How Astronauts Took the Most Important Photo In Space History 108
The Bad Astronomer writes "On December 24, 1968, the Apollo 8 astronauts saw the Earth rising over the limb of the Moon. The photo they took of this moment — dubbed Earthrise — has become an icon of our need to explore, and to protect our home world. NASA has just released a video explaining how the astronauts were able to capture this unique moment, which included a dash of both coincidence and fast teamwork."
[SPOILERS] (Score:5, Funny)
They used a camera.
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Having seen the brilliant documentary Capricorn One [imdb.com], I can assure you: While it might have been taken with a camera, it was clearly of a matte painting, not of the Earth itself.
Re:[SPOILERS] (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: [SPOILERS] (Score:5, Informative)
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It's the same reason no stars.
There are quite a number of stars visible in the full sized photo.
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It's the same reason no stars.
There are quite a number of stars visible in the full sized photo.
I looked at the full sized image [nasa.gov] (3000x2400) and I can only see a few dozen stars, a very, very, very, very small fraction of the stars that would be visible if not for the very bright planet in the middle of the picture.
The same is true on a night when there is a full moon vs a moonless night.
Anyone who knows anything about photography will not be surprised by this.
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did you try issuing the verbal command enhance?
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That's pretty good considering I look outside my window and I see no stars. Either the sky or my eyes must not be real.
Re: [SPOILER] (Score:2)
Those were painted in later, and not very well - perhaps intentionally.
The ones portrayed (alpha superfactus and beta malumbra are the most obvious giveaways) would have been directly beneath the astronauts' feet at the time it was supposedly taken.
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The picture probably had an exposure setting comparable to what you would use in the Arizona desert at high noon. You don't see any cities on the night side for the same reason you don't see any stars.
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It does strike me as interesting that unlike the views from orbit we see regularly that show population and technology density (e.g. the one making the point of North Korea's much weaker economic development than South Korea), where cities glow brightly against the rural darkness--the "dark side" of the Earth in the picture is absolutely dark in its entirety.
Perhaps everything but the sun's illumination is filtered by the atmosphere from that distance? We certainly would have had comparable populations (hence comparable artificial lighting) in 1969...
Even the world's greatest light polluting metropolis emits a puny amount of light compared to what Earth reflects from its sunlit side. The night side is "absolutely dark in its entirety" simply due to underexposure.
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Did anyone actually use point and shoot cameras in the late 1960s / early 1970s?
Dynamic range of film with any decent ASA was abysmal back then - it got considerably better up through the 1980s and even 1990s.
Back then, people wouldn't have been asking "where are the stars and cities" - everyone knew that film just wasn't that good.
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Did anyone actually use point and shoot cameras in the late 1960s / early 1970s?
Are you kidding? Point and shoot cameras were all the rage back in that era. Perhaps you've heard of "Instamatic", "110 film", "Polaroid"?
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I guess what I am asking is: did anyone here, the ones all wrapped up about not seeing city lights and stars, use those cameras, and if so, can they remember their dismal dynamic range?
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"dark side" (Score:2)
The photographs/maps showing the city lights have been heavily processed and derived from many raw orbital photographs.
In the natural state it is very difficult to make out artificial lighting even if dark adjusted.
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The desert scenes were filmed on Mars.
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Oh for mod points: I would mod this "Informative"
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Wow, life must be painful for you.
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Re:Spinit. (Score:5, Interesting)
FUCK! China landed a probe on the moon. Dammit we haven't done a damm thing in ages.
You mean except for the two rovers that are currently driving around on Mars?
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The Chinese are getting ready to send a repair guy there, in case they need a tow or a jump-start.
That picture will be awesome!
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Wake me up when the Chinese get anybody above 400 miles. I seriously doubt that any Chinese astronauts are going to do much of anything.
Besides, launching people into space only once every three years or so isn't going to give them the ability to do much of anything. I am significantly underwhelmed by the progress of the Chinese space agency and their ability to recreate the Ranger missions.... and boldly go where dozens of amateur rocket hobbyists [googlelunarxprize.org] plan to tread in the very near future.
There certainly is
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I just felt like I was reading the transcript of a talk by the Russians about the US after the Launch of Sputnik, or maybe Gagarin.
I am looking forward to seen whether the amateurs can make it to the moon before the Chinese. The main difference is resiliency to failure, and failures there will be.
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There's a slight difference between "amateur hobbyist" and "privately funded company".
