Blog archives for August, 2007

Arizona State University has partnered with NASA to digitize original photos of the Apollo project and make them available at http://apollo.sese.asu.edu/.

The original photos have not been available to researchers because they cannot be replaced. Shortly after the flights, copies were made and those copies have been the main source for prints. Researchers and the public will have access to the original images and a level of detail never before available. To quote the news release:

The Apollo digitizing project goes back to the original flight films and
scans them in high-resolution detail to reveal their subtleties.

Robinson explains, “We worked with the scanner’s manufacturer — Leica
Geosystems — to improve the brightness range that the scans record.” In
technical terms, a normal 12-bit scan was increased to 14-bit, resulting in
digital images that record more than 16,000 shades of gray.

“Similarly,” says Robinson, “to get all the details captured by the film, we
are scanning at a scale of 200 pixels per millimeter.” This means, he says,
the grain of the original film is visible when scans are fully enlarged. The
most detailed images from lunar orbit show rocks and other surface features
about 40 inches (1 meter) wide.

Combining high resolution and wide brightness range produces very large raw
image files, notes Robinson. For example, in raw form, the scans of the
Apollo mapping (metric) camera frames, each 4.7 inches square, are 1.3
gigabytes in size.

“That’s bigger than most people want to look at with a browser,” says
Robinson, “even if their browser and Internet connection are up to the job.”
So the Web site uses a Flash-based application called Zoomify, which lets
users dive deep into a giant image by loading only the portion being
examined. Links are available on the site for downloading images in several
sizes, up to the full raw scan.