APOD: Earthrise: A Video Reconstruction (2018 Dec 23)

[APOD Robot]

Earthrise: A Video Reconstruction

Explanation: About 12 seconds into this video, something unusual happens. The Earth begins to rise. Never seen by humans before, the rise of the Earth over the limb of the Moon occurred 50 years ago tomorrow and surprised and amazed the crew of Apollo 8. The crew immediately scrambled to take still images of the stunning vista caused by Apollo 8's orbit around the Moon. The featured video is a modern reconstruction of the event as it would have looked were it recorded with a modern movie camera. The colorful orb of our Earth stood out as a familiar icon rising above a distant and unfamiliar moonscape, the whole scene the conceptual reverse of a more familiar moonrise as seen from Earth. To many, the scene also spoke about the unity of humanity: that big blue marble -- that's us -- we all live there. The two-minute video is not time-lapse -- this is the real speed of the Earth rising through the windows of Apollo 8. Seven months and three missions later, Apollo 11 astronauts would not only circle Earth's moon, but land on it.

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[Antony Rawlinson]

Why does it need to be a reconstruction? We can understand that the first time it happened, the Apollo crew were unprepared to film it, but the lunar mission continued for 10 more orbits of the moon, and there were further lunar missions, all with orbit modules. There was plenty of opportunity to film it in real-time.

[Klaus Doerbecker]

Every child knows that the moon always shows the same side to earth. So, april, april, there will be no earthrise or movement to be seen from the moon.

[APODFORIST]

Every child knows that the moon always shows the same side to earth. So, april, april, there will be no earthrise or movement to be seen from the moon.

But they weren't on the moon when they saw the earth rise - they flew around it.

[richard schumacher]

Every child knows that the moon always shows the same side to earth. So, april, april, there will be no earthrise or movement to be seen from the moon.

"april, april" ?

[De58te]

Why does it need to be a reconstruction? We can understand that the first time it happened, the Apollo crew were unprepared to film it, but the lunar mission continued for 10 more orbits of the moon, and there were further lunar missions, all with orbit modules. There was plenty of opportunity to film it in real-time.

They had problems with the video camera. First off the video was in black and white on Apollo 8. Still cameras were in color. First color video was on Apollo 10. Naturally the astronauts thought grab the color stills camera.Then when they were halfway to the Moon Bill Anders took off the cabin view lens and put on a telephoto lens to take a picture of the Earth. The telephoto lens unbeknown to the crew greatly overexposed the light exposure to the camera and destroyed a sensor. This was fixed though by the time they got to the Moon by taping a filter from a still camera over the telephoto lens. Then another problem cropped up. RCA had updated the Apollo 7 camera that used 262 scan lines with a 320 scan line camera. This was OK for Mission Control but it wasn't compatible with the standard broadcast TV system then of 525 lines. They had to interlace the pictures of 262 lines with a double scan. So the 320 lines had to be converted to 262 lines. This resulted in an inferior picture that resembled the telecine videos of the 1950s.

[Chris Peterson]

Why does it need to be a reconstruction? We can understand that the first time it happened, the Apollo crew were unprepared to film it, but the lunar mission continued for 10 more orbits of the moon, and there were further lunar missions, all with orbit modules. There was plenty of opportunity to film it in real-time.

Well, the first problem is film. Electronic sensors produce vastly better images, but they didn't have those available. And they didn't have an overwhelming reason to schedule making images or movies of an earthrise out their window, when they were very busy with mission critical tasks. So if we really want to get a good sense of the visual view they had, a modern reconstruction from our much better quality imagery makes good sense.

[Bach fan and APOD lover]

Beautiful! But the musician in me is aching to hear the resolution of that final cadence. ARGH!!!

[arby24]

I too am a great fan of the IPOD site and a musician. I was completely absorbed in the amazingly beautiful video with Bach's Prelude in C accompaniment; but I had to let out a terrible groan when the music ended maybe 2 seconds early without the resolution to a C chord. Ol' J.S. himself must have done several revolutions in his grave. If this can be done, it would make perfect a wonderful thing to show to people in my astronomy and space exploration classes, from 3rd grade to adult. Please consider it. Otherwise, I find it so dissatisfying I will never bring myself to share it.

