I'm a little late on this one, but the droolworthy factor makes it well worth noting: Arizona State University is working with NASA's Johnson Space Center to make high-resolution, high-contrast versions of moon pictures from the original Apollo lunar missions available online for the first time.
Nor is this just a bright moment for civilian space geeks like me. The original versions of these photos have gone almost unseen even by lunar scientists since their creation. Because of the photos' irreplaceable value, NASA made sets of duplicates between 1968 and 1972, and put the originals in cold storage.
It's those copies, considerably less sharp than the originals, and with too much contrast, that the world – including most of the research community – has actually seen.
The new digitizing project is going back to the original films for the first time, and scanning them in high detail. The Arizona team has worked with Leica Geosystems, the manufacturer of their scanner, to improve the black-and-white resolution, moving from a 12-bit to a
14-bit scan that can capture 16,000 shades of gray. Scanning at 200
pixels per millimeter, the grain of the film itself is evident when the photos are fully enlarged.
For easy browsing purposes, a version of the photos will be put online that lets Web surfers view and magnify only a small portion of the photo at a time. But the full raw scans – weighing in around 1300
Mb – will also be available for download.
Over the next three years, the team plans to scan the full Apollo archive of about 36,000 images, covering both ground- and space-based shots. A set of five has already been posted as a preview of what's to come.
(Photo Credit: Arizona State University, NASA/Johnson Space Center)
