Apollo 11 Today (And a Cool Helmet Cam)

This is a pretty amazing photograph, although it needs its caption to yield its meaning. It's a recent photograph taken from by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). If you look at the larger version, you can see the descent stages of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module, Eagle, still sitting on the surface of the moon. It's the tiny whitish speck in the middle of the picture casting the long, skinny, non-crater-like shadow. It's been there since 1969.

The LROC—note hammer and Swiss Army Knife for scale

Shazzam
For those of you who prefer more earthbound adventure, check out the nifty GoPro Hero, an inexpensive, waterproof, miniature still and video camera with a wide-angle lens intended to attach to helmets, surfboards, cars and offroad vehicles, your wrist, your chest, radio-controlled vehicles, or pretty much anywhere else you can think of to stick one. The company's website is a lot of fun to browse around in, and here's where you can buy one (as you can see, it's not exactly going to break your bank—although note that the price at the link is just for the camera and the housing; you buy the attachment accessories separately, based on what you need).

What do you say, should I attach one to my forehead on my next trip to the doggie park? I think the suction cup attachment might work for that.

Mike
(Thanks to Tim Bradshaw and Carl Leonardi)

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Featured Comment by David A. Goldfarb: "This is not a camera you attach to your forehead on your next trip to the doggie park. This is a camera to attach to your doggie's forehead on your next trip to the doggie park."

Featured Comment by Ctein: "I suspect most people don't realize how far removed the Apollo photos they remember are from the originals. The original chromes never left the NASA vaults. A very few institutions, including the Smithsonian, got first-generation 'master' dupes. A few very elite publications got second-gen dupes. Most publications got third- or even fourth-gen dupes.

"Add in another generation for the printed reproduction and you're typically 4 or 5 generations away from the originals.

"How big a difference did that make? I've been lucky enough to see some of the Apollo chromes in the Smithsonian archives. The difference between those and what typically appeared in a good publication is like the difference between printing a negative on Grade 2 paper and Grade 4. Not to mention the color and saturation distortions commensurate with that.

"Two books are noteworthy: Orbit: NASA Astronauts Photograph the Earth by Jay Apt, Michael Helfert, and Justin Wilkinson, and Full Moon by Michael Light. The photos for Orbit were scanned from original flight film ('zero generation' original, first generation reproduction) and color/tone corrected by Roger Ressmeyer. (Ressmeyer had a scanner station built onsite, so film never had to leave the storage facility.)

"Michael Light was not quite so blessed; he had to work off of first-generation 'master' dupes. Perceptive viewers will see artifacts, e.g., some small amount of dark haloing around the blackest shadows, which are evidence of slight degradation in the duping process. His results are still remarkable and gorgeous.

"Those who want some sense of what the photos really looked like owe it to themselves to own these books.

"Digital imaging has been a true blessing to space photography; no longer do we public have to suffer with distorted and degraded n-generation offspring."

Featured Comment by David A. Goldfarb: "This is not a camera to attach to your forehead on your next tript to the doggie park. This is a camera to attach to your doggie's forehead on your next trip to the doggie park."

Featured Comment by Rod S.: "I really enjoyed the heads-up on the new LRO photography, Mike. Hey, the Apollo 14 picture is particularly fun: the astronaut's walking trail leading over to the ALSEP jumped out at me even before I'd scrolled to the enlargement.

"I'll second Ctein's recommendation of Full Moon. Michael Light sifted through NASA's collection to find those that struck him as a photographer, steering away from the most commonly seen photographs. Most of the B&W photographs were shot for geological control but most of those he selected are stunning. The first time I turned the pages of the book, I cried, because it took me to those valleys and mountains in a way I had not previously experienced.

"In a discussion with Michael Light at the opening of his exhibition in Sydney, I had remarked about the several copies of the book that I'd seen which included flattened lumps of white clay within the pages. Michael explained that the clay was used during production (by Amilcare Pizzi, in Milan) to address the problem of pages sticking together due to the unusually large amount of black ink used in the printing (for the lunar skies). On the issue of duplicates, Michael told me that he was able to use a fresh new set of 'master' duplicates which NASA had fortuitously prepared shortly before he made his request, so he did have good fortune there."

Comments

[David Dyer-Bennet]

I'm sure the "Hero" cameras are much cheaper than the one on the orbiter, as well as being smaller and lighter!

The gallery of surf shots is tremendously impressive, and they look very clean. If I did anything more interesting than sitting at my computer, this would be a serious risk!

[EZ]

You must have meant "from 500 KILOmeters up"... Nasa actually has a collection with all but one (Apollo XII is still elusive) of them captured quite clear:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html

The best of all (IMHO) is Apollo XIV...

[Martin Doonan]

Hammer & Swiss Army knife - did MacGyver build it?

[Bob]

Err, 500 metres is the size of that scale band on the photo. The final orbit of LRO will be about 31 miles which probably closer to the height at which the photo was taken.

