The Moon! In 3D!
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter reveals 3D snaps of the Moon's surface
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is currently whizzing about the Moon, snapping pictures of the surface – and thanks to a clever bit of technical trickery, it’s able to take 3D anaglyphs of the Moon.
Although it only has the one camera, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) is able to capture the 3D images by taking two separate pictures on subsequent orbits of the Moon. The idea is to use the 3D images to pick out lunar features like craters and volcanic flows in more detail.
NASA’s released the images as red-green anaglyphs – which is a bit low-tech considering they’re the space agency. Hopefully we’ll be getting versions of the images that’ll work with active and passive 3D displays at some point, so we can pretend that we’re astronauts.
The images are being uploaded to the LRO website – and if they’ve whetted your appetite for our nearest celestial body, check out our 25 best Moon movies for some more lunar exploration.
[via 3D Focus]
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