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Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

cnn.com

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Re: Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

#161

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

decimalenough wrote: post #53
sfjailbird wrote: post #12

Here are the pictures it has taken so far: https://www.flickr.com/photos/fireflyspace/albums/7217772031... There's also a cool lunar flyover video taken during final deorbit.

It's fascinating how the pictures have that "Apollo moon landing" look. I'd always assumed that a huge part of this was just 1960s technology (film not digital etc), but apparently it's actually coming from the literally unearthly lighting conditions of being on the Moon.

a lot of "unearthly lighting" is because of regolith' contra-reflexivity

it reflects light in (roughly) the direction of light source

so you have /even bigger/ contrast between shadow and its border than you'd expect from "no air to soften shadows with dispersed light"

Re: Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

#162

Post by jccooper »

RangerScience wrote: post #39

Horray! Also: - Wow but the moon is 3D. Like, when we see shots of Earth, the ground always looks so flat, but the depth of the craters and the heights of the ridges is really, really amazing to see - ...KSP did a really good job mimicking the real thing

Much smaller, no atmosphere. You can get a lot closer to it in orbit. Until Apollo 14, the LM would enter a 50,000 ft periapsis on the way to landing. Dunno the exact phasing of this lander, but that video could be from a similar height (or lower, if you have good navigation.)

Re: Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

#163

Post by t43562 »

I am a fan of the LuGRE instrument from Italy. It's a sneaky little precursor to the ESA Lunar Pathfinder which will put a lunar communications system and positioning system into orbit. That will be able to use the LuGRE instrument to get it's own position fixed accurately and then it can start providing communications and positioning services to the surface. A few more satellites and the whole moon will be covered.

Re: Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

#165

Post by ballooney »

porphyra wrote: post #134
stevage wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's the lack of atmospheric scattering.

Yeah due to the lack of a blue sky, shadows on the moon are basically completely black and challenging to photograph. Also the Hasselblad camera they sent to the moon back then was actually pretty good even by modern standards.

Spectacular still by modern standards.

Re: Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

#166

Post by butlike »

What gets me is that the videos warp the perspective of the Earth in a way where it doesn't appear large anymore; and I wonder if that would happen with astronauts too.

They break through the atmosphere and then all of a sudden it looks like a small globe when the point-of-reference switches to the blackness of space.

Re: Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

#167

Post by FredPret »

porphyra wrote: post #134
stevage wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's the lack of atmospheric scattering.

Yeah due to the lack of a blue sky, shadows on the moon are basically completely black and challenging to photograph. Also the Hasselblad camera they sent to the moon back then was actually pretty good even by modern standards.

It was a medium format camera; it's going to be good camera at any point.

I think it had a 7x7cm film - that's a humongous, 49cm^2 sensor compared to a regular full-frame camera, which clocks in at 8.64cm^2. As far as I can tell, the iPhone's is a tiny 0.25cm^2.

Combine with no-holds-barred lenses and you're bound to get fantastic pictures even six decades ago.

https://www.hasselblad.com/about/history/500-series/

https://www.nasa.gov/history/alsj/a11/a11-hass.html#:~:text=...

Re: Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

#168

Post by dylan604 »

butlike wrote: post #166

What gets me is that the videos warp the perspective of the Earth in a way where it doesn't appear large anymore; and I wonder if that would happen with astronauts too. They break through the atmosphere and then all of a sudden it looks like a small globe when the point-of-reference switches to the blackness of space.

The moon is a long way away. The furthest man has ever been from terra firma. The Earth is small at that distance compared to images from ISS or even a geosync satellite. The distance to the moon is about 30 Earths for perspective, over 400,000 kilometers away.

Here's a very famous image from Apollo 8:

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/82693/earthrise-rev...

For a different perspective, check out the view of earth/moon from Mars:

https://science.nasa.gov/resource/earth-and-moon-as-viewed-f...

Re: Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

#169

Post by butlike »

chefandy wrote: post #61
consumer451 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting tangent. Is it Flickr's copyright rules that make it attractive? Or, something else? Lack of existing competitors? Not associated with a social media account?

If you’re going to post albums of high-res photographs on the internet… why not Flickr?

It's a valid question about ToS, and one I'm not sure of.

Re: Firefly ‘Blue Ghost’ lunar lander touches down on the moon

#170

Post by ge96 »

sfjailbird wrote: post #12

Here are the pictures it has taken so far: https://www.flickr.com/photos/fireflyspace/albums/7217772031... There's also a cool lunar flyover video taken during final deorbit.

Why does the moon looks soft/smooth in the videos? Is it because the material is soft? Or a scale thing. If you consider mountains on Earth they look jagged.
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