Hello, Apollo! –
“It almost felt like I was behind the camera, inside the Lunar Module.”
Eric Berger – Apr , (4: (UTC UTC)
These images were processed and shared with Ars by Andy Saunders, a property developer and semi-professional photographer in northern England who is an Apollo enthusiast. In recent years, he has spent more and more time going into the Apollo archive to dig out new details from images and film. (A larger version of the damaged Apollo (Service Module) can be seen here .) Andy the artist
In particular, he wanted to find more images of Neil Armstrong on the Moon. (Armstrong had the camera, so most images are of Buzz Aldrin). As Saunders reviewed fuzzy mm mm footage recorded by Aldrin from inside the Lunar Module, which showed Armstrong stepping out onto the Moon, he discovered that three of the images showed something of Armstrong’s face. He stacked the three images to create a photo that shows Armstrong’s face at the historic moment. “For me, it was almost like being there, really, and going back in time to join them,” Saunders said. “Especially when the clearer images come out. With the Armstrong image, it almost felt like I was behind the camera, inside the Lunar Module. At that moment, only me and Buzz Aldrin had really seen this.” Saunders was hooked.
Astronauts took about , images on Hasselblad cameras during the Apollo Program, and they’re kept in a vault at Johnson Space Center. Periodically, the space agency will re-scan this film and release new versions of the images. Recently, Saunders said, the space agency put out new, raw, 1.3GB versions of each image, an upgrade from the previous MB JPEG versions. By using photo editing tools, Saunders has been able to push the processing of these images harder to bring out more details in pictures once set aside as too blurry or otherwise uninteresting.
Stacking images
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