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The Indian lunar probe Chandrayaan-1 is slowly making its way to the Moon; it’ll be another week before it gets there. In the meantime, the ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) has been testing the cameras by taking images of the Earth. The picture shown here (click to embiggen) is very cool. It shows the southern coast of Australia, and I think it’s south-up, despite the map they show [Update: Emily figured this out: the image has been flipped horizontally due to operator error!]. You can clearly see water above the land mass, and I think that’s the ocean south of Australia. The resolution is nice.
That picture was taken on October 29 when the probe was 70,000 km above the surface of the Earth; nearly twice as high as weather satellites. Obviously, when it arrives at the Moon and drops into its 100 km orbit, the images it gets will be fantastic!
November 1st, 2008 at 11:38 am
Nice!
November 1st, 2008 at 11:56 am
It’s roughly north-up. The coastline matches the north east, not south.
November 1st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
What are you talking about? The image/map are clearly right, this is an image of the south coast of Oz taken looking north(ish).
November 1st, 2008 at 12:03 pm
(When I said “you”, I was referring to The Good Doctor himself, justincase Thanny was confusticated.)
November 1st, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Can you see me?
*waves*
No?
Under the clouds to the right.
*waves again*
November 1st, 2008 at 12:27 pm
[...] Up BA Blog: Chandrayaan-1 view the Earth __________________ 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 [...]
November 1st, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Pictures of home just don’t get old.
November 1st, 2008 at 12:53 pm
You’re wrong, Phil. It’s north up, and the sea you see there is the Coral Sea. How can you tell? Firstly, the shape of the coastline is consistent with the northeast coast of Australia. Secondly, you can clearly see to the top a band of orographic clouds marking the central mountains of New Guinea, especially its easternmost peninsula. That’s pretty much unmistakable.
November 1st, 2008 at 1:01 pm
A week? Was little Billy Keane in charge of navigation?
November 1st, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Flat Earth nutcases are gonna say, “that picture is a fake!”
November 1st, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Actually it is a mirror image of the northwest coast of Australia.
That little peninsula is North West Cape. The big give away is the angle of the coast in relation to the terminator if it was the east coast the picture would be in our summer down here.
Just a note, this is my first post, not only on this site but any site (no longer a virgin) although I have been reading it for many years. Thanks Phil
November 1st, 2008 at 2:05 pm
So much for attempting to impress you lot with my first post being perfect. We are close enough to our summer for the terminator angle to be correct, however it still is a mirror image of the west coast. So even though I though I was wrong, I was mistaken.
November 1st, 2008 at 2:17 pm
We’re all wrong. The image has been flipped horizontally. Check the update in the post.
November 1st, 2008 at 2:30 pm
A very bad overlay attempt, but it makes it clear (flipped the original picture and dumped a Google Earth snap on top of it). — http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/2020/westausox3.gif (animated, give it a sec)
November 1st, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Phil Plait: “We’re all wrong. The image has been flipped horizontally.”
Um… speak for yourself, Phil, I didn’t say anything about that.
November 1st, 2008 at 2:40 pm
I’m always struck by the smooth marble like appearance of the earth.
November 1st, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Yeap, we were all wrong. lol
Emily is the best!
November 1st, 2008 at 3:40 pm
OFF SUBJECT : As I am very new to this, can anyone tell me how long it normally takes for your reply to come up after you have submitted it? (My previous replys took about an hour).
ON SUBJECT : In my haste I forgot to mention the most important bit. Sometimes we shouldn’t worry about the technical stuff, Just stand back and look at it, we all live there…
November 1st, 2008 at 4:20 pm
John, my comments here appear almost immediately. Make sure your browser is refreshing correctly. Also, be sure you allow it to refresh all the way. I’ve sometimes clicked on a page that appeared to have completely refreshed but had not. That can stop the refresh and the display of the last comment.
About the picture: I find photos of Earth from space awe inspiring and paradoxical. The awe-inspiring bit is, I think, apparent. The paradox rests in the fact that our planet is just another little thing orbiting our star, yet life exists on it that is clever enough to get those pictures. Someday we will have of photo of the solar system from “above.”
