Planets and Moons  ID: 10961

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Brings "Earthrise" to Everyone

Released on April 19, 2012
On December 24, 1968, Apollo 8 Commander Frank Borman and crew members William A. Anders and James A. Lovell, Jr. became the first humans to photograph the Earth rising over the moon. Now, the rest of us can see what it was like in a new NASA visualization that draws on richly detailed maps of the moon's surface made from data gathered by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter!

The narration in this visualization comes from the original audio recording of the Apollo 8 astronauts. The flight time has been compressed for effect. The Earth in this visualization is not an exact duplication of what the astronauts saw but a mosaic of more recent images taken by Earth-observing satellites. Representative clouds were then layered on top of the mosaic.

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Watch the visualization here!

For complete transcript, click here.


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The first color Earthrise photograph taken by the Apollo 8 crew, rotated and scaled to match the simulation, with alpha channel. The second image is the clock overlay.

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The black-and-white image taken by the Apollo 8 crew, rotated and scaled to match the simulation, with alpha channel. This was taken about a minute before the first color photo.

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The raw frames, rendered at twice the frame rate of the other animations. Played at 30 FPS, these frames run at the actual speed of the Earthrise event. At 60 FPS, they match the running speed of the other animations.

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A map showing which parts of the lunar terrain are visible in the photographs. Annotated with coordinate values, crater names, and coverage outlines.
 

Source Material

Earthrise

Related

Earthrise 2.0

Credits

Ernie Wright (USRA): Lead Animator
Chris Smith (HTSI): Video Editor
Chris Smith (HTSI): Producer
Richard Vondrak (NASA/GSFC): Scientist
James Rice (NASA/GSFC): Scientist
Noah Petro (NASA/GSFC): Scientist
Gordon Chin (NASA/GSFC): Scientist
John Keller (NASA/GSFC): Scientist
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10961

This item is part of this series:
Narrated Movies

Goddard TV Tape:
G2012-043 -- Transit of Venus

Keywords:
SVS >> HDTV
SVS >> Hyperwall
DLESE >> Narrated
NASA Science >> Planets and Moons
SVS >> Apollo 8
SVS >> Earthrise
SVS >> Presentation