Television Pictures of the Lunar Surface by Earthshine

The Surveyor spacecraft TV camera has been modified to provide a light integration capability, or bulb mode, to obtain pictures of the lunar surface with only the light reflected from the earth's disc as the illuminating source. The objective is to take pictures of the lunar surface in the event of pre-sunrise landings, but other purposes soon became apparent. Compared with the original Surveyor camera's capability to view stars down to a magnitude of 2, the integrated-mode design allows stars to be viewed down to magnitude 6, with a theoretical limit of magnitude 8. Another interesting application is the detection of the extent of radiation of the corona at various radii from the edge of the solar disc after sunset.

Print ISSN

0361-4573

Published

1968-04

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/J05833