A Lunar Image Rendering Program by Jay Tanner
The bright crater Tycho, and the southern limb of the moon.
The red line at the top marks the south polar axis.
LUNEX is a program script designed to render customized high-quality 3D images of the moon from virtually any perspective using POV-Ray (v3.7), a free, open-source 3D ray-tracing program. It serves as a virtual geocentric or mobile space telescope or virtual lunar spacecraft from which to view the moon.
The default settings simulate a geocentric telescope aimed at the full moon at its mean distance of 238,857 miles (384,403 km). However, the camera (or eye) can be moved out into space to simulate a view from any other perspective, or even view the moon from the other side or center the view on any crater or feature given its surface coordinates
The program can be used to create royalty-free customized lunar maps and specialized diagrams for educational or any general purposes. See the LUNEX Examples With Source Code, also in the left menu.
A comprehensive list of several hundreds of craters and other features and their coordinates are provided with the program as well and can easily be copied/pasted into the program.
NOTE:
Not every crater in the listings is visible in LUNEX. Extremely small craters (1 to 3 km) may not be resolved, but LUNEX wasn't intended to walk on the surface or resolve detail that tiny. It does, however, produce photo-realistic images as might be viewed from a telescope on Earth or from a close orbiting spacecraft.
Both LUNEX and POV-Ray are FREEWARE - No ads or malware of any kind.
Some Of The Program Features
- There are two rendering modes. Quick Render Mode 1 is for making quick experimental renders and Full Render Mode 2 is for rendering the finished product at highest quality when the experimenting is finished.
- The moon can be viewed at any relative phase angle from 0 to 360 degrees.
- Any side of the moon can be viewed from a spatial perspective and at any relative phase.
- Any given lunar feature can be targeted and centered in the rendered view given its selenographic surface coordinates.
- Some special texture maps, such as color-coded altimetry and gravity maps and surface maps with coordinate grids are provided and the user can add new custom or revised maps if necessary.
- There is also a camera zoom feature to magnify any selected area, but it should be used with caution to avoid pixelation at extreme values.
- The camera location can be shifted left/right/up/down to center on any location along the edge of the lunar disk or any other targeted region.
- The camera can also be moved to any distance closer or farther from the moon for various perspective views. The moon does not look quite the same when magnified 50x from Earth as it does when actually viewed from 1/50 of its mean distance.
- A marker or pointer can be placed on a lunar feature's coordinates to make it stand out and find it more easily or simply to locate a coordinate location.
- The 3D surface relief shading can be turned on or off as needed for special renders.
- The northern (blue) and southern (red) polar axes can be turned on or off as needed when rendering in the lunar polar regions.