NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has captured images of Chandrayaan-3's landing site on the lunar south pole region.  Chandrayaan-3, the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO's) third lunar exploration mission, softly landed on the Moon's south pole region on August 23, 2023, making India the first country to softly land a spacecraft on the lunar south pole area. The landing site is located about 600 kilometres from the south pole. In the image shared by NASA, one can see Chandraayan-3's Vikram lander in the centre of the image. The dark shadow of Vikram is visible against a bright halo surrounding the lander.


The bright halo was created as a result of the landing module's rocket plume reacting with the fine-grained lunar regolith or lunar soil. 


 



Chandrayaan-3's landing site is located about 600 kilometres from the south pole. In the image shared by NASA, one can see Chandraayan-3's Vikram lander in the centre of the image. The dark shadow of Vikram is visible against a bright halo surrounding the lander. (Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)


The LRO camera captured an image of the lander four days after Chandrayaan-3 landed on the Moon. 


 



The bright halo was created as a result of the landing module's rocket plume reacting with the fine-grained lunar regolith or lunar soil. (Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)


On September 5, 2023, ISRO shared an anaglyph of Vikram on the Moon captured by the Navigation Camera onboard the Pragyan rover. Pragyan's camera captured images of Vikram in both left and right directions. Using these images, which are called NavCam Stereo images, ISRO created the anaglyph. 


In photography, an anaglyph is a composite picture obtained by superimposing two images of the same object in different directions, and in different colours, which are usually red and green. One can have a visual impression of three dimensions if they view the anaglyph using certain filters.


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Therefore, an anaglyph is a visualisation of an object or terrain in three dimensions, or a stereoscopic picture, created using multi-view images. 


Vikram's anaglyph is a three-channel image, which means that three different colours have been superimposed. 


ISRO created the anaglyph by positioning the left image of Vikram in the red channel, and the right image in the blue and green channels, creating a cyan effect, and eventually, a stereo effect.


One can view the anaglyph in red and cyan glasses to enjoy the three-dimensional effect.