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Space Photography

  • Anders sadly perished a few days ago at the age of 90 in a terrible plane crash. Anders was a man of many talents. Running General Dynamics was probably not one of them. I’ll leave that story out of this post, but leave that to you look up. Instead, I want to share something else about William Anders. One of his greatest shining achievements, was probably this unscheduled photograph he took during the Apollo 8 mission.

    First, for the uninitiated, Apollo 8 was the first crewed mission to leave Earth’s orbit completely to reach the moon. The crew then orbited the moon some 10 times before returning back to Earth. It was a landmark historical mission.

    A transcript from NASA’s program Earthrise: The 45th Anniversary:

    On December 24, 1968, a few minutes after 10:30 am Houston time, Apollo 8 was coming around from the far side of the Moon for the fourth time. Mission Commander Frank Borman was in the left-hand seat, preparing to turn the spacecraft to a new orientation according to the flight plan. Navigator Jim Lovell was in the spacecraft’s lower equipment bay, about to make sightings on lunar landmarks with the onboard sextant, and Bill Anders was in the right-hand seat, observing the Moon through his side window, and taking pictures with a Hasselblad still camera, fitted with a 250-mm telephoto lens. Meanwhile, a second Hasselblad with an 80-mm lens was mounted in Borman’s front-facing window, the so-called rendezvous window, photographing the Moon on an automatic timer: a new picture every twenty seconds. These photographs, matched with LRO’s high-resolution terrain maps, show that Borman was still turning Apollo 8 when the Earth appeared. It was only because of the timing of this rotation that the Earthrise, which had happened on Apollo 8’s three previous orbits, but was unseen by the astronauts, now came into view in Bill Anders’s side window. Here’s what it looked like, as recreated from LRO data by Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio. You’ll hear the astronauts’ voices as captured by Apollo 8’s onboard tape recorder, beginning with Frank Borman announcing the start of the roll maneuver, and you’ll see the rising Earth move from one window to another as Apollo 8 turns.

    Borman: All right, we’re gonna roll. Ready… Set…

    Anders: The impact crater with uh – at uh – just prior to the subsolar point on the south side, in the floor of it, uh, [unintelligible], there is one dark hole. But I couldn’t get a quick enough look at it to see if it might be anything volcanic.

    Anders: Oh my God, look at that picture over there! There’s the Earth comin’ up. Wow, is that pretty!

    Borman: Hey don’t take that, it’s not scheduled.

    [shutter click]

    Anders: You got a color film, Jim? Hand me a roll of color, quick, would you?

    Lovell: Oh man, that’s great.

    Anders: Hurry.

    Lovell: Where is it?

    Anders: Quick

    Lovell: Down here?

    Anders: Just grab me a color. A color exterior. Hurry up. Got one?

    Lovell: Yeah, I’m looking’ for one. C 368.

    Anders: Anything. Quick.

    Lovell: Here.

    Anders: Well, I think we missed it.

    Lovell: Hey, I got it right here [in the hatch window].

    Anders: Let me get it out this one, it’s a lot clearer.

    Lovell: Bill, I got it framed, it’s very clear right here!

    [shutter click]

    Lovell: Got it?

    Anders: Yep.

    Lovell: Take several, take several of ’em! Here, give it to me!

    Anders: Wait a minute, just let me get the right setting here now, just calm down.

    Lovell: Take –

    Anders: Calm down, Lovell!

    Lovell: Well, I got it right – aw, that’s a beautiful shot…Two-fifty at f/11.

    [shutter click]

    Anders: Okay.

    […]

    Source: Transcripts of Earthrise: The 45th Anniversary

    I love this interaction. It highlights just how much a team effort it took to take these photographs, and just how astounding the visage of Earth rising up out of the darkness as they orbited out of the dark side of the moon. Truly captivating.

  • The last supernova that was remotely visible by the naked eye was Supernova 1987A. It was an impressive display then. But will we see another supernova again?

    https://twitter.com/tomkerss/status/1212718011012042754

    For context, our closest red supergiant star is Betelgeuse. It is currently on the cusp of exploding, as it transforms into a supernova. The star is already spewing gases from its surface as it prepares to ascend into supernova — superheating nearby celestial gas and dust into a spectacular light-show.

    As the star prepares to self-destruct, there’s a nearby wall cloud formation of dust. According to the ESA, it’s technically the edge of a nearby interstellar cloud, being illuminated by Betelgeuse. The two are posed to collide:

    If the bar is a completely separate object, then taking into account the motion of Betelgeuse and its arcs and the separation between them and the bar, the outermost arc will collide with the bar in just 5,000 years, with the red supergiant star itself hitting the bar roughly 12,500 years later.

    This image of Betelgeuse is comprised of bow shock (right) and a wall cloud of dust and debris (left). It will take thousands of years for the two to collide. Photo: ESA
    The first photo of a star other than our sun, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1996. Betelgeuse is a red supergiant in the constellation Orion. This photograph is an ultraviolet image. Pictured on the right is the full constellation Orion, with Betelgeuse marked by the yellow cross. Note just how large the size of the star is compared to the size of Jupiter’s orbit. Enormous.

    Check out more photos of Betelgeuse at WIRED,

  • I came across these via the r/space subreddit. In the comments, a Redditor revealed that these images were processed by Seán Doran and Gerald Eichstädt and after looking through the photostream, I was completely blown away.

    It’s nuts that we have a spacecraft out there in void. All alone. Snapping and transmitting these beautiful images of the Jovian giant to us. We are not worthy.

    Swirling violent masses of gases rage and dance on the surface of Jupiter

    Where do these photos come from? The Juno spacecraft of course! This spacecraft and mission has planned to orbit the gas giant Jupiter more than 35 times (these have been organized into perjoves), and has a planned termination date for 2021. A remarkable achievement.

    Here’s a clearer shot of one of Jupiter’s polar vortexes