Presents the landscape of the Moon through 3-D and color images from robotic space and human exploration missions.

The story of the lunar landing and the events that led up to it, told in text and visually stunning 3-D images. July 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 11's epochal lunar landing, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon. This visually rich book offers a new perspective on that historic accomplishment, telling the story of the lunar landing and the events that led up to it with text and 3-D images. A 3D viewer, designed by astrophysicist (and lead guitarist with the rock group Queen) Brian May is included with the book. Mission Moon 3-D offers unique access to the Apollo astronauts and what they saw. It tells the story of the US-Soviet space race, from Sputnik and the space dog Laika to Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy declared that America would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong guided the Eagle to a safe landing on the edge of the moon's Sea of Tranquility. President Richard Nixon told the astronauts, and the nation, that it was “the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation.” Mission Moon 3-D recounts all this and more in memorable and visually stunning fashion.

The issue discusses methods to extract 3-dimensional (3D) models from plain images. In particular, the 3D information is obtained from images for which the camera parameters are unknown. The principles underlying such uncalibrated structure-from-motion methods are outlined. First, a short review of 3D acquisition technologies puts such methods in a wider context, and highlights their important advantages. Then, the actual theory behind this line of research is given. The authors have tried to keep the text maximally self-contained, therefore also avoiding to rely on an extensive knowledge of the projective concepts that usually appear in texts about self-calibration 3D methods. Rather, mathematical explanations that are more amenable to intuition are given. The explanation of the theory includes the stratification of reconstructions obtained from image pairs as well as metric reconstruction on the basis of more than 2 images combined with some additional knowledge about the cameras used. Readers who want to obtain more practical information about how to implement such uncalibrated structure-from-motion pipelines may be interested in two more Foundations and Trends issues written by the same authors. Together with this issue they can be read as a single tutorial on the subject.

This fascinating book will stay with children every time they gaze up at the night sky. Through vivid pictures and engaging explanations, children will learn about many of the Moon’s mysteries: what makes it look like a silvery crescent one time and a chalk-white ball a few nights later, why it sometimes appears in the daytime, where it gets its light, and how scientists can predict its shape on your birthday a thousand years from now. Next Time You See the Moon is an ideal way to explain the science behind the shape of the Moon and bring about an evening outing no child—or grown-up—will soon forget. Awaken a sense of wonder in a child with the Next Time You See series from NSTA Kids. The books will inspire elementary-age children to experience the enchantment of everyday phenomena such as sunsets, seashells, fireflies, pill bugs, and more. Free supplementary activities are available on the NSTA website. Especially designed to be experienced with an adult—be it a parent, teacher, or friend—Next Time You See books serve as a reminder that you don’t have to look far to find something remarkable in nature.

Journey to the moon on the Apollo 12 mission with Alan Bean, the fourth astronaut to walk on the lunar surface and the only artist to paint its beauty firsthand! As a boy, Alan wanted to fly planes. As a young navy pilot, Alan wished he could paint the view from the cockpit. So he took an art class to learn patterns and forms. But no class could prepare him for the beauty of the lunar surface some 240,000 miles from Earth. In 1969, Alan became the fourth man and first artist on the moon. He took dozens of pictures, but none compared to what he saw through his artistic eyes. When he returned to Earth, he began to paint what he saw. Alan's paintings allowed humanity to experience what it truly felt like to walk on the moon. Journalist and storyteller Dean Robbins's tale of this extraordinary astronaut is masterful, and artist Sean Rubin's illustrations are whimsical and unexpected. With back matter that includes photos of the NASA mission, images of Alan's paintings, and a timeline of lunar space travel, this is one adventure readers won't want to miss!

Since the dawn of history, various cultures have imagined heaven and the abode of gods to be literally located in some part of the sky; and hell, to be in the interior of the Earth. From a modern scientific perspective, these were the earliest concepts of parallel universes and the idea of a multiverse, which is a serious area of research in cutting-edge physics today. This book presents a model, supported by scientific and metaphysical evidence, which validates this intuitive view. It appears that, after the death of the ordinary matter body, most human beings will indeed find themselves in an invisible (what science would call “dark”) higher energy sphere which interpenetrates and shares the same spacetime landscape and gravitational field as the familiar visible form of planet Earth. Depending on the nature and composition of their bodies, they gravitate or levitate into particular “shells” in the relevant sphere - “higher” shells being coincident with the atmosphere, and beyond; and “lower” shells being within or below the crust of the ordinary matter Earth. Non-fiction: Popular Science/Metaphysics

A dazzling pop-up book full of amazing facts about our moon, certain to illuminate the entire family! You see it almost every night, but how much do you really know about the moon? In this incredible pop-up book, discover where the moon came from, why it appears to change shape, how it affects our oceans, and what a blood moon is. Shoot into space with the Saturn V rocket and travel back in time to join the first astronauts to set foot on the moon. Four breathtaking pop-ups reveal the inner workings of the solar system, demonstrate how eclipses occur, and more. Intricate illustrations and fact-filled pages bridge the 238,000-mile distance between us and the moon, making this the perfect gift for young stargazers. Budding astronomers and anyone curious about the night sky will find that the moon’s secrets are just “one small step” away!

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) is developing a new, holistic optical navigation system for all stages of spacecraft planetary approach and landing procedures. The central feature of this new navigation system is its landmark-based navigation. Commonly, craters are used as landmarks, as they exhibit very characteristic shapes and they are stable over the long term with respect to shape, structure and positioning. However, the flawless perception of these surface features by computers is a non-trivial task. A possibility of generating realistic surface images of celestial bodies with a significant number of craters and with well-known local illumination conditions is essential for the development of new navigation algorithms, as well as a technique for estimating the local illumination direction on these images. To date, no software exists to generate artificial renderings of realistically illuminated planetary surfaces while determining the local solar illumination direction. Having said this, a surface illumination simulation software for solid planetary surfaces with a significant number of craters has been developed within a master's thesis at the Merseburg University of Applied Sciences and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), whereas all work has been done in the context of the Moon. This software, the Moon Surface Illumination Simulation Framework (MSISF), is the first software known to produce realistic renderings of the entire Moon's surface from virtually every viewpoint, while simultaneously generating machine-readable information regarding the exactly known parameters for the environmental conditions, such as the local solar illumination angle for every pixel of a rendering showing a point on the Moon's surface. To produce its renderings, the MSISF maintains a global digital elevation model of the Moon, using the latest data sets from the ongoing NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission. The MSISF has also demonstrated its ability to not only produce single renderings, but also whole series of renderings corresponding to a virtual flight trajectory or landing on the Moon. The MSISF can also be modified for the rendering of other celestial bodies. This book shows how these renderings will be produced and how they will be suitable for the development and testing of new optical navigation algorithms; it is based upon the examination version of the original master's thesis.