Chang'e 3 data: Rover Panoramic Camera (PCAM)

Credit for these images goes to Chinese Academy of Sciences / China National Space Administration / The Science and Application Center for Moon and Deepspace Exploration.

See also the Lander Terrain Camera (TCAM) data.

The Yutu rover panoramic camera (PCAM) system is a stereo pair of color cameras with CMOS detectors, 2352 by 1728 pixels in size, with Bayer filter arrays for color. The PCAM field of view is 19.7 by 14.5 degrees.

These data were downloaded from China's Science and Application Center for Moon and Deepspace Exploration on January 21, 2016, and they represent all of the data that were available in the database at the time, but not all of the data that PCAM took on the Moon.

There appear to be two or three versions of each image, denoted 2A, 2B, and 2C. 2A and 2B are both grayscale, 16-bit images that have not been demosaiced. 2C are color, 8-bit images that have been demosaiced. Wherever a 2C version of an image observation exists, it is shown on this page as a color image, and clicking on the thumbnail will take you to a PNG version of that color image. When there is not a 2C version of an image observation, it is shown on this page as a grayscale image, and clicking on the thumbnail will take you to a PNG version of the grayscale images.

Below each thumbnail is a link to each of the available PDS-format versions of each image. The 2A and 2B images appear virtually identical. Wherever there is a 2C (demosaiced) version of the image, I also provide a link to the 2A (grayscale, undemosaiced) version of the image. You may obtain better color results by trying various demosaicing algorithms on the 2A images.

PCAM images come in two sizes. "PCAML-C" and "PCAMR-C" are color observations using the full resolution of the detector. They are 2352 by 1728 pixels in size. "PCAML-Q" and "PCAML-Q" are panchromatic images that were downsampled by a factor of 2 before downlinking. This downsampling averaged together all the different-color pixels, so also makes the images grayscale. They are 1176 by 864 pixels in size.

IMG2PNG currently handles the 2A and 2B, full-scale images, but does not handle the 2C or the downsampled images correctly. You can open the PDS-format images as raw images, with these most common sizes:

2A and 2B images (full scale): 2352 x 1728, 16-bit, IBM PC byte order, headers 4704 or 9408 bytes

2C images: 2352 x 1728, 8-bit, interleaved, header 7056 bytes

2A and 2B images (panchromatic): 1176 x 864, 16-bit, header 4704 bytes

These pages were built by Emily Lakdawalla of The Planetary Society. To support Emily's work, please donate to The Planetary Society.

Observation 0005 (December 21, 2013 19:44)

Observation 0005 (December 21, 2013 22:40)

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Observation 0007 (January 12, 2014 13:11)