Why are some close up satellite shots of the moon inaccessible?

Question

I was looking at satellite images of the moon on the Clementine Lunar Image Browser http://www.cmf.nrl.navy.mil/clementine/clib/
I found it weird that several area on the far side of the moon looked rather blurry, (like they where erased or air brushed). When I clicked on to some particularly obvious smudged out areas, to enhance I got a message that particular spot of the moon was unavalible to view close up. There where a few spots on the front side as well. Something weird seems to be going on so I checked out other sights, and the same thing happened. You can see every square inch of earth through the terra server, (except military bases) With the moon being so much smaller we should have perfect images. Anyone know of a good lunar sight that doesn't have restrictions?

It all started a few days ago during the full 'harvest' Moon. I set up my camera & tripod, and took several 70X zoom pictures. Upon viewing them, I found a small "lump" at about -2 latitude and 337 longitude in my pictures. I had never noticed this "mountian" before so I started researching the name of it since it was so obvious in my picture. That's were I found it was one of those "areas" that where unavalible to view. I don't know what the smudged out images on the clementine sight are, but they appear to be mountains. You seem to be insinuating that I'm some sort of a conspicy freak, and you are way off buddy. I just want an answer...I was hoping MAYBE someone knows something about that sight

BTW Mr. Courious. The far side of the Moon is NOT the dark side as you suggested. The far side of the moon has sunlight daily

Answer 1

Your question implies some sort of cover-up. What do YOU think is in those spots that are "blurred"? I would be curious to hear how you see this innocent glitch. I'm quite certain that photographs from the back side of the moon are more difficult to capture clearly because of the lack of light, no great conspiracy there. As to why areas of the front of the moon were blurred is anyone's guess, but I will predict that with a little research you will find the mysterious portions printed elsewhere. I would try the JPL site since they've done a lot of the mapping of the moon thus far.

Answer 2

I don't have a definitive answer to your question; but I did run out to your link. I think this web image database was developed by a company named "ACT" (Applied Coherent Technology) - see these page at their site. (1. & 2.)

Link (1.) is of particular interest, because a paragraph on this page summarizes what ACT did to prepare the Clementine images.

At it's end, it states: "No attempts have been made to fill in data gaps using post-mapping data recovery orbits. "

Now, I don't know enough to say if this is BS or not. I do know that there were a series of orbits towards the end of Clementine's mission where "gaps" in the observations were supposedly filled; maybe this is what ACT was talking about? (3.)

In any event, I think your next move is to see if you can't correlate that feature you've spied through your telescope, against some of the other info we have on the Moon. See (4.), for example - it's an online lunar atlas of low-orbit photographs of the Moon, searchable by feature or coordinates.

Answer 3

I believe that they just don't have full coverage of the Moon at the highest resolution, so they fill in the missed areas with whatever lower quality images they have. I don't think they are hiding anything. The Moon may be smaller than Earth, but Earth has been photographed by so many satellites for so many years while the Moon has only been photographed by a very few satellites that have operated for short times.

Answer 4

The only really clear close up of the moon is here:

http://moon.google.com/

Zoom all the way in, you'll be amazed at the resolution

Answer 5

complex stuff. check out into yahoo or google. this may help!