p515dfi@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Daniel Fischer) (02/05/91)
From: p515dfi@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Daniel Fischer) Surely we've all seen the remarkable views of the Kuwait theater from the Soviet space station Mir this weekend: taken with a handheld ordinary TV camera they showed - in vivid color - topographic detail, streets and airfields as well as smoke clouds and the oil slick. Seems that was the first uncensored hi-res look at this part of the world since the war began - but *how*high* was the resolution? Everyone with a good map of the area should be able to identify Kuwait's coastline in the TV frames and determine the image scale and approx. resolution - it would be great to find it posted here, calculated for both zoom settings that were used in the video clip [on German TV it aired in every news program for 24 hrs]. One thing's for sure: the *contrast* of these TV pictures clearly beats the actual photo product of last September that was published in SPACE NEWS of 21 Jan. - was that due to better lighting conditions?