Customer Reviews

The Clementine Atlas of the Moon

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book represents a groundbreaking and unique resource for both professional and amateur lunar enthusiasts. The first section of the book consists of a concise, yet comprehensive review of lunar exploration and lunar science. The authors bring many years of experience to bear on a subject in which they are clearly well versed and highly knowledgable.
The main section of the book represents the first global atlas of the Moon covering both the near and the far sides, and as such is an unique and unprecendented resource. The Clementine images have been reproduced at a high quality and the use of annotated shaded relief maps ensures an unobscured view of the Clementine mosaics.
Finally, the atlas contains the most complete gazeteer of lunar features ever produced.
I have to disagree with the other reviewer's comments about the book. The book was clearly never intended to primarily be a general interest book about lunar exploration (many excellent books on this subjects already exist). Instead it is intended to be an atlas of use to both professional researchers and amateur astronomers (and would no doubt be an interesting addition to any coffee table), and it fills this role admirably.

If you are looking for a book with a lot of pretty pictures of the lunar surface, take a big pass on The Clementine Atlas of the Moon.

If, however, you are looking for a professional lunar atlas utilizing spacecraft photos, this is your book. The images shown on the pages of The Clementine Atlas of the Moon are reproduced at the same scale and under nearly identical lighting conditions. This alone provides a consistency that has been sorely lacking in lunar atlases made from photographs taken by other NASA spacecraft.

The main part of the atlas features 144 plates made from images taken at the 750nm wavelength by the Clementine spacecraft launched in 1994. Plates generally correspond to the LAC (Lunar Aeronautical Chart) system of the early 1960s. The plates, each with a two degree by two degree grid overlay, are on even number pages. A small inset map of the front and near side is at the upper left-hand corner of each plate and shows its location on the lunar surface. Corresponding maps annotated with the names of various prominent features are on the facing odd number pages. Each map also has a grid and indicates the plate numbers to the north, south, east and west. The atlas must be turned ninety degrees to the right for use and north is always on top (or "up"). At the lunar equator a plate is 20 degrees wide in longitude and 16 degrees height in latitude and physically measures 23 cm by 18.5 cm. The entire moon is covered.

Image quality is very good, but the plates themselves are somewhat bland due to the fact that the lighting is overhead, or at lunar noon. Nonetheless, there was not a single feature for which I searched that I could not find. The somewhat generous plate scale, about 1.1 cm per degree at the equator, and grid makes finding lunar features fairly straightforward if you are armed only with a set of coordinates.

The front part of the book, about 40 pages, describes modern lunar exploration, the Clementine mission itself, and the atlas. This section ends with maps of the near and far sides that are overlaid with the LAC system of chart numbers to provide a quick guide reference guide. The back portion of the atlas offers a 25-page gazetteer which keys in names of lunar features to coordinates and atlas plate numbers. I found only one discrepancy in the gazetteer for features I needed to find. The crater Leakey is shown to be on plate 79, but was not indicated on its corresponding annotated map.

I did find it curious that the six Apollo landing site are designated on the appropriate plates, but Ranger, Surveyor, Luna and Lunokhod landing sites are not. Perhaps "boots on the ground" was the criteria for inclusion. This, however, is nitpicking as The Clementine Atlas of the Moon should be an essential part of any serious student-of-the-moon's library, whether that person is an amateur or professional.

this is basically a research reference item, of limited use and interest. it is billed as a compendium of photographs from the clementine lunar orbiter mission, stitched up to create a "universal coverage" atlas of the moon, but it turns out to be both unfocused and weak on substance. most of the clementine photos, for research reasons, were taken when the sun was "close to noon" over the surface, and as a result there is almost no shadow relief in the lunar photos: everything appears as blotches of gray and white (with the exception of the polar regions). instead, on the facing page of each clementine composite, there is a mapmaker's topographic rendition of the exact same area, but in fuzzy shading that lacks any detail, and it's from this source that you get a geological or topographical sense of the surface. unfortunately, this is also the map that is used to show the lunar crater names, along with the various letter name subsidiary craters, so the topographic map is cluttered. worse, the letter names are linked to the primary craters through various "clues" -- orientation to one side of the crater or typeface size -- which creates visual puzzles wherever the map gets crowded. there is an extensive introduction, mostly a history of lunar mapping, and a few full color geologic maps that are not useful because they are only about 6" in diameter. there is a useful lunar gazetteer, but the ensemble is not worth the $100 you'll pay for it.

The Clementine Lunar Atlas of the Moon, by Bussey & Spudis, provides a wealth of information on basic lunar facts, history, and exploration (part 1), and is the best global compilation of lunar geography and imagery in one book to date (part 2). The remarks of the Italian reviewer concerning the figures in part 1 are overstated. One of the figures is blurred, however, none of the figures appear as badly scanned from another book and carelessly pasted in the text. In addition, the criticism about the pixel size of some of the global remotely sensed element maps is unwarranted. The reader is observing the data at the resolution Lunar Prospector acquired it (~60 km per pixel). There just isn't anything that can be done about it except go back to the Moon and acquire better, higher resolution measurements.

The atlas fills an important niche in my collection. A reference guide to finding any crater named in any article I am reading, and getting a good first-order understanding of the crater's local geography. The quantity of craters named (using the Madler system), the extent of coverage (both the far side and near side of the Moon), and the comparable (Nadir) viewing geometry of all the images makes this atlas a must have for lunar scientists, gradstudents, and amateur astronomers alike.

This book has been released more than one year later than the initial scheduled date. Previously I read several astronomy books issued by the same editor, being some of them atlas (Compact NASA Atlas of the Solar System) or specifically dedicated to Solar System objects (Planetary Sciences, The New Solar System, The Giant Planet Jupiter,...) and others catalogues or handbooks (Planetary Observer's Handbook, Observing the Moon,...): in any case the quality, both of the contents and the edition, was very good if not excellent. I had therefore great expectations about this specific book, but, as soon as I received it, I was greatly disappointed. It is divided in two sections: the first is a general discussion about the Moon and its properties (geological history, motion in space, lunar exploration by the Americans and the Soviets). The section ends with a discussion of the Lunar Prospector and Clementine Missions. I have not read this section deeply, but the names of the two authors should make a warrant for its content. I would in any case rate it quite general, if not common or superficial. Furthermore, the few photographs in it, all selected from well known images taken from the various missions to the moon, are of exceedingly poor quality: in fact they look as if badly scanned from an other book and carelessly pasted in the text. They give you the idea of an unfortunate draft version of the book. The same applies to the few graphs reported.
Second section is the true atlas, in black and white: facing pages contain on the left the Clementine 750 nm images and on the right a digital global shaded relief images by the USGS (1 cm on the image or maps corresponds to roughly 25 km on the Moon in Mercator projection). A lat./long. grid is superimposed on the both of them: the lines are white and look as if they were drawn with Paintbrush! The map on the right is reproduced so that pixels stand out as large as a square with the side up to 0.5-1 mm long.
Furthermore the paper quality is poor: leaves are opaque.
I am not discussing the contents, that are in any case worth of the book, But I still think that such a book should have deserved much more attention by the editor, better quality, deeper review: if you are searching for top quality images and edition such as those of the compact NASA Atlas of the Solar System, well, probably you should better save your money!