[Douglas Urner]

Cool photo, though it looks to be from quite a bit higher than 500 meters. From a quick scan of the NASA site it appears that the LRO may be orbiting at an altitude of 50 KM (about 31 miles).

[Mike Johnston]

"You must have meant 'from 500 KILOmeters up'"

Whoops, the "500 Meters" on the picure is a scale bar, not a distance from the camera to the subject. My bad. Fixed now.

Mike

[Lawrence Plummer]

Great lunar shots. However, the shots are taken from an orbit of 50km, not 500m. It is planned that it will be there for a year.

[Ed O'Mahony]

Hi Mike,
Re video, you might want to check this out,it's pretty cool stills video and good commentary on how it was put together.I love this your site!!!
Ed

[Ed O'Mahony]

Sorry Mike forgot the link= robertbenson.com/blog
Ed

[Bopbop, a conspiracy in every photo]

That putative landing module is about 10 by 35 pixels. Looks easy to p'shop to me and pretty close in structure to those rocks to it's left. Doesn't change my mind.

[Mike Johnston]

"Doesn't change my mind."

Er.... (Should I ask?) Doesn't change your mind about WHAT?

Mike

[Zach]

The hero is cute, but a kit for mounting one of those fancy new 720p-shooting, 24mm-lens-having pocket cams would be much more useful.

http://www.vimeo.com/4636468

[photo retouching services]

Great helmetcam. Not sure if it will be up for the job though!

[John Roberts]

Gee, I thought I did know what Apollo photos "really" looked like.

[B Grace]

Ctein, I have the smaller sized Jonathon Cape of London version of Full Moon by Michael Light which I found at, of all places, a clearance bookstore at an outlet mall. It's a captivatingly presented collection of photos not commonly included in Apollo retrospectives.

It's important to note the Apollo astronauts received extensive training for all of their tasks including the use of their cameras. They were all highly educated in the fields of science and engineering so the mastery of their camera gear, lens stops, shutter speeds, etc. would have been assumed. Considering the context, their photographs would serve first as documentation of their work and secondly as art. And yet, art the photographs are.

[G]

"It's the tiny whitish speck in the middle of the picture casting the long, skinny, non-crater-like shadow."

...why does the shadow appear to be cast to the right, while all of the mountains and humps appear to cast a shadow to the left?

[G]

"...why does the shadow appear to be cast to the right, while all of the mountains and humps appear to cast a shadow to the left?"

I'll answer my own question, if you like. Are all those things that look like humps actually craters? I can persuade my brain of this, buy my eyes refuse to believe me...

[Miserere]

Ctein, I thought the reason for the lousy Moon pictures was to hide the cables suspending the Earth model and other prop stands in the studio where the landings were faked.

;-)

[Pak]

Ctein: I can second that recommendation for Orbit; but thank you so much for the detailed explaination on the effort that was made to bring this book to the public.

I think I have first edition hardcover of Orbit when I was in high school as my parents bought it for me through a subscription to National Geographic (since I was still the age where a job description of "astronaut" was something you would tell people with a straight face).

Your post brought back a lot of fond memories ... and dreams unfulfilled.

Pak

[robert e]

Just noting that the basic HERO package you linked to does include the waterproof/shockproof housing. The mounting kits are bought separately, or as part of camera/mount bundles. All inexpensive.

[Salviano]

Somewhat off-topic, but this photo is worth seeing

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/1046/dsc02386v.jpg

Taken by a friend of my son. He said he was taking a picture of the rainbow, and the lightning struck at that exact moment.

[Alton Marsh]

The featured comment talking about a master vault caught my attention. Maybe that was true on the Apollo 11 mission. I covered Apollos 14, 15, and 16. I think it was 16 where I wondered into a house on NASA property that was some sort of collection center for Hassleblad film from the lunar missions. The film in there at the time 16 was aloft must have been from 15 or earlier. There was no one there. It was lunch. I wondered around until on the second floor I found a roll of developed negatives. It had been in a large magazine on the camera so there were lots of shots. From frame one I realized I was holding, carefully, actual film that had been near the moon. It was all taken from lunar orbit, so maybe it was even earlier than 11, like 8 or something. Since it was the moon, the shots were pretty much all the same: crater negatives (black and white). But I examined one and then another until the film nearly reached the floor. A darkroom proficient amateur, I knew I couldn't let them touch, so I rolled them back up and left.

[Tom Duffy]

Why people insist on perpetuating this myth that we actually landed on the moon is beyond me. What's next, Mike, a story about claims by some fringe group of scientists that the earth is really round? :)

[David A. Goldfarb]

Too many cameras, not enough doggies, apparently.

[bopbop]

Mike sorry about the late reply. My rather vaguely implied implication was that the image does not change my mind that 'we' went there ie 'we' did not and that 300+ pixels could be easily photoshopped to look like a manmade object.

Well forget it... it fell flat like the earth....