Earthrise

[filkertom]

Forty years ago today, the crew of the Apollo 8 mission sent back the first picture of the whole Earth humans had ever seen. And I and ten million other kids wanted to be astronauts.

That picture is in the archives of the NASA Image Gallery. If you have any other cool pictures or galleries of either space photos or nature photography, it'd be great if you could link up to 'em here so we could all enjoy them.

Comments

[baphnedia.livejournal.com]

One thing I remember about Earthrise, is that it is still (I think) the most published image in the history of mankind.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

We live in wonderful times, in spite of all the bad stuff that has happened too. My grandmother was enthralled by that picture.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Well, to be pedantic, the image of the whole earth that they sent back was a not so lovely video image.

And just to add something more than pedantry, there was an earlier earthrise photograph, taken by Lunar Orbiter 1 back in 1966, which was published fairly widely:



With caption and links to a larger image here

The Lunar Orbiter images were not only black and white, but they had annoying strips and streaks, artifacts of the strips of film that were chemically processed onboard, and then essentially faxed back home. Wonderfully detailed for mapping Apollo landing sites, but not very inspiring to look at.

Of course, culturally, Apollo 8's images grabbed the world's attention, both for the memorable TV moment and the beauty of the color photos the astronauts captured on film.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

And that picture still sends shivers down the spines of those of us who do work at NASA.

Never lose that sense of wonder. Ad Astra.

[wwetuesday.livejournal.com]

Sadly, there are still people to this day that believe that the Apollo 8 landing was fake.

Hearing some of those people, you can tell those are ones who've lost all imagination.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

There was no Apollo 8 landing. Apollo 8 orbited the moon to prove it could be done. Apollo 11 was the one that people say was a faked landing (and 12, 14,15, 16, and 17).

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

My favorite thing in this vein was what I overheard as we left the theater after Apollo 13 -- a young woman, college age, said to her friend, "No way that'd really happen like that."

[danceswithlife]

Not too long after I saw Apollo 13 I watched a documentary (on PBS, I think), which included the Apollo 13 problems and I was amazing how much of the dialog from the movie was taken right from the NASA recordings.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

um... The first landing on the moon was Apollo 11.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

Have you ever visited the Astronomy Picture of the Day site? Besides putting a different photo on their home page every day, they have a fabulous searchable archive.

(Today, by no coincidence, they feature the Earthrise photo.)

[kirylyn.livejournal.com]

oooh, its now my desktop's wallpaper!!

which is appro since I remember hunting down the XP Plus Pack *JUST* because it has the Space Theme (which is what I use for this box)

wonder if there's a way to just take the NASA image of the day and make it the daily desktop image?

[danceswithlife]

I stumbled across this when I followed didjiman's link to the best photos of the year. It's an advent calendar of 25 pictures from the Hubble, some of them action shots:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/hubble_space_telescope_advent.html

I captured one of them, cropped it a little and am using it as my wallpaper.

[laurel-potter.livejournal.com]

They showed it on the news tonight, and my dad pointed it out to me. I don't think he knew what it was. I certainly didn't, as I was just passing through the living room. So thanks for letting me know what I saw, LOL.