BBC Sky at Night - UK (2021-08)

August 2021 BBC Sky at Night Magazine 35

Toby Ord is a Senior

Research Fellow at the

University of Oxford and

author of The Precipice.

For all the restored

photos visit http://www.

tobyord.com/earth

photo. I chose it for the cover of my book

The Precipice, which looks at humanity’s

own fragility in these challenging times.

Another one of my favourite photos

is from Apollo 13. Two days in, the craft

suffered a dramatic explosion, venting the

contents of the Service Module’s oxygen

tanks into space, leaving the Command

Module without enough breathable air

to get home. This ethereal photo (right),

DWƅUVWDSSHDUVWRVKRZWKH0RRQEXW

it is really the crescent Earth amidst

WKHJKRVWO\UHƆHFWLRQVRIWKH/XQDU

Module. They were

80,000km and

seven hours away

from safety – this

photo captures this

stolen moment,

yearning for home.

It was an absolute

treat to be able

to play a role in

reviving these

images. There are

so many more great

photos that have

never been restored.

But, since raw scans

of all the images

are publicly

available, anyone

can try their hand.

And then there

is Artemis. In

is primarily a world of blue and white, with
brown continents and just a suggestion of
muted green in places of lush vegetation:
“I was able to look out the window to see
this incredible sight of the whole circle of
the Earth,” said Apollo 16’s Charlie Duke.
“Oceans were crystal blue, the land was
brown, and the clouds and the snow were
pure white. And that jewel of Earth was
just hung up in the blackness of space.”

Restoration mission
Struck by the beauty of the most famous
photographs, I wondered if there were
more. So began a journey that would
occupy my evenings over the next
three years. I hunted through all 18,000
Hasselblad photos from the Apollo
missions for the best images that time
forgot, and digitally restored them to
bring out their full glory. It was these
lost images of Apollo that were the real
rivals to the most well-known ones.
One of my favourite hidden gems is the
crescent earthrise from Apollo 12 (above).
It was captured by Richard Gordon as he
circled the Moon alone in the Command
Module, awaiting his companions’ return.
It was overlooked for years as the original
negative was poorly exposed and washed
out. But as soon as I properly adjusted the
levels, it took my breath away, revealing
a haunting scene with an even more
graceful and fragile view of the Earth and
Moon than Apollo 8’s famous ‘Earthrise’

“I was able to look

out the window to

see this incredible

sight of the whole

circle of the Earth.

Oceans were crystal

blue, the land was

brown, and the

clouds and the

snow were pure

white. And that

jewel of Earth was

just hung up in the

blackness of space.”

• Charlie Duke,
  Apollo 16

two years’ time, Apollo’s twin — the

Artemis Program — will send four more

astronauts to the Moon. With 50 years

of advances in camera technology, their

photographs will rival everything that

has come before.

A lesser-known crescent

earthrise, as captured from

Apollo 12 on 19 November 1969

A haunting view of a crescent Earth,

as taken from inside Apollo 13’s

Lunar Module on 17 April 1970