Sunrise over Imbrium

Copernicus to Sinus Iridum along the terminator of a ten-day Moon, from Japan's Kaguya.

30 m per pixel · 21,664 × 47,664 px · 650 × 1,430 km

How this was made

Every pixel comes from spacecraft data. Japan's Kaguya (SELENE) mapped the Moon at 7.4 m in 2007–09. Its morning map was relit for a Moon ten days old, using Kaguya's elevation model, and shown as seen from Earth.

Method

Kaguya Terrain Camera morning map at 15 m. Kaguya's own camera blur (measured, 5.3 m) is undone.
Relit with a lunar-Lambert model; shadows cast from SLDEM2013 with the Sun's disk, so they soften with distance.
One Lanczos step to 30 m per pixel, no sharpening.
HDR: only the large-scale fall-off of sunlight toward the terminator is compressed.
Color from NASA's LRO wide-angle camera (643, 566, 415 nm). Mineral color multiplies the real color differences 5 times.
Earthshine: the night side lit by sunlight reflected from Earth, shown about 1,700 times brighter than it really is.

Notes

Built from real spacecraft data but relit: it is not a single photograph taken at one moment.
The shadows of small craters and the finest relief are inferred from Kaguya's own shading, so they are an approximation.
A data gap of about 10 × 35 km just west of the crater Tobias Mayer is filled from its surroundings.
Nothing was added, cloned or generated with AI.

Downloads, wallpapers and the full notes: stinga.jp/sunrise-over-imbrium

Credits

Kaguya (SELENE) Terrain Camera and SLDEM2013: ISAS/JAXA, processed. Color: LRO LROC WAC, NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University. Processing: Stefano Ivan Stinga.

Keys

M mineral color · E earthshine · L labels · H whole view · F full screen · C copy a link to this view

10 km

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