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NASA Scales Up 1966’s Moon Image to Amazing Ultra-High Resolution Posted: 16 Nov 2008 08:19 PM CST When NASA released this image from their Lunar Orbiter 1 back in 1966, the first photograph ever of the Earth rising above the Moon's surface, it was low resolution but they still amazed the world. This week, they have surprised every space aficionado re-releasing the same image in ultra-high definition. The cool part now is that NASA hasn't used any upscaling or magical infinite zoom-in filter from CSI. Instead, they have created a new technology that uses refurbished analog machines and a new digital process that fully extracts the information stored in the program's old magnetic tapes, something that was impossible to do in the 60s. Click on the image to watch it in its 3673 x 1740 pixel glory. The Lunar Orbiter missions included five spacecrafts dedicated to map the entire lunar surface, a task necessary to select the landing sites for Apollo. The first three missions focused on twenty potential landing sites, while the two last ones—which flew high altitude polar orbits—took photographs of 99% of the surface with a resolution that ranged from 60 meters to an stunning 2 meter. While these probes were not as sophisticated as the HD cameras of the Selene spacecraft developed by the Japanese space agency, the NASA orbiters had a clever imaging system that achieved similar results four decades ago. It included a dual lens camera—one 610 millimeter narrow angle for high resolution and an 80 millimeter wide angle for medium resolution—, a film processor, and a scanner. Both lenses were aligned to expose the same part of the 70 millimeter film roll, so the high resolution image area was centered with the medium resolution area. This was more complicated that it sounds: Since the spaceship was cruising above the lunar surface, they had to compensate for that motion. Using an electro-optical sensor to measure the distance while a small motor shifted the film so the second exposure exactly matched the first one. After that, the film was processed, scanned, and the... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Circuit City Looking to Close Another 150 Stores? Posted: 16 Nov 2008 12:58 PM CST While Circuit City has already announced plans to close 155 stores nationwide, a reliable industry source tells us that the company is looking to close another 150 stores—with that announcement possibly coming in as little as two weeks from now. As for which stores close, it'll be a simple question of which locations remaining have the worst profitability. Black Friday looks to be a large indicator of how this whole scenario will play out. More as we get it. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

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