November 1st, 2008 at 4:52 pm
I’m amazed at how flat the Earth is!
November 1st, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Hey, the weather channel was right, it IS stormy in WA!
November 1st, 2008 at 5:00 pm
John McBryde, if you’re a “newbie” then submitted comments will probably be held up by the “spam” filter for anything from 10 minutes’ to several hours’ “awaiting moderation”, depending on whether or not the moderator (Phil Plait, I presume) is on duty, but after a few posts your comments should appear immediately. However, if your comment contains a link to an external web-site, it will be held up for ‘moderation’ regardless of how many posts you have made.
November 1st, 2008 at 10:22 pm
PHOTOSHOP!
Seriously, though, will the probe’s cam(s) have sufficient resolution to snap a pic or two of the “Apollo landings”? :^)
November 3rd, 2008 at 12:31 am
I’m amazed at how our Earth is round !!! and water is not falling down into the space!!! how they are intacthced..even our whether, air, rain,soil human, animals, trees and entire object of our mother Earth ..how she is holding us…why not to save her…please don’t plouter our mother earth please, don’t cut trees, don’t kill animals bcoz this earth is also belongs to them!!…please let us keep together them alll!!! wow what a good resolutions …i hope they capture apollo landings and send and view to the public!!!
and let us hope that there is abudant helium-3.
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:32 am
Hey folks,
Just because you thought South was UP, why is that wrong.
If we had south pointing up, us Aussies wouldn’t be “down-under” any longer!
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:48 am
Actually, I should have mentioned that the Indians would probably be pretty good at Australian geography. In the second (southern coast photo) they would most likely have determined that the left nearly shows the WACA (Western Australia Cricket Association) ground in Perth, and on the right (before it disappears into clouds) is the Adelaide Oval (Adelaide, capital of the state of South Australia). Buried under the clouds on the right, of course, is the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Trust me, judging by all the Indians I’ve ever worked with, navigation by cricket grounds would be the least of their skills.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I am an Indian and experience of watching this picture is as follows;
All my youger years I wanted to have a camera anc click my own pictures. When I got my first camera I saw the first picture that I clicked I was proud and inspired.
All these days Indians have seen pictures of moon and other planets taken by cameras of other countries but this one comes from our own.
I that is the importance of Moon Project. We know US and other countries have gone there before and there are a lot of study material avaiable but you never really learn if you dont do it yourself.
November 8th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
It is clear that the image is a fake. How can it all hang up there in the sky? Einh? Look! Only half is shown. Old Indian rope trick. So, it means someone is sitting on the either side and holding it all up. If you ask them to show the other side, then he will change sides. So, they will never let you see the whole thing. Just bits of it.
Only way to authenticate that the world can be held up like that, all by itself, with nothing under to hold it all up is to send an international team headed by an honest person. Do you know of any honest person today? No such thing. So it can never be proved that the great orb in the sky is just hanging there.
Just my opinion.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I was wondering: what’s the smallest possible resolvable objects with the orbiter’s resolution? Any chance of getting direct images of any o the lunar landing sites, to see how they’ve aged? I remember reading on the Bad Astronomy site about why nobody has been able to take pictures of these sites before (too far away, so even high-power telescopes can’t see anything that small). Is this one powerful/close enough?
November 17th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
“# Rob Davidoff Says:
November 14th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I was wondering: what’s the smallest possible resolvable objects with the orbiter’s resolution? Any chance of getting direct images of any o the lunar landing sites, to see how they’ve aged? I remember reading on the Bad Astronomy site about why nobody has been able to take pictures of these sites before (too far away, so even high-power telescopes can’t see anything that small). Is this one powerful/close enough?
”
The resolution of the TMC (Terrain Mapping Camera) of Chandrayaan-1 @ 100 kms above the lunar surface is 5m. So its unlikely that it can take pics of any of the lunar landing sites.
By the end of the mission, if they decide to lower the orbit to say around 25kms, the resolution will go up to 0.3m, at which the lunar landing sites can sure be pictured. It depends how they decide to wind up the mission.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:35 am
Thanks, Asphyxia. Interesting to know that. And thanks for responding: I’d begun to worry I’d chosen too old of a post to get a response….