Apollo 17 shot
 

Geologist-Astronaut Harrison Schmitt on the moon, inspecting the lunar rover, in December of 1972.

hi-res version, and really hi-res version. Other great stuff, including videos, can be found here.

Wow ... totally cool image!

Growing up in the 60s I was a HUGE Apollo program fan (still am).

Sights like that gave me chills and opened me up to the wonders of space exploration.

Sad to say, I can't generate that kind of enthusiasm for the shuttle program. The extra-long haul truck driving involved just doesn't have the same sense of romance that the moon missions did.

I remember the manned moon landing, and how that was THE coolest thing ever.

I remember being in school during the time of the Apollo 13 crisis, and being held there late to watch the splash down.

I remember Alan Sheppard's "longest drive ever" which will forever remain my highlight of Apollo 14.

Thanks, Juju, for stirring up a lot of good memories.

Damn. Now I feel like I have to go drink some Tang. Do they still make the purple kind? Guess I'll just have to obsessively play with some velcro until the feeling goes away.

Photo of Harrison Schmitt on the moon.............or a top secret film studio at area 51.

It's a very high quality image either way.

Goddammit!!!

(wolf thinks to self ... The cameras that they took to the moon were NOT that good. How the heck did they get such a quality high-res digital image ... D'OH!)

There is no space program. It's all ILM. That's how George Lucas got the money to make Star Wars.

(My worldview hasn't been quite the same since I found out that CW McCall was really Mannheim Steamroller)

I think there's a space program, but I am definitely uncertain about the authenticity of this shot.

You've been in the digital age so long you forgot that people used to (and still do) take good pictures with film! :cool: I don't know what kind of cameras they took to the moon, but the standard image area of a 35mm slide is 24 x 36 mm. Using a modern slide scanner at 4000 dpi, you can get a 3770 x 5660 pixel digital image. Even with an older 2100 dpi scanner you'd get 1980 x 2976, quite respectable for most uses. Amateur shutterbugs were using 35mm Kodachrome for their vacation snapshots in the 50s; I'm sure NASA sent along something at least that good in 1969.

You know, they <i>did</i> have color photography in 1972. Untrusting bastards. :)

Here's a despription of the cameras they brought with them. And here's a little write up on the problems they had with the color film they brought to the moon. Apparently color works differently in the vacuum of space, and the film was washed with certain colors that just weren't there in real life. Looks like they photoshopped the pics in order to eliminate the rouge colors. Still, it's not as if they added colors.

BTW - if you really want chills, check out some of the videos from apolloarchive.com. Really amazing stuff.

As I recall, most of the Apollo mission photography was done with Hasselblad large-format cameras. http://www.hasselblad.com/products/level2.asp?secId=508

There is no doubt...the cameras that were used in the Apollo program (the space program in general) are at the top of the line, period. If you're going to spend the weight penalty to launch a camera (or anything else for that matter), you don't send up a Volkswagen when there are Mercedes available.

Stupid question, I guess, but.... Why can't I see any stars in the background?

Overpowered
 

They are overpowered by the large fields of bright grey. The same exposire time can't capture both the foreground and the starfield. An exposure time sufficient to show the stars would have left the foregrounf severely overexposed.