large craters on the Moon. This type of feature is formed by the impact of a small asteroid onto the lunar surface. The surface is molten and, similarly to when a drop of water falls into a full cup of coffee, the hit surface bounces back and solidifies into the central peak.
The Zucchius crater is named after the Italian Mathematician and astronomer Niccolo Zucchi (1586-1670).
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24-Mare Humorum-1.jpgMare Humorum (1)83 visiteThis sequence of images, taken by the advanced Moon Imaging Experiment (AMIE) on board ESA's SMART-1 spacecraft, shows an area on the near side of the Moon, at the edge of the Mare Humorum basin.
AMIE obtained these raw images on January, 13th, 2006 from a distance ranging between 1031 and 1107 Km from the surface, with a ground resolution between 93 and 100 mt per pixel.
The imaged area is located at Longitude 45,7º West and Latitude between 30,5º and 24,5º South. The field of view of each single image is about 50 Km.
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