images from Apollo 16 at ["Lunar and Planetary Institute" ], Houston, TX
Another unknown (to me) discovery from 35 years ago. As the Apollo 16 and 17 spacecraft started their cruises back toward Earth their Panoramic Cameras kept taking long image strips. The increasing distance meant that broader swaths of the Moon were covered, ultimately from limb to terminator. These two images cover about the same area, with the upper one being taken closer to the Moon and hence having higher resolution and narrower width of coverage. The swaths sweep from near Gauss on the east limb as seen from Earth, across to the farside to Tsiolkovskiy on the terminator at right. These images are excellent at showing large swaths of the farside at moderate resolution. Actually, since these are simply the browse images, the resolution is probably ten times what it appears to be here. It is a shame that the Apollo spacecraft did not carry cameras to provide a broad scale synoptic mapping of the Moon.
Technical Details:
General info on Pan photography
Related Links:
Apollo 16 TEC
Apollo 17 TE
Yesterday's LPOD: Happy Independence Day
Tomorrow's LPOD: Accidental Concentricity
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