Earthrise: The 45th Anniversary

In December of 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first people to leave our home planet and travel to another body in space. But as crew members Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders all later recalled, the most important thing they discovered was Earth.

Using photo mosaics and elevation data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), this video commemorates the 45th anniversary of Apollo 8's historic flight by recreating the moment when the crew first saw and photographed the Earth rising from behind the Moon. Narrator Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon, sets the scene for a three-minute visualization of the view from both inside and outside the spacecraft accompanied by the onboard audio of the astronauts.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE-vOscpiNc


All I can say is - wow! I wish I could see this scene with my own eyes. Those astronauts were very privileged!

Here are these photos:

AS08-13-2329


AS08-14-2383


AS08-14-2384


Source: history.nasa.gov...

reply to post by wildespace


Great video!

reply to post by wildespace


Nice video, thanks! I am in the middle of simming Apollo 8 myself with NASSP 7 in commemoration of the 45th anniversary.
nassp.sourceforge.net...
The graphics aren't as nice, but it really gives you an appreciation for what it took to accomplish the mission.

Considering how big earth is and how big the moon looks in our skies, i thought the earth would look bigger when seen from the moon. Maybe its just me,,,

Lompyt
Considering how big earth is and how big the moon looks in our skies, i thought the earth would look bigger when seen from the moon. Maybe its just me,,,

Two things you have nothing to compare it to like on Earth say buildings etc also the focal length of the lens on the camera changes the apparent size of an object.

Oh s&f wildspace.

Lompyt
Considering how big earth is and how big the moon looks in our skies, i thought the earth would look bigger when seen from the moon. Maybe its just me,,,

To emphasize the response above, go out with a camera next full moon and take a photo if it. I can pretty much guarantee you will be a little disappointed with how small the moon is in the photo compared with what you saw with your eyes and you'll need a very good zoom for it to match what you actually see.

Lompyt
Considering how big earth is and how big the moon looks in our skies, i thought the earth would look bigger when seen from the moon. Maybe its just me,,,

Just to give you an idea I have a DSLR with an aps-c size which has a crop factor of 1.5 so if I use my
70-300mm zoom it gives the same image size of a 105-450mm zoom lens on a full frame pro DSLR.

Here is the Moon at the 70mm end.



Here it is at the 300mm end.



Here it is when a crop is taken from the 300mm end.



At the 70mm end the image of the Moon is approx twice the size you would see with the naked eye but it
doesn't look it in the frame.

Lompyt
Considering how big earth is and how big the moon looks in our skies, i thought the earth would look bigger when seen from the moon. Maybe its just me,,,

The Moon is actualy quite tiny as seen from Earth - only 0.5 of a degree. You need good telescopic lens to make it look big in a picture.

The Earth actually looks fairly big in those Apollo photos, because they used telescopic lens (250 mm).

Here's a 100% scale crop from AS08-14-2384 at history.nasa.gov... with the Earth oriented north-up and sharpened:

Pretty impressive. You can see Africa, some of the Antarctica and South America, and even the Sun glinting off the Atlantic ocean.

reply to post by Lompyt


We can figure out how big the Earth would look from the moon using some math. We can use the Small Angle Approximation

So we say that:

d = a/3600*2*Pi*R

Where as "d" = diameter of the Earth, "a" is the angle in arcseconds that the Earth will cover in the sky, "R" is the distance from the Earth to the Moon, "Pi" is 3.141592654

Working the math we find that:

12,742 km = a/206265 * 384,400 km

so "a" = 6,837.223 arcseconds.

There are 3,600 arcseconds in 1 degree, so divide "a" by that and you get 1.899 degrees.

So the Earth would look about 3.5 times bigger in the moon's sky, and is why we see a lot more lunar eclipses here on Earth than we do solar eclipses.

reply to post by eriktheawful


Huh????

Oh, right, you were speaking math... Not a language I'm familiar with...

That was a really cool video. Those were incredible days. Everyone under the age of twenty wanted to be an astronaut...

seagull
reply to post by eriktheawful

 

Huh????

Oh, right, you were speaking math... Not a language I'm familiar with...

He figured out how large the Earth looks from the Moon. In short, the Earth would look approximately 3.8 times larger than the Moon looks from Earth. Here's a picture for comparison:

And if they hadn't decided to turn the capsule we would have missed the whole thing. One of the best pictures ever taken.

reply to post by Lompyt


Ever see the moon low on the horizon with buildings to scale it ? It looks Hugh. Then when it's high up although it's still the same size it looks small. Nothing to gage it to.