Thursday, September 5, 2013

A key moment in space history, revisited


As part of the Festival of the Planets, which runs from 8th-13th September in London, England, an exhibition titled 'Snapshots from Space History' is being offered online.  It contains some images never before seen on the Web, and others that are more familiar.

I was struck by this picture of Earth in 1966.  It was the first picture ever taken of the Earth from the Moon.  The first image below is the original, unretouched photograph taken by Lunar Orbiter 1 in that year.




The second is a 2008 reprocessed version of part of that image, which is (unsurprisingly) much clearer and more detailed, with the help of modern computer technology.




There are larger versions of both photographs at the link, and many more images available online.

It's fascinating to think that this was the very first image of Earth taken from another celestial body.  I was a child at the time.

Peter

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