Moon question

reply to post by wmd_2008


Errr... Ack!

So, if in the pictures of the moon from Earth it looks that tiny, like little more than a dot, and the distance and size differentials are that small, why did the Earth look so large from the Apollo shots when they were on the moon? Or was that again a function of the lenses they used?

Second part of that question I guess would be, if it was a result of lens effects, how big/small would the Earth have looked in normal perspective from the moon? And like on Earth where the rising full moon looks bigger on the horizon than when straight up above, how small would the Earth have looked from the moon when it was straight overhead?

Sorry if the questions are convoluted, hope you get my drift.

reply to post by signalfire


More or less the lens focal length has an effect, also somtimes pictures are cropped ie they dont show the full frame of the picure .

This will give you an idea how focal length can effect how things look 24mm lens.



Step back a few feet but use 150mm the statue is about the same height in the frame but the church!!!!!



Thats why I laugh on here when people post so called ufo pics and videos and claim its at a certain height or doing a certain speed if they dont have something of a KNOWN size next to it they dont have enough info to make those claims!!!

1st what 3d program are you using, that would give some insight into how to give you a few pointers to make this an easy thing to remember/replicate in the future?

Originally posted by vkey08
1st what 3d program are you using, that would give some insight into how to give you a few pointers to make this an easy thing to remember/replicate in the future?

I use Poser Pro (2008 flavor for now) as my main tool. I als have the latest Daz3D Pro, Bryce pro, and a couple of 3d mesh editors.

But I use Poser for most wrk.

OK this was done in LIghtwave but it's the best way I know how to explain this.. You see how the room and the floor meet at the very back end of the picture? Well that hangar is about 500 feet give or take. so what I do (and this works for huge and small distances between objects) make a single (in this case it's the line on the floor it just worked out that way) poly object and scale it to the distance needed. You put your fore object on one end of that line and the other object, scaled to the far end of that line, and presto, you have accurate representations of the distance between two objects.

reply to post by vkey08


Nice scene.

I understand the scaleing. In my image I set up the environment to contain both the Earth and Mon, scaled them apprriately, and then "looked" at it (rendered it). When viewing from "earth orbit" the moon "looked" much smaller than I thought it should. When I placed ISS in the scene, "my" moon was much smaller than NASA photos of the same thing. Course I didn't account for lunar distance, since it vaires by a cnsiderable amount, nor did I take into account the perspective or "view point" frm which the NASA images were probably taken. The result was a small moon.

When I backed my camera out, then "zoomed" in everything began to "look" correct. My guess is that NASA didn't release any images of ISS frm less than a few 1's f miles (I had to back out some 50 or so iles to get it right.

I didn't think of the "scaled" line, probably easier than my method. Being an engineer, I scaled "display" units to the real world.

Anyway, I think I have a handle on this, now al I got to do is figure out how to do better lighting

Thanks.