Lunar details gleaned from digital stereo images

Using new methods to analyze digital stereo images taken from spacecraft, scientists have mapped areas on the Moon's surface in unprecedented detail. A team at the Institute of Planetary Exploration in Berlin, a branch of the German Aerospace Research Establishment (DLR), developed digital stereo image processing methods and applied them to recent spacecraft imagery of the Moon to create local and regional Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) [Oberst et al., 1996]. If these results are any indication, the new methods should greatly enhance studies of surface geology of other planets as well. In fact, the analysis methods have been successfully applied to images of asteroid Ida, to moons such as Ganymede and Io, and to Mars and Mercury.