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- Earth_Moon_Movie.Hqx is in BinHex format for the Macintosh. The
- unHexed file can be opened as a stack and animated by NIH Image,
- a public domain package available from Wayne Rasband at the
- National Institutes of Health. When uncompressed, the movie takes
- up about 6 Mb of memory.
-
- This is part of a time-lapse sequence taken by the Galileo spacecraft on
- December 16, 1992, eight days after its flyby of the Earth/Moon system
- en route to Jupiter. The full color sequence utilized the 0.968, 0.727 and
- violet filters; this reduced, black-and-white version was made with the 0.968
- micron filter so that both vegetated and unvegetated land masses appear bright
- in contrast to the oceans. The 46 frames span 15 hours of motion by the Earth,
- Moon and spacecraft as viewed from the perspective of Galileo, with South at
- the top. Visible are the Pacific basin, Australia, Southeast Asia, India, and
- finally Arabia and the horn of Africa. A remarkable feature of this sequence
- is the specular reflection or sun glint from the sea surface. Depending on the
- roughness of the water the extent of specular reflection varies rapidly,
- expanding over rough seas and contracting to a point over still oceanic pools
- such as near the west coast of Australia.
-
- Source: Paul Geissler and Larry Kendall, University of Arizona, with
- thanks to M.J.S. Belton and the Galileo Imaging Team.
-