Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wuarchive!emory!att!cbnews!cbnews!military
From: p515dfi@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Daniel Fischer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Mir views Kuwait - cosmonauts' TV camera shows lots of detail
Keywords: photoreconaissance, Mir, Soviet TV cameras, resolution
Message-ID: <1991Feb5.044219.6824@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 5 Feb 91 04:42:19 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
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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?