Chang'e 3 - China Rover Separates From Lander, Now On Moon's Surface

[deuem]

Oh, great brown cheese. I was hoping it was yellow. It does kinda look look like it is a simulation. I want to see some more photos before making up my mind.[if that is possible now a days]

[Somamech]

The Planetary Societey are doing an ok job tracking the footage from the wee little rabbit.  They have been taking screenshots of the stationary images and animating them.

I will have to save them at a later date as I gotta head off to work.

Here's the whole list of blod post's on TPS:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/blog-archive.html?keywords=change-program

[stealthyaroura]

That actually felt pretty special watching the rover drive onto the moon.

And the picture quality! really impressive. so is it real or is it memorex?



 

[rdunk]

Thanks Somamech. Some good information in that link. From that link, here is a YouTube video of the Chang'3 actual lunar approach and landing.

It is better if seen on full screen!

After watching this a few times, I will mention a couple of things:

-- starting at 4:15 minutes there is a dark area that shows up in the lower right corner. Not outstanding, but is just "different" from the general area.

-- as the landing begins, and as it gets nearer the surface, there is some sort of white raised looking piece/structure that can be seen, not far from the lander. And it can still be seen, after the landing. Just wondering?

                                               

[Sgt.Rocknroll]

It was shot on a sound stage in Shanghai. It's going to be called 'The Big Boss 2'. Watch for the dubbing. It reely reely good.

[deuem]

I ran the brown shot, I don't like it. I compared the 2 off the ramp shots. the second one is rotated 2 deg CCW and the center of the frame down 3 degrees. So the camera moved inbetween the 2 shots and the one of the rover looking back is Zoomed in on or a big time crop. I can not find any other new prints at this time.

Maybe the rover is sleeping. For being up there and on the surface for a day I would expect more than 1 rover photo of mommy. Without knowing the data on the cameras it is hard to get any math right. The only thing that should stay the same is the horizon. So we can rotate the photos to match it.

little data, few answers. It is now more on the web here than before. All the sites are showing the same thing and a lot of sites like Peggy are already calling it fake and made up. I will give it more time.

Deuem

[WarToad]

Picture taken by Chang'e. (Received and x-fered by ESA)

[ArMaP]

Picture taken by Chang'e. (Received and x-fered by ESA)

Is it me or does the rover appear to have a lower resolution than the ground near it. 

[WarToad]

Is it me or does the rover appear to have a lower resolution than the ground near it. 

It might just be the pic I have.  Copy of a copy kind of thing.  I'll try t look for a better pic.

Also "brown moon" pic - appears to be taken in darkness with fairly poor artificial lighting.  Yes?  I think the orange-brown hue is just due to it being a substandard lighting pic. 

[deuem]

On the earth looking photo. I checked the pixel sizes and they are the same for me. I do wonder about the sun angle on the shadow vs the sun. I need to know a lot about where the 2 bodies are in relation to the sun. To get a straight on shadow like that, the moon would have to be behind the earth on its orbit. Also we have the stupid problems of what is lighting up the tires. Reflective light? They should be black they are not in the light. Ok maybe a lot of bounce.

The biggest thing I am worried about is that for the first time I can not pick up any sunlight on the moon. The program loves the sun. Even on Mars I get it. I don't know if it is because the light is straight on but then if it was the sun should be behind the earth and blasting us. There are a lot of technical problems here and it seems to be a 3D max photo we are looking at. I don't think this photo is real. But I will leave the door open. 3D max can not reproduce the real sun. The entire surface shows gray for me. no real light....?

If you noticed in the apollo shots there were very long shadows because the moon was in the trailing position in orbit. High noon on the moon is only when it is behind the earth. The earth would be blacked out and a huge sun shine behind it. And in order to get this shot of the shade and the earth it is impossible. Someone made it me thinks! The entire photo.  Is this a press release?

If we had good details on the camera, math could be used to see if the Earth is the right size. Right now it reminds me of the Apollo size but with a different lens the size should be different also.

Deuem

[Norval]

What I wonder is WHY China, India, and others are spending BILLIONS on going out into space , , , just to look at rocks !? ?!? !?  That sure makes the USA and their partners in the ISS appear not to be telling everything.

[Vandalis]

Just watched the rover vid. Hmm the camera on the lander may be looking at the floor but is that another spot lit area/fake horizon? I mean if that area is lit up then why not everywhere else? horizon only a few meters away or what? It cant be bright as hell on that spot and compltes blackness elsewhere? Reminds me of the Apollo 11 landing. Tiny area lit up and nothing else beyond a few meters.

Or am I talking nonsense? lol

[rdunk]

I too wonder about the size of the Earth in the photo. The earth is approximately 4X the diameter of the Moon, and thus about 16X the surface area. To me that shot of the Earth looks no bigger than the full moon we see when we "look up" in our night sky? Just wondering?

[Somamech]

Thanks Somamech. Some good information in that link. From that link, here is a YouTube video of the Chang'3 actual lunar approach and landing.

It is better if seen on full screen!

Your welcome mate!

The best thing is that at least some people are looking over this mission.  It's bloody amazing that China has put a Rover on the Moon (supposedly) and a media blackout is basically occuring in western media. 

Regardless of the who's, why's, and what have you's. This should be headline news and it's not here in Oz (Just reporting the gen media in my own locale..other locale's may differ?)

The decent footage look's almost odd in the sense of Google Moonish odd if you get my drift, but at least some of the footage of the rover in it's wee baby steps show some colour, along with what looks like damp soil where the rover first unloaded 

We need more imagery thats sure


 

[Somamech]

Dooey would have to veryify this as a means to search China as he is the dude on the ground so to speak

Here's my process so far in digging a bit deeper into the Chinese Media.

1: Perform a Quick Character Search for Chang'e which brings up wikipedia.  Our CHinese Character's don't work here on the forum due to unicode.  But all the same we are only trying to find simple search terms for the next step to see where we end up in China LOL

2: Do a quick search for Chinese Search Engine's.

Result:

http://chineseseoshifu.com/blog/top-5-chinese-search-engines.html

3:  Search Baidu using Simplified Chinese Character's. 

4:  Depending on what browser or plugin's you use one may see a translated version if you have it set-up in that manner to translate pages. Personally I use Google Chrome for translating but I'm sure there is a firefox plugin that perform's the exact same translation  As to the translation..well it helps to understand Chinglis and Asian Culture I guess?  But that is where Dooey and people who have asian connections come in here on Pegasus 


In using the Above simple search lesson I found this article:

http://news.cecb2b.com/info/20131216/1664587.shtml

Searching in other Language's is probably something that need's a good write up here and made into a sticky at some point in the near future.