On 12/25/18, saguaroastro saguaroastro@cox.net wrote:

And here is an interesting video about the taking of this most iconic photo:

https://youtu.be/dE-vOscpiNc

Thanks for the URL.

That Apollo 8 photo actually wasn't the first earthrise that was seen. During the Lunar Orbiter program, one of the spacecraft took a rather fuzzy and indistinct picture of that same view. The lack of detail led to some people thinking that it was a hoax.

A few years ago, some amateur enthusiasts decided to take some of the Lunar Orbiter data tapes and reprocess them with up-to-date equipment and filtering methods. The result was that the first earthrise picture turned out to be almost as good as what the astronauts took with their Hasselblad cameras or what more recent lunar spacecraft observed.

One unexpected benefit of doing that was that it provided valuable data for lunar scientists. It gave them a basis by which to compare more recent views of lunar terrain and seeing what might have changed since the late 1960s.

73s

Bernhard VA6BMJ @ DO33FL