Click pic for better view

Japan’s Kaguya probe, now in lunar orbit, recently beamed back the first ever high-definition video footage of the moon’s surface. The clip consists of two sequences—one shot over the northern part of Oceanus Procellarum toward the Moon’s north pole; the other is a fly over of the western side of Oceanus Procellarum.

The image shooting was carried out by the onboard high definition television (HDTV) of the KAGUYA, and it is the world’s first high definition image data acquisition of the Moon from an altitude about 100 kilometers away from the Moon.

The image taking was performed twice on October 31. Both were eight-fold speed intermittent shooting (eight minutes is converged to one minute.) The first shooting covered from the northern area of the “Oceanus Procellarum” toward the center of the North Pole, then the second one was from the south to the north on the western side of the “Oceanus Procellarum.” The moving image data acquired by the KAGUYA was received at the JAXA Usuda Deep Space Center, and processed by NHK.

More info here:

http://tinyurl.com/35rxqs

The video is worth viewing here:

http://tinyurl.com/2vztx9