Luna-9 was the first successful landing on another world (not counting
intentional crashes). It obtained three panoramas. The image
below is a synthesis of the three to maximize coverage. In addition to
shifting illumination, the glare of the sun wiped out slightly different parts
of the view from frame to frame. Also, the spacecraft was slowly shifting
from frame to frame, causing parts of the spacecraft to obstruct slightly
different areas. I tried to maximize coverage in this way as well.
The top image is a "best coverage" view (although some of the central regions
are from very speculative processing of very low-contrast data).
The next image is with the glare at maximum coverage, obscuring more of the actual image, but hiding the gap in the horizon caused by the tilt of the spacecraft.
This is a polar projection of the same pan.
Finally, these images show the shift in the spacecraft between the first and last images. The fact that there is change relative to the horizon shows that it is not a trick of illumination.
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author.
tedstryk@gmail.com
© Ted
Stryk 2007