[RJN]

Beautiful! But the musician in me is aching to hear the resolution of that final cadence. ARGH!!!

Try as I might, I could not get YouTube to include that one last note. I could have sacrificed the first note, but likely many more people will hear the beginning of the video than the end. Perhaps someone with better YouTube video editing skills than me can do it. Otherwise it will have to wait for a future version. I remain cautiously optimistic that this will be solved by Apollo 8's 100th Anniversary.

- Robert Nemiroff for APOD

[dlw]

I was disturbed by that lack of ending as well. My daughter is a film/video editor. I'll see if she can fix it, e.g., by repeating the last video frame for a few seconds and then adding the Bach sound track.

[heehaw]

OH, I just replayed it, and even my tin ear senses the problem. Sigh! And on top of that, I only just learned that Sir Buckstone Abbot was wrong in suggesting Pagliacci as the Italian composer staring with P and nine letters! And yet I'd seen Pagliacci at least twice! I hope I have no errors in this: http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/EMC2.pdf

[saturno2]

Beautiful

[Nicholas]

It is a pet peeve of mine that this great photo is referred to as an Earthrise, which it is not. As scientists I am surprised NASA allowed it, as it gives the impression that there is an Earth rise to be seen from the moon, which there is not. Granted, "Earth Coming into View" is not as poetic as Earth Rise, but the odd circumstance of the geocentric position of Earth in the Moon's sky is poetically fascinating enough by itself not to loose the teaching moment of accuracy for the sake of a slick title for a poster. It would be like drawing a smiley face on the Earth so as to appeal to more people. And did I mention that it was a pet peeve of mine?

[neufer]

Theoretical extent of visible lunar surface (in green) due to libration, compared to the extent of the visible lunar surface without libration (in yellow).

---

As scientists I am surprised NASA allowed it, as it gives the impression that there is an Earth rise to be seen from the moon, which there is not.

Due to libration there is an observable Earth rise and Earth set every month over much of the relatively flat lunar surface shown on the left between the green and yellow lines (e.g., from the Mare Orientale at 19.4°S 92.8°W or the floor of Compton crater at 55.3°N 103.8°E).

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php? ... 09#p288336

[MarkBour]

It is a pet peeve of mine that this great photo is referred to as an Earthrise, which it is not. As scientists I am surprised NASA allowed it, as it gives the impression that there is an Earth rise to be seen from the moon, which there is not. Granted, "Earth Coming into View" is not as poetic as Earth Rise, but the odd circumstance of the geocentric position of Earth in the Moon's sky is poetically fascinating enough by itself not to loose the teaching moment of accuracy for the sake of a slick title for a poster. It would be like drawing a smiley face on the Earth so as to appeal to more people. And did I mention that it was a pet peeve of mine?

It looked like an Earthrise to me. ... Maybe I'm not a scientist.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/earthrise?s=t
earthrise [urth-rahyz]
noun Astronomy.
the rising of the earth above the horizon of the moon or other celestial body, viewed from that body's surface or from a spacecraft orbiting it.

[MarkBour]

Every child knows that the moon always shows the same side to earth. So, april, april, there will be no earthrise or movement to be seen from the moon.

"april, april" ?

I was not getting that. I see that Germans, at least, use it for "April fool", i.e. "I'm just joking."

[Chris Peterson]

It is a pet peeve of mine that this great photo is referred to as an Earthrise, which it is not. As scientists I am surprised NASA allowed it, as it gives the impression that there is an Earth rise to be seen from the moon, which there is not. Granted, "Earth Coming into View" is not as poetic as Earth Rise, but the odd circumstance of the geocentric position of Earth in the Moon's sky is poetically fascinating enough by itself not to loose the teaching moment of accuracy for the sake of a slick title for a poster. It would be like drawing a smiley face on the Earth so as to appeal to more people. And did I mention that it was a pet peeve of mine?

It doesn't seem like an inaccurate description to me. Indeed, as long as humans have been orbiting the Earth in spacecraft, they (and we) have spoken of their experiencing sunrises and sunsets about every 90 minutes. "Rise" and "set" reasonably describe the visual experience, not just the rotational dynamics.

