24 000 Mosaic Full Moon View from NASA torrent

The work of LROC\'s wide-angle camera, which provides surface context for those incredible narrow-angle shots, has largely gone unheralded … until now. This past week the team released a new mosaic of the Moon\'s near side taken entirely with wide-angle frames. Acquired during a two-week period in December, the 1,300 black-and-white frames create a full-disk mosaic measuring 24,000 pixels across. Gulp!

\"As the Moon rotated under LRO\'s orbit,\" explains LROC team leader Mark Robinson (Arizona State University), \"the ground track progressed from east to west (right to left in this mosaic).\" The image run was timed to keep the Sun high up in the lunar sky but not straight overhead (its altitude varied from 69° to 82°). This created enough shadowing to define crater rims and other topography crisply, unlike the shadow-free view that we see during a full Moon. The combined image shows slight banding where the 1,024-pixel-wide swaths were stitched together.

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