Lives In the Shadow of the Moon

"I wana promise you I am human,
I'd pinch myself to find out if it was really happening;
I walked on the Moon for three days of my life;
And now I am here to tell you about it - that's science fiction."
--Eugene Cernan, Apollo 10 & 17.

In the Shadow of the Moon (Australian release DVD packaging shown left) is a documentary about the men who went to the moon between 1968 and 1972. The film was shown in a limited theatrical release in the U.S. and Canada in late 2007 and also had a limited release in Australia in 2008.

The film is a series of interviews with ten of the twenty-four Apollo program astronauts, the notable exception is Neil Armstrong, interspersed with archival footage. The only speaking roles in the documentary are the astronauts themselves, although Neil Armstrong does appear in archival footage. The interviews are intimate; the astronauts speak directly to the camera. The power of this documentary is that I felt they were speaking to me alone.

The majority of the archival footage I have never seen and I found it spectacular, however, when describing scenes from the film to a friend he mentioned seeing some of the material before. The closest I've come before to that sense of awe is the photographs of Apollo presented in Michael Light's book Full Moon (published in 1999).

The film's title is a metaphor for the astronaut's lives defined by the shadow of their involvement and achievements in Apollo. The men, now in their seventies, reflect on what Apollo was to them at the time and what is to them now. For the first time I had a sense of these men as human beings rather than remote, larger than life figures. In the interviews one sees hints of the behind the scenes drama, and of the personal cost of Apollo to the men and their families.

This film makes the experiences of the astronauts accessible to us and in their own words. What made it different for me was the focus on the men, as they were then and as they are now, rather than a cavalcade of hardware being shot into space. But there is enough hardware shown to keep ardent technocrats happy. The film engaged me (code for I loved it) and I recommend it to anyone.

Australian release: Madman Entertainment (MMA 2791), 2 DVDs, $AUD 39.95. Contents: Disc 1: In the Shadow of the Moon; Disc 2: Behind the shadow (additional interview material); scoring Apollo (the music); interview with David Sington (director); original theatrical trailer.

Earth and Moon, part 2

On 16 December, 2008 I talked about the first picture of the Earth and Moon taken by Lunar Orbiter 1 during 1966. This morning while browsing the Astronomy Picture of the Day web site I found that APOD recently (18 November, 2008) featured a restored version of the same picture; its much better than the version I used to illustrate my earlier post. Go to APOD, this is the link http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081118.html; click on the image to enlarge.

The original image was restored by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project in November last year (www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/LOIRP/index.html). More information about the image, including a comparison of the original and restored versions, and historical documents are available there.

Image credit: © NASA/Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project, 2008.

Earth and Moon from space

The Voyager 1 image I posted earlier started me wondering about how many times the Earth-Moon system has been imaged or photographed from space. The Voyager image quoted was the first image from deep space, that is, out side the Earth-Moon system, however, it was not the first image of the system, that honour goes to Lunar Orbiter 1.

The image was taken 16:36 GMT on 23 August, 1966 and shows the eastern far side of the moon; the Earth is 380,000 kms away and the terminator (day-night boundary) runs through Odessa, Istanbul, and slightly west of Capetown. To see the a larger version click on the image.

The Lunar Orbiters were sent into space by the US during 1966 and 1967 to photograph the entire surface of the moon at close range. NASA before the Apollo Program could proceed needed to identify potential landing sites, and it also needed to decide how safe those sites were. Lunar Orbiter was a reconnaissance mission designed to do this. Once the program was over all five machines were crashed into the lunar surface so as not to present a hazard to the Apollo spacecraft. As a result of the program 99% of the lunar surface was photographed at a resolution of around 100 meters or less. Information on the Orbiter Program cam be found at NASA (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunarorb.html)

The NASA-JPL Photojournal (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html) allows the public world wide to see many of the images taken by US (and many non-American) spacecraft, click on the image map or press the "Search Methods" tab at the bottom of the page.

Image credit: © NASA/GSFC, 1966.

Big and close moon for 2009 and a blue moon

As an amateur astronomer I take a keen interest in what is happening above our heads, but apparently not keen enough!

My mother during a recent telephone call asked if I'd seen the moon the previous day, I answered, "Yes", and asked her why was she asking, because although she does look through my 'scope on the odd occasion, she is no-way as keen as her son. The answer, it turns out, was that there had been a piece in the evening TV news.

What was being discussed was the occurrence of the instant of full moon with the moon being at the closest point in its orbit to the Earth (the perigee of its orbit); this occurred on 12 and 13 December and although not common is not rare. The conjunction of these two phenomena has two results: higher than usual tides (king tides), and the moon appears larger than usual in the sky. Nick Lomb at Sydney Observatory explains all the mechanics in his post for 15 December (www.sydneyobservatory.com.au/blog/?p=1535).

So I don't miss the next, Constant Reader, I give the circumstances of the event, which is the only one for 2009: 10 January (perigee, distance 357,497 km, 10 pm AEST); 11 January (full moon, 2:37 pm AEST).

While checking my facts and figures for the above I noticed that December 2009 will have two full moons. This means the second December full moon (31 December) can be called a blue moon.

Image: The Earth & Moon as seen by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, 18/9/1977. Distance: 7.25 million km. Moon is at 11 o'clock position.

Image credit: © NASA/JPL, 1977.