[Nicholas]

It is a pet peeve of mine that this great photo is referred to as an Earthrise, which it is not. As scientists I am surprised NASA allowed it, as it gives the impression that there is an Earth rise to be seen from the moon, which there is not. Granted, "Earth Coming into View" is not as poetic as Earth Rise, but the odd circumstance of the geocentric position of Earth in the Moon's sky is poetically fascinating enough by itself not to loose the teaching moment of accuracy for the sake of a slick title for a poster. It would be like drawing a smiley face on the Earth so as to appeal to more people. And did I mention that it was a pet peeve of mine?

It doesn't seem like an inaccurate description to me. Indeed, as long as humans have been orbiting the Earth in spacecraft, they (and we) have spoken of their experiencing sunrises and sunsets about every 90 minutes. "Rise" and "set" reasonably describe the visual experience, not just the rotational dynamics.

I know, I know. I do it too. I say "look at the pretty sunrise" and "what time does the Sun go down?" It certainly looks like it does, which is why people assumed the Earth was the center of the Universe for so long. But (April-April?) we now mostly know it is not! I make a point of reminding myself that the Earth is rotating and bringing the Sun into and out of view, rather than rising and falling through the sky. I love the 3D feeling it gives to our orbit and rotation. This is a fantastic ride we're on and sometimes I get the sensation that I can 'FEEL' its motion. I don't mean to be picky and say our astronauts are in the Earths eclipse at night (which they are, right?) but to fly over the part of the moon that faces earth and call it Earthrise when it does not appear to rise or set unless your flying 1500 MPH is misleading about a very interesting and UNEARTHLY phenomenon.

It is a pet peeve of mine that this great photo is referred to as an Earthrise, which it is not. As scientists I am surprised NASA allowed it, as it gives the impression that there is an Earth rise to be seen from the moon, which there is not. Granted, "Earth Coming into View" is not as poetic as Earth Rise, but the odd circumstance of the geocentric position of Earth in the Moon's sky is poetically fascinating enough by itself not to loose the teaching moment of accuracy for the sake of a slick title for a poster. It would be like drawing a smiley face on the Earth so as to appeal to more people. And did I mention that it was a pet peeve of mine?

It looked like an Earthrise to me. ... Maybe I'm not a scientist.
As the video shows, the moon's surface is moving toward the camera as the earth appears to rise. It is that motion of the spacecraft traveling to the side of the moon that is facing earth that gives the impression of it 'rising'. If one were standing on the moon's surface there is not that daily rising and setting we assume it has. There is no "dark side of the moon", but there is that other side from which you would NEVER see the earth. (which we confer in the fact that we only ever see the one same side facing us) There is sunrise and sunset on the moon, but there are only 12 days in its year, (each about 28 earth days long) 14 earth days in daylight and 14 earth days of night each. And to be more accurate, there IS a slight rising and setting of Earth over the course of 28 earth days IF you are observing it from a point along the horizon that WE see as the outside edge of the moon, but its only a few degrees up and down, due to the fact the orbital plane of moon around earth is like 5 degrees different from earths orbital plane around the sun. But if you are standing other than at that 'horizon' the earth just wobbles back and forth a little up in the sky,( rotating completely around once every 24 hours of course), but not touching the horizon ever unless your standing near that edge of the back half of the moon that we never see. It never goes across the sky. For the Moon settlements to come, where that settlement is located will determine whether the Earth appears high in the sky, low on the horizon, or completely blocked from view

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/earthrise?s=t
earthrise [urth-rahyz]
noun Astronomy.
the rising of the earth above the horizon of the moon or other celestial body, viewed from that body's surface or from a spacecraft orbiting it.

[MarkBour]

I make a point of reminding myself that the Earth is rotating and bringing the Sun into and out of view, rather than rising and falling through the sky. I love the 3D feeling it gives to our orbit and rotation. This is a fantastic ride we're on and sometimes I get the sensation that I can 'FEEL' its motion.

I like this sensation, too. Particularly in a dark-sky location, to see our nightly movement compared to the frame of the "fixed" stars.