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Yes.... a privately funded company would be something like SpaceX, Planetary Resources, or Bigelow Aerospace. Amateur hobbyists are groups like a bunch of students and interested amateurs (perhaps even professionals working in their spare time) such as Team Pulli [googlelunarxprize.org] or Team FredNet [googlelunarxprize.org]. You can argue that they are likely not going to get to the Moon, but the point is that purely amateur hobbyists are participating in the GLXP and some have serious plans for actually getting to the Moon.
That some privately funded
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By the way, what's the space program in your country up to nowadays? Just askin'.
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Yeah, lemme guess - Sputnik wasn't that big an accomplishment either, was it?
By the way, what's the space program in your country up to nowadays? Just askin'.
Besides a spacecraft currently in operation around Saturn, one that just left the Solar System entirely, another one on its way to Pluto, still another spacecraft traveling to yet another planet (admittedly dwarf planet) called Ceres, and has discovered nearly a thousand new planets and planetary systems elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy? Oh, and of course the two rovers currently operating on Mars and a recent survey of Mercury?
And all of that is what is happening right now, not just in the distant past.
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First you mean the Germans the Americans took were ahead of the Germans the Russians took?
Yes, and that speaks well of America. Which side do you think von Braun and company went out of their way to surrender to?
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It only speaks well of America if you think that war criminals shouldn't be punished.
Then again, you probably voted for Bush.
AC Needs Some Space History (Score:1)
Von Braun's group could have almost certainly launched a satellite for the US in 1957 before Sputnik 1. In 1956 they had already launched their Jupiter-C rocket to over 70% of orbital velocity and over a thousand km high with a DUMMY 4th stage. Through 1957 they repeatedly asked for permission to launch one with a live 4th stage but the Eisenhower administration considered it "provocative". After Sputnik 1 orbited, the von Braun team was given their go-ahead orders and launched Explorer 1 into orbit abo
AC Needs Some Space History (Score:2)
Reposting what I accidentally just put up as AC:
Von Braun's group could have almost certainly launched a satellite for the US in 1957 before Sputnik 1. In 1956 they had already launched their Jupiter-C rocket to over 70% of orbital velocity and over a thousand km high with a DUMMY 4th stage. Through 1957 they repeatedly asked for permission to launch one with a live 4th stage but the Eisenhower administration considered it "provocative". After Sputnik 1 orbited, the von Braun team was given their go-ahead o
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I'm significantly underwhelmed by the longevity of the Euro-American civilization currently making all the fuss in North America.
So, it took the Chinese 50 years to "catch up" to the pre-Apollo U.S. space program, that's what, like 1% of the duration of their continuous civilization?
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They haven't really "caught up" to us until they have dudes on the moon playing golf and drinking Tang.
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Really, what is the current ability of the US to launch people into space? Oh right, paying for access on other countries rockets. While NASA may currently have the ability to launch and support robotic missions their ability to support human missions falls short of China's capabilities.
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Manned spaceflight is overrated.
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It should be pointed out that there has been a nearly continuous failure on the part of NASA to come up with a successor to the Space Shuttle.... something that has been in the works since the late 1970's even before the Columbia made its initial flight. I can easily find reference to over a dozen different alternatives that had received various levels of funding, including more than a few that even got so far as early prototype levels of development and even spent some time in the air for testing purposes
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The difference with most of these vehicles that are currently under construction (with the exception of the Orion spacecraft.... admittedly a traditional government cost-plus contract built in the same way the Space Shuttle and Apollo spacecraft were built) is that the companies involved are permitted, indeed are seeking private and independent customers that are different from the government customers. Bigelow Aerospace in particular has several customers that want to use their space stations, but Bigelow
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The Chinese are getting ready to send a repair guy there, in case they need a tow or a jump-start.
That picture will be awesome!
Could be needed soon... Word has it that one of the rovers on Mars may have a flat tire...
Re:Spinit. (Score:4, Insightful)
FUCK! China landed a probe on the moon. Dammit we haven't done a damm thing in ages.
Good for China. Now how many probes do they have on Mars? We just landed, what, our 4th rover?
CHINA. you know those guys who make all our cheap plastic walmart crap... is now kicking our asses in space.
Let me know when China lands men on the moon, or anything on Mars [google.com]. Personally, I'm also super impressed with the Cassini [nasa.gov] mission. Did you know that Titan has lakes [nasa.gov]?
Re:Spinit. (Score:4, Insightful)
We look like such fools.. Talk up how awesome NASA was!
The other way to look at it is; "look how awesome NASA used to be - let's fund them again, and get more awesome like this, dammit!"
Perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
Perspective is such a wonderful thing
People should get out and about more
Re:Perspective (Score:5, Funny)
Perspective is such a wonderful thing
Not from where I'm standing.
