Applications to Lunar Remote Sensing - 3D Computer Vision: Efficient Methods and Applications - page 314

Fig. 8.3 Depth-diameter
relations for Mercury, the
Moon, the Earth, and Mars
(adapted from Pike, 1980 ).
( 1973 ) and Wood and Andersson ( 1978 ), that the slope in the double-logarithmic
diagram displays a sudden change at a planet-specific critical diameter value, which
marks what is called the simple-to-complex transition. In the recent work by Sala-
municcar et al. ( 2012 ), such data are extracted automatically based on an analysis
in terms of orbital imagery and topographic data obtained by laser altimetry, relying
on pattern recognition methods. Craters with diameters exceeding the critical value
are not bowl-shaped any more but, depending on their diameter, display complex
structures such as flat floors, central peaks, or inner walls with terraces (Pike, 1980 ).
A discussion of the geological factors influencing the dependence of the crater depth
on the diameter is provided e.g. by Cintala et al. ( 1976 ) and Pike ( 1980 ).
8.2.2 Three-Dimensional Reconstruction of Lunar Impact Craters
at High Resolution
This section describes results obtained by Hafezi and Wöhler ( 2004 ), Wöhler and
Hafezi ( 2005 ), d'Angelo and Wöhler ( 2008 ), and Herbort et al. ( 2011 ) for the three-
dimensional reconstruction of lunar impact craters at high resolution based on the
methods discussed in Chaps. 3 and 5 . The presentation in this section is adopted
from those works.
The telescopic images utilised by Hafezi and Wöhler ( 2004 ) and Wöhler and
Hafezi ( 2005 ) were acquired with ground-based telescopes of 125 mm and 200 mm
aperture equipped with a CCD camera (Philips ToUCam). Each image was gener-
ated by stacking several hundreds of video frames. For this purpose we made use of
the Registax and Giotto software packages, employing a cross-correlation technique
similar to the one described by Baumgardner et al. ( 2000 ). In that work, however,
digitised analog video tapes were processed, while we directly acquired digital video
frames. The scale of our images is between 500 and 800 m per pixel on the lunar