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How Astronauts Took the Most Important Photo In Space History
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."
They used a camera.
FUCK! China landed a probe on the moon. Dammit we haven't done a damm thing in ages.
Quick. Start running some storys about how nasa is so awesome and did so many things first to cover up that china... CHINA. you know those guys who make all our cheap plastic walmart crap... is now kicking our asses in space.
We look like such fools.. Talk up how awesome NASA was!
Perspective is such a wonderful thing
People should get out and about more
On a set in the Nevada desert of course.
It's iconic. We already knew what the Earth looked like.
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.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
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.
pretty soon we will all be witness to Earthset, and from space it won't even look less pretty than this.
Only thing is, it's man created, and the moon won't even be a possible last resort.
Have gnu, will travel.
Why go through Slate when you can hit NASA?
http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-releases-new-earthrise-simulation-video/
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
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.
I would have a sig but I am too busy updating programs and restarting my computer
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 something that was written even earlier simply to show the sheer historic significance of what it was that they were doing.
Besides, why do you give a crap about what somebody else believes? A basic principle of liberty is that people are free to believe or not believe whatever it is that they want. The first amendment applies just as much to astronauts as it does to anybody else, and that even includes the freedom from censorship about religious ideas too. The next time you decide to take a trip around from the back side of the Moon and want to make a profound public statement about your experience, you can chose something else you think is much more appropriate like Dr. Seuss.
so the earth and the moon are the same size?
Of course the exposure as mentioned by many other posters is set for bright conditions. But even if the exposure had been changed, you would not perceive city illumination and shown in the "earth maps".
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.
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.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Addendum:
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
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
So Cool.
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 .
"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,
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 should get you there.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
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 aboard a Jupiter-C less than three months later. Can anyone doubt they could have done it in 1957?
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 orders and launched Explorer 1 into orbit aboard a Jupiter-C less than three months later. Can anyone doubt they could have done it in 1957?
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.
It is indeed an awesome photo, but personally, I think Voyager 1's Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth is much more thought provoking.
Wikipedia has a write-up about it here.
it wasn't cloudy that day!
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.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Don't be silly.
It was done on the screen of a Mac. Just take a look at the pixels.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's really odd that the only place Google can find those star names is in your Slashdot post. It's like you made them up just for the occasion.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!