BBC Sky at Night - UK (2021-08)

34 BBC Sky at Night Magazine August 2021

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Portraits of our planet

T

he photos of Earth against

the blackness of space

are perhaps the greatest

legacy of the Apollo

Program. As astronaut

Bill Anders said on

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Earth’s orbit: “We came all this way to

explore the Moon, and the most important

thing is that we discovered the Earth.”

Apollo images such as ‘Earthrise’ and

‘The Blue Marble’ are not just famous

images of Earth, they are among the

most widely reproduced photos of all

time. The contrast of the delicate blue

and white sphere with the inhospitable

void and barren Moon became the iconic

image for the growing environmentalist

movement. And the image of a world

without borders helped people see a

world more united than divided.

But why haven’t these photos, great

as they are, been eclipsed by others over

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since the Apollo Program, astronauts have

got no higher than low-Earth orbit – less

than one per cent of the way to the Moon.

Taking a photo of Earth from there is

like taking a portrait of a friend with the

camera less than a centimetre from their

face. You might be able to capture the

texture of their skin, but any attempt to

render their entire face would be distorted.

And while some of the autonomous

spacecraft destined for other worlds

turned their sensors around for a parting

shot, their cameras weren’t designed for

the job, producing inferior images.

In contrast, as the Apollo astronauts

travelled out towards the Moon, they

reached the perfect distances for

planetary portraiture. NASA had provided

some of the world’s best equipment for

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They were thus able to faithfully record

Earth’s true colours as they appeared to

the human eye. If we look at this image

from Apollo 16 (above), what we see isn’t

the bright green and blue circle that has

come to represent our planet. Instead, it

To b y O r d has restored images of Earth captured during the

Apollo missions, casting new light on the fragility of our planet

A remarkable view of Earth from Apollo 16, taken on

16 April 1972, reveals a world of blue and white with a hint

of brown; (inset) the image before it was digitally restored