SPACE: EARTHRISE

I have been thinking about how to talk about photographs of and from space in the context of photography – beyond the technicality– and here we go. Opening appropriately with NASA image AS8-14-2383.

This emblematic photograph was taken on the 1968 Apollo lunar mission by astronaut William Anders while orbiting the moon. It was called by Galen Rowell in LIFE's 100 Photographs That Changed the World "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken."

Borman: Oh my God! Look at that picture over there!
               Here's the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty. 
Anders: Hey, don't take that, it's not scheduled. 
Borman: (laughing) You got a color film, Jim? 
Anders: Hand me that roll of color quick, will you...

[from the NASA transcript as the photo was taken]  

It should be noted that this phenomenon can only be viewed by someone in orbit around the moon. Because of the Moon's synchronous rotation around the Earth no Earthrise can be observed by a stationary observer on the surface of the Moon. Also, an 'earthrise' or 'earthset' would take approximately 48 hours to clear the surface of the moon from a stationary observation point. A lunar 'day' (with respect to the earth) is 27 days during which one would see various earth 'phases'. An interesting side note is that this photograph was actually taken with a different orientation, with the Earth on the left and the moon's surface at the right of the frame.

One of the most interesting things about the moon landing and these photographs, is not the touching or the seeing of the moon, but the turning back and encountering the earth from an external vantage point for the first time. It shows a point of view that before people had only imagined. And in imagining, often it was the viewpoint of the divine.

Update on Saturday, March 27, 2010 at 1:34PM by Alexander Porter

This video, taken from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency; I guess they couldn't resist using that X) shows a video of the same phenomenon and it is beautiful to watch. What makes this video possible is that the camera is traveling over the surface of the moon speeding up the Earthrise/Earthset. 

Update on Saturday, March 27, 2010 at 1:38PM by Alexander Porter

Seen from 3.7 billion miles, Earth appears as a tiny dot (the blueish-white speck approximately halfway down the brown band to the right).
Then there is this photograph (left) dubbed the Pale Blue Dot. It was taken from part of the first ever 'family portrait' of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth. 

Here is an excerpt from a commencement address delivered May 11, 1996, by Carl Sagan where he speaks about this photograph:

"Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."