This is forwarded from a friend and very cool Rodger.
The June 2011 issue of Sky and Telescope (pp. 50-51) has an article about new maps of the moon, significantly better than any ever created before. Using both a Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) with a resolution of just a few feet across and a Wide Angle Camera (WAC) with a resolution of 500 feet per pixel, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) completed in December 2010 a mapping of the entire moon at both resolutions in near constant illumination angle (no washout by too bright direct sunlight). The next problem was how to portray so much fine detail over such vast areas in manageable sizes. Let me quote several sentences from the article about their solution:
“The image is so large that whenever it is printed, its scale is reduced so much that the splendid detail it shows is lost. Fortunately, the LRO team at
Arizona State University has found a way around this. Its website displays the mosaic in a zoomable browser
(http://wms.lroc.asu.edu/lroc_browse/view/wac_nearside) that allows easy viewing and enlargement of any place on the nearside.”