Re:On a Mac (Score:2)
Don't be silly.
It was done on the screen of a Mac. Just take a look at the pixels.
Re:It's not important (Score:5, Insightful)
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What did this picture of the Earth "explore"? The fact that it's round? We figured that out 5000 years ago with shadows. Did we explore the camera's capabilities? The inside of the Command Module? No, we built them...
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Whats even more astounding than this iconic photo is the tiny pinpoint of light that is Earth seen in pictures from the Mars rovers, or how about the picture from one of the deep space probes looking back at the the Earth-Moon system (was it NewHorizons, I forget).. THOSE picture blow my mind even more than this one..
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You don't have to be very far away at all to get those photos, just set the lens to wide angle...
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As TFSummary explains, in the 1960s, the image of the Earth floating in the vastness of space had a profound psychological impact on a people who "unlike us today" had never seen at it that way.
The TFS is regurgitating hype. I was around when that picture came out, and despite the poetic pronouncements of people whose wont is to hype, most people just thought it was a great picture.
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Re:It's not important (Score:5, Interesting)
That's what is important about it.
That picture of Earth had a pretty big impact on peoples' minds. It's hard to convey that to younger generations. Imagine you're living in a world where two sides of the globe are hell bent on destroying each other and both sides kinda-sorta think that they could win, or at least that they could kinda-sorta survive such a MAD scenario. They keep telling you that the other side is out to get you and to kill you, and that there is nothing more important than getting them first.
And then you see our planet, set against this pitch black void of space. That tiny, precious marble that we call our Earth, the only place where we can live. A tiny spec of heaven in the middle of the unfriendly, dangerous and outright deadly void around it.
Of course we knew what our planet looks like. We had people in orbit before. They were up there and they were able to look down onto our planet. But they always saw it as something huge. When you're in LEO, Earth is pretty big. When you're looking at it from the moon, it gets incredibly tiny. Precious. And very fragile.
I don't want to say that this picture "won" the cold war, in the sense that we steered towards mutual acceptance and away from the idea that we should blow each other up. SALT was started before it. But I think it did have some impact on the people, and on how they saw our planet.
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...and then realize that the "other side" that America unwaveringly accepted was an absolutely evil, freedom-hating actor is now responsible for securing the freedom of someone who exposed America's absolutely evil, freedom-hating actions.
How times have changed.
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The Soviet Union actually ensured our freedom. As long as it existed, our rulers had to play nice so they'd be seen as the good guy.
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Good ideas have always been around, and relatively easy to recognize. Getting good ideas accepted by a majority vote is the big trick.
Fast teamwork? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmm... interesting description. It's not as though they went to the moon for a single orbit (there were ten) and then came right back. Did they manage to miss the Earth rise until their last orbit and had to act quickly? No, it was on the fourth orbit. If they missed it, they'd get another chance in two hours. From the transcript, I found the most interesting thing was that they had a list of things they were supposed to photograph, that Earth doesn't appear to have been on the list, and that there seems to been a bit of a disagreement as to whether they should even be snapping that photo. Sure the photo schedule they had was driven by the scientific information they were collection for the planetary scientists and for the planners of the future Apollo missions but you'd think they could have contacted Capcom and told them "Hey we've got a great PR opportunity here...". It's sort of funny nowadays that many, if not most, unmanned missions seem to have a view of Earth built into their photographic schedule. Keeps the general public interested, I guess.
(No... haven't seen the video yet; bandwidth starved at the my location. The above is based on the transcript.)
Re:Fast teamwork? (Score:4, Insightful)
that there seems to been a bit of a disagreement as to whether they should even be snapping that photo.
I can understand that. Film* was a precious commodity and they didn't want to miss a required shot by snapping a bunch of unplanned crap.
*Don't ask, kid. And stay off my lawn!
Re:Fast teamwork? (Score:5, Informative)
In the video, there wasn't actually a disagreement about taking the picture. It's clear from Borman's tone that he was kidding with Anders about whether or not that photo was scheduled, and Anders responds with a chuckle and keeps taking the pictures.
It's also worth pointing out that this was at the height of the space race. They didn't really need any more PR at that point. They just needed to win.
Also, as I understand it, the reason they missed it previously (and on subsequent orbits) was because the capsule was simply oriented in the wrong direction. It was only because they were in the middle of the roll maneuver that the windows turned for awhile in a direction that allowed them to capture the shot. Prior to and after the maneuver they were not oriented in such a way that they could capture the shot.
