So, it's October. What do you do in October? Carve jack-o'-lanterns, of course! But once the pumpkins are carved, you've got to light them. What's the best way to achieve that great spooky glow? Your first answer might be candles. But the engineer in me says, "That's so 19th century!" Fortunately, we just happened to have some extra OLED lighting panels lying around, so we were able to create the masterpieces you see below!



Kodak is a leader in OLED technology for lighting and displays. We have demonstrated efficacies >66 lm/W on OLED panels meeting the Energy Star specifications for color and color rendering.  That's more efficient than 90% of the luminaires available today!

The picture below shows three OLED lighting panels mounted on a glass fixture. The panels are thin, bright and do not produce much heat. They are perfect for lighting jack-o'-lanterns - or rooms, for that matter. Come see Kodak's OLED lighting panels at FPD International in Yokohama, Japan October 28-30, 2009!

After a trip of over 200,000 miles, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent back its first images from the moon - and they look great. 

Kodak supplied the CCD image sensors used in all three cameras of the orbiter, which will ultimately provide images up to 0.5 meters in resolution - about the same as what's available from commercial programs such as Google Earth.  Currently, the LRO is still in its commissioning orbit, where the equipment is first turned on and adjusted, and the orbit is modified to its final trajectory (which today looks more like an ellipse, rather than a circle, around the moon).  But even while these final adjustments are made, the images coming back are still pretty incredible.

Here's one of the first images sent back by the LRO - taken when the orbiter was flying at the edge of the lighted region of the moon (an area of lunar "sunrise" or "sunset").  Because of this, the shadows are a little exaggerated, but it still gives a good idea of the level of detail available from this new instrument.

[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]

Since the LRO orbits the moon about once every 2 hours, it's pretty straightforward to image the same location from slightly different angles - making it easy to come up with 3D images of the moon (don't forget to use your 3D glasses):

[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]

You can even "fly along" with the LRO in movies that have been made from the series of images it has sent back:

But the clear highlight of the first set of images to come back from the LRO are those of the Apollo landing sites, which came just in time for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing.  These show not only the lunar modules and some scientific equipment left on the moon, but even the trails of astronauts' footprints on the lunar surface:

Apollo 11 lunar module, Eagle.  Image Width:  282 meters (about 925 ft.) [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

[NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]

It's nice to know that 40 years later, all of these things are right where we left them.

As the orbit stabilizes over the next several weeks, images from the LRO should have two to three times better resolution than the pictures shown here - so future passes over these sites will only produce even sharper images, showing these artifacts in even more detail.  But for now, it's good to know that the cameras on board the LRO are working just as advertised, ready to provide an unprecedented set of close-ups of our nearest neighbor in space. 

As a reminder, there are a lot of different ways you can follow along with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on its mission, including web sites from NASA, the Goddard Space Flight Center, and Arizona State University (where the project team for the cameras is based), as well as accounts on both Facebook and Twitter. 

P.S.  Can't get enough of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter?  Arizona State University has put together a paper model of the LRO you can print up, cut out, and glue together.  Now you've got all the things you need to send your own orbiter to the moon.*

*Launch Rocket not included.

The KODAK KAF-1300 Image Sensor has been named one of the 25 Microchips That Shook the World in the May issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine.  IEEE Spectrum is the flagship publication of the IEEE, the world's largest professional technology association.  In this article, they highlight 25 semiconductor chips that were (in their words) "cutting-edge", "out of the box", and "ahead of their time".   And we're pretty excited that one of them is a CCD image sensor from Kodak.



The KODAK KAF-1300 Image Sensor is a 1.3 megapixel CCD that was used in the first SLR digital camera - the KODAK PROFESSIONAL Digital Camera System.  This camera, which combined Kodak electronics for image capture and processing with a Nikon film camera body, sparked the digital photography revolution.  In addition, the KAF-1300 image sensor used in this camera included technologies that served as the building blocks for the high-performance CCD devices Kodak sells today for both professional photography as well as other applied imaging markets.  

The full list of chips honored by IEEE Spectrum is very impressive, and includes the Intel 8088 Microprocessor (the predecessor to the CPU's used in almost all the world's PCs today), NAND Flash Memory (used today in SD storage cards and USB sticks), and the MP3 decoder used in the first portable media player (the predecessor to the iPod).  Plus the processor used in the Apple I computer (as well as Nintendo and Atari game units).  And the chip used in digital projectors and movie theaters around the world.  And the speech synthesizer chip from the Texas Instruments' Speak & Spell toy (used by E.T. to "phone home").  

Pretty rarified air, when you think about all of the advances that have taken place in semiconductor chips.

And not bad good company for a ground-breaking CCD from Kodak.