Apollo 17 in real time

[bknight]

The list of which magazines were used are complete, but not every magazine is available, for whatever reason. No doubt they are chock full of aliens, astronauts sat around smoking on set etc etc.

The missing ones tend to relate to orbital science or specific experiments, such as the Hycon images Awe130 was banging on about from Apollo 14, or the 35mm photos taken by Apollo 15 of stellar targets.

Isolated examples of these images do appear in scientific and technical reports, so they were processed, but they haven't been scanned by anyone for the modern age.

Your mystery image from Apollo 16 is listed in the Apollo Image Atlas as 'Gray Scale', so it's likely that that one, and others like it, were taken for calibration purposes to help with analysing other images on the magazine.

I've heard Marcus Allen claim that 32000 images were taken on the moon (and he specifically uses the word 'on'), but this is way over the actual total of all images taken (the Image Atlas cites 25000 lunar images including Metric and Panoramic camera images). Most of the images are taken in lunar orbit, and a substantial number in LEO and cislunar space. The majority of surface images in Apollo 15-17 were taken during LRV traverses.

Another hefty chunk accounts for photographs of samples and or experiments 'in situ' and 'locator shots' to give a context for samples and experiments. Very few Apollo lunar surface images are what would be described as 'tourist' or 'opportunist' shots that average HB expects, mostly because the film budgets were very carefully worked out in advance.

So then the roughly 8500(?) images of the 25000 are on the Lunar surface.

[Kiwi]

There is a couple of images  that maybe someone may tell me what they are. You won't find it in ALSJ, however, the image is on the slideshow A16-124-19916. I can't figure it out.

The Lunar & Planetary Institute's Apollo Image Atlas says:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/frame/?AS16-124-19916

Apollo Image Atlas
AS16-124-19916

Image Collection:  70mm Hasselblad
Mission:  16
Magazine:  124
Magazine Letter:  SS
Description:  GRAY SCALE
Film Type:  2485
Film Width:  70 mm
Film Color:  black & white

It's a gray-scale which is used for calibrating film, prints, developing-chemicals or equipment.

The view of the entire film
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/70mm/magazine/?124
shows it has been photographed at the end of the film using 13 different exposure settings from over-exposure to under-exposure.

So then the roughly 8500(?) images of the 25000 are on the Lunar surface.

From a spreadsheet I made of all Apollo 7 to 17 photos years ago (dunno why the total of 18,629 doesn't agree):--

Code: [Select]

Images     Surface     Orbital     Other
18667      6506        9135        2988


[bknight]

From a spreadsheet I made of all Apollo 7 to 17 photos years ago (dunno why the total of 18,629 doesn't agree):--

Code: [Select]

Images     Surface     Orbital     Other
18667      6506        9135        2988


That was a lot of work, but thanks. 

[smartcooky]

A couple of weeks back, I decided to try to generate some interest and discussion about Apollo by making this and putting it up on the front of the counter in my shop.



I explain to people about the LRO and KAGUYA and how they have photographed the moon from close up. Some interesting comments have been made, the most common of which has been words to the effect that..."so they really did send men to the moon!?" . Apart from one marginal HB (and he was just a bit creepy TBH) who just thought was all faked, the majority of the comments have been positive.

update

Last week, the LRO Apollo 17 Taurus-Littrow poster above lured in my first genuine Apollo fan. His name is Tony, an Englishman, about my age, who saw Neil Armstrong's first steps 11 live (we didn't in NZ). He came in with his two sons about 12 and 14, and we had quite a discussion about Apollo and the space programme in general. His enthusiasm has obviously rubbed off on his boys as it was apparent that they knew a lot about Apollo and were able to participate fully in the discussion. Looking at and listening to those two boys, I realised that are around the same age that Tony and I were when it was all happening at Tranquillity Base, and it made me wonder what the world will be like when they get to my age. Hopefully, Tony has set his boys on the path of understanding that Apollo was real.

I wouldn't normally bother to post all this, except that yesterday, Tony came back and brought in a book for me to look at. Its called "Full Moon"  by photographer and artist Michael Light. I found it quite stunning. It has all the usual Apollo photographs such as the moonscapes and Earth from the moon and close up of the LM and the LRV etc, but it was these photos the really caught my eye...




For mine, it is photos like these that truly speak to the reality of what these men did, and more so than all the other the amazing photographs of where they went. This makes it all the more sad that there are people out there who, for their own selfish motives and deluded self-aggrandisement, deny the reality of the achievements of these great men.

[Zakalwe]

Great story!


I love that picture of Cernan...he looks like he has just come up from a shift downt'pit! It's probably my second favourite Apollo picture after this one:

[bknight]

Great story!


I love that picture of Cernan...he looks like he has just come up from a shift downt'pit! It's probably my second favourite Apollo picture after this one:

They were covered with all that phony moon dust   A17 was in my opinion the most interesting of the missions, perhaps because of Schmidt

[ka9q]

I love that picture of Cernan...he looks like he has just come up from a shift downt'pit!

I agree. Seeing his lunar-dust-covered face (instead of an anonymous gold mirror) makes it all seem that more real. And hard work, too.

Lunar dust particles are extremely small, jagged and clingy, and that reminds me of asbestos. Have there been any reports of lung problems among the 12 astronauts who went to the surface and breathed that stuff?

Too bad we don't have any films or videos of astronauts moving around inside an LM in lunar gravity. The only visible faces I see bouncing around in 1/6 g are on reduced-gravity parabolic airplane flights, e.g., in that fantastic Mythbusters moon-hoax-busting episode. (I'm not counting brief low-resolution glimpses of Jack Schmitt as he lifts his scratched-up visor.)

But seeing real 1/6 g does spoil the illusion in TV shows and movies set on the moon. Occasionally they'll fake it with slow motion in outdoor scenes, but they don't even try to fake it in indoor scenes. E.g., Space: 1999, Moon, Apollo 18 and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The difficulty of doing that even today ought to tell the hoaxers something...

[onebigmonkey]

Full Moon is a beautiful book and you can get it 2nd hand pretty cheaply - make sure you get the full sized version.

The best copy I've seen is one that had been taken around astronaut events and had Apollo signatures on apprpriate pages.

[bfeist]

onebigmonkey

I know that you know a lot about the ALSJ and the photographs taken by the Apollo astronauts. So tell me, how would I go about locating a particular photo taken at a particular time? I have looked through the ALSJ index, and I can't seem to find anything that tells me how to locate a photo (that might not even exist) given only the approximate time it was taken.

The reason I ask is that last night, I watched a documentary on the History Channel about Apollo 17 (Last Men on the Moon) and near the end, after the launch (where they talk about the NASA technician who filmed the launch by anticipating the six second signal delay to pan the LRV camera upwards following the LM as it launched) there was a brief glimpse of video looking down from the LM at the lunar surface, and I could see the patterns of the LRV tracks and astronaut footprints that are apparent in the LRO photo I posted in my previous post. This would have been shortly after 188:01:30.

Here is a screen grab from my TV of what I am talking about....



This does appear to be actual A17 footage and not stock footage from another mission because the large crater to the bottom left of the descent stage (7 o'clock) and the tracks to its right, and the two dark patches to the right of the descent stage (4 o'clock) and the tracks beyond it seem to line up quite nicely with the photo I posted.

I was wondering if there might be a better, clearer shot of this.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I wasn't getting my forum notification emails!

The footage you're looking for is on apollo17.org at 188:02:00 or so. The youtube video is the best available scan of the 16mm onboard film.
Here's a link right to that moment: http://apollo17.org/?t=188:01:55

Ben
apollo17.org