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Any manned lunar orbit mission today would likely include dedicated external cameras that could capture those images regardless of attitude.
Amazing what 50 years of technology advance has done for the cost of imaging.
Re:Fast teamwork? (Score:4, Informative)
and that there seems to been a bit of a disagreement as to whether they should even be snapping that photo.
That's a joke son. You can hear it clearly in the recording that it was meant in jest/snarky-remark.
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One of the reasons why most unmanned missions have a view of the Earth as a part of their photo schedule is precisely because of this famous photograph. Even today, it is one of the most widely requested photographs from NASA (both from server activity as well as from its PR office) and has been credited with popularizing the environmental movement to possibly even ending the Vietnam War.
As you say, this was a public relation opportunity, but at the time it wasn't even considered. On the other hand, the s
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Borman was Commander. Anders was LMP, even though there was no LEM.
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Borman was Commander. Anders was LMP, even though there was no LEM.
My mistake. You are correct.
Funny thing is (Score:3)
Only thing is, it's man created, and the moon won't even be a possible last resort.
Well, at least ... (Score:2, Funny)
Direct link (Score:2)
Why go through Slate when you can hit NASA?
http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-releases-new-earthrise-simulation-video/ [nasa.gov]
Genesis? (Score:1)
It certainly was a different time then. Today, there would be much ado about this. A government project with the main players reading a religious text? No way that would work today.
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A government project with the main players reading a religious text? No way that would work today.
Exactly. Back then it was no big deal, there may have been a few that bitched but most would not think of it as promoting Christianity but as a general observation of this tiny speck of soil, water, and air in the midst of extremely large volume of black space. And back then the country was not as religious as it is today.
The Most Important Image Ever Taken (Score:2)
I apologize in advance but this is what DRM brings you, The Most Important Image Ever Taken has always been considered the Deep Space Pix .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcBV-cXVWFw [youtube.com]
"The single most important image ever taken by humanity".
I have a copy of the video -I grab the good stuff in case something like this happens, but does nobody any good but me.
BTW the background is Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.
Get to walk the dog, then see if I can get a link of it here. The audio explains it all,
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The mistittled link has it's place in image history but taken before the Deep Space pix.
The Deep Space Field Flv is here ftp://trax.asuscomm.com/MECLOUD/Image/ [asuscomm.com]
it's a 13 Meg zip file, a zip file as it would play if clicked on. If asked for a password, it's: image
I'm know of being slashdotted, see how asuscomm takes it if it happens. :}
This can be taken down at anytime (obvious).
Mistitled link. (Score:2)
The link is mistitled. The result is an article about the video. For those if us that want the meat now: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dE-vOscpiNc&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DdE-vOscpiNc [youtube.com] should get you there.
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The link is mistitled. The result is an article about the video. For those if us that want the meat now: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dE-vOscpiNc&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DdE-vOscpiNc [youtube.com] should get you there.
Was kool to see how it took place. -shorter link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE-vOscpiNc [youtube.com]
thanks for that was a good watch.
Awesome photo (Score:2)
It is indeed an awesome photo, but personally, I think Voyager 1's Pale Blue Dot [nasa.gov] photograph of Earth is much more thought provoking.
Wikipedia has a write-up about it here [wikipedia.org].
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My guess is they didn't choose Genesis chapter 3 for the reading either, about how Man shouldn't eat from the forbidden tree of knowledge, lest he realize he's naked.
Re:Oh America (Score:4, Funny)
My guess is they didn't choose Genesis chapter 3 for the reading either, about how Man shouldn't eat from the forbidden tree of knowledge, lest he realize he's naked.
NASA felt that telling everybody that the crew of Apollo 8 spent the entire mission naked might be bad for the public image of the space program.
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For the more esoterically-oriented out there, more relevant would be that he realized he was indifferentiable from an animal, a situation for which adding clothing would be a natural attempt to differentiate oneself.
Which, with his newly acquired cognitive range, would have presented rather troubling implications for himself and his surroundings regarding things outside the garden.
Implications which, I might add, persist for some right through to the present day.
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Jesus said to them, "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter the kingdom."
--Thomas
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They felt inspired due to seeing something that literally no other human ever in the entire existence of mankind had ever seen before. If you can't grasp just how profound it was for a group of people going further away from any other group of people in all of history (several times further from any other group), you really fail to grasp just what was going on that particular December of 1968.
Yes, they could have read something out of Shakespear, Tolkein, Douglas Adams, or Einstein. Instead, they choose s
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And I would eat it here, or there. I would eat it ANYWHERE!
I do so like green cheese and ham, thank you, thank you, Sam I am.