This image, released by NASA on December 18, will make great wallpaper (or whatever they call it) for your computer screen. Click to enlarge, or get it from the site linked below:
It’s a composite of images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on October 12, and the NASA site gives details on how it was made.
And here’s the very first photo of Earthrise, taken by the crew of Apollo 8 crew as it entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, 1968:
Wow, that’s beautiful!
That Apollo 8 picture seems to actually be a Lunar Orbiter 1 picture (1966).
Yes. Certainly is not the iconic “Earthrise” photo… which was in color, and had a fuller phase of the earth.
I knew something was wrong, space nut that I am. Lived with the images & audio of Mercury, Gemini & Apollo for quite a time growing up.
The “Earthrise” photo was only just in colour. Apparently they had to scramble to find a roll of colour film.
I know the feeling – when watching the 1999 eclipse at Dachau KZ, I had a double-wind on fault in my camera and reached the end of the roll at T2-01:30 or thereabouts. Strategic choice to continue shooting with the second camera (on the tripod) while changing film on the first.
Ohhh, worrying question. Where the blazes are those rolls of film now?
Maybe you should set aside a week off when you can go through all your old negs and digitize the keepers. I’ve done that with much of my old stash.
Yeah … get a week when I’m in the same country as them. Then get that damned slide scanner to work again.
I can do them for you. It’ll cost you though.
Oh, Dad has got a slide scanner – Nikon thing – it’s just a question of getting me, my slides and it into the same country. And being bothered.
Yes, I should do the eclipse photos. But I know that most of my old photos got an attack of mould some time between 1988 and 2006 (when I was looking for photos of a guy who died, for his “Dispatches” party).
I got lots of mold too. Green. Ugly.
I posted the composite photo on Twi**er a few days ago, as it made me hold my breath. Can’t see it enough 🙂
Earthrise. Thanks for that. An enchanting perspective and beautiful shot.
Yes, this is really beautiful. One must consider that the original pictures were on film, without the digital enhancements that are routine today.
It turns out the second earthrise pic was taken from the Lunar orbiter 1. So it really was broadcast back to Earth and stored on analog video tape. The nasty artifacts were resolved only in late 2008 using digital reprocessing.
(the astronaut William Anders on Apollo 8 took the iconic Earthrise photo a couple years later, in ’68 – in color, from the cozy confines of inside the capsule. Then because the guys couldn’t think of anything better to do, they took turns reading from Genesis).
I’m glad someone is keeping the history of these photos.
The reading from Genesis was deeply annoying for me. I remember thinking, what the hell! – this is supposed to be the 20th century. If the moon trips mean anything, it is that we have left our myths and superstitions behind and entered the mature phase of human civilization. Boy, was I wrong.
Yep. We were making some kind of goddy-woddy point, as opposed to those godless commies we were showing up. But we in Colorado Springs get the dubious distinction of spawning James Irwin (Apollo 15), who went from 8th person to set foot on the moon to intrepid explorer, hunting for the remains of Noah’s Ark on Mt. Ararat. It had to be Colorado Springs.
I sympathize.
There is film and/or audio of Irwin, observing the lunar landscape during Apollo 15, quoting the Bible, “I lift mine eyes unto the hills.”
After Apollo, what is Mount Ararat, eh?
That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.
Amazing. Unfortunately, the image will soon be usurped by the meme:
“God’s chosen live here”
(Oh and those other ruffians who managed to learn science and actually take the photo.)
Reblogged this on The Logical Place.
Kind of reminds me of the stark moonrise landscapes Ansel Adams used to shoot in Yosemite and the Sonoran desert. Too bad NASA didn’t send him up there with the crew of Apollo 8. All he would’ve needed for great photos was his boxy camera and those big, old-fashioned photographic plates.
Lovely shot of the earthrise. And it features Africa, birthplace of us all.
From the NASA page :
That just begs the question of what their views of Mars and Venus are like? (The other planets are most likely just a few pixels.)
Yes, all other planets would look like stars, because of their distance.
Well, they do specifically say that they image other planets, so I guess their arc-s per pixel isn’t too bad. Let’s see, at closest approach Mars is 56 million km away. Radius is 6800 km, so largest angular size is .00012 radians, or a little under a half minute of arc.
The resolution of the cameras is 0.5m at a range of 50 to 200km which is 0.00001 to 0.0000025 radians.
10 to 40 pixels. Doable for Mars. A bit harder for Venus. Not sure about Jupiter.
Sub
I doubt that anyone who was not around before 1968 can fully appreciate the Earthrise picture from Apollo 8. We had never seen something like that before – the full Earth from space. It provided context we had never had previously. And we did not get the full impact until Apollo 8 returned. In those ancient times, you used film that had to be developed. From space, there was a grainy black and white television broadcast that was stunning on its own terms. And on the front page of every newspaper on Earth – including China and the USSR. Once Apollo 8 returned and the film developed, the reaction was astonishment. Here is the Times of London:
http://www.photo-transport.co.uk/moon/apollo8-times-earthrise-master.jpg
And this happened at the end of the shittiest year since WWII. And 1968 still holds that distinction. A few highlights – North Korea seizes the US ship the Pueblo, Tet Offensive in Vietnam, My Lai Massacre, Martin Luther King Jr assassinated, Bobby Kennedy assassinated, Pope condemns birth control, USSR invades Czechoslovakia, Democratic Convention (and police riot)in Chicago, scores killed by police in protests before Mexico City Olympics, Nixon elected president.
In retrospect, I really do not mind that the crew of Apollo 8 read from the book of Genesis. Just think about it in literary terms.
If you want to see the Apollo 8 capsule, it is at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Not far from Jerry.
http://www.msichicago.org/whats-here/exhibits/henry-crown-space-center/
Very cool.
Not merely cool, groovy! 😉
Get down!
“Too much!”
Bad!
“Moderately neato”
– George Carlin
Far out!
“And this happened at the end of the shittiest year since WWII.”
You’ve got that right. I add to that, personally, my mother’s first cousin being killed in Vietnam, my grandmother dying, my brother successfully enduring a nine-hour operation to remove a “benign” tumor from his pituitary gland.