AT THE MALL...You Look Out of this World!
(Your Face is Like the Moon)

What do the Moon and your skin have in common? If you look closely enough at the moon (such as through a telescope) you see craters, boulders, folds, furrows, hills and valleys. If you look at your skin closely enough (such as the microscopic image at left) you see many of the same features, even for those of us with "smooth" skin!

In the early days of the Apollo program, NASA used unmanned satellites orbiting the moon to photograph possible landing sites for our astronauts. Unlike Earth, there is no atmosphere on the moon to filter light. That makes the moon's shadows look different (at least to a camera sending signals from lunar orbit) from shadows on Earth.

NASA scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory had a hard time figuring out the details of the photographs, such as the height of a large boulder or the depth of a crater. NASA began using computers to enhance the images. This image processing software "decoded" the shadow patterns and provided accurate heights and depths of geographical features.

Cosmetics firms such as Estee Lauder are now using image processing software originally developed by NASA. Skin care specialists take "before" and "after" pictures of skin treated with a moisturizer or anti-wrinkle cream. The image processing software provides an accurate and readable picture of how well the products work.