This is all we've got. We need to do a better job of preserving it.
One of the objectives of the Artemis missions is to prepare for Mars travel, none of the objectives of Artemis are to view Earth as the only planet we have nor to preserve it.
Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
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Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#282Fun question: What time was this taken? The exif includes time, but not time zone. They are not quite at the moon, and Lunar Time is under active development but not official. Also clocks tick slower under the moon's weaker gravity. (Or is it faster?) Anyway, what time was this taken?
Line 30 of the exif dump in the gist linked above gives an offset of -05:00
Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#283I often think about what an amazing time it is to be alive and how amazing all the tech we have at our fingertips is. But I am also incredibly saddened by the fact that I was probably born just shy of routine space travel. I can not even imagine how amazing it would be to look down on earth and see it in its entirety. Hopefully my kids or my grandkids will be able to achieve my dream and do exactly that.
If you had routine space travel, you would be upset that you can't time travel.
Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#284If you're confused what you're looking at, turn it upside down.
West Africa & Gibraltar strait
Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd have probably shot it wide open at f/2.8 rather than cranking the ISO up to 51200. Incredibly impressed at the steady hands for a sharp image at 1/4 s shutter speed though! Maybe they just let the camera float in space with the mirror up, triggering it remotely.
I would imagine since they are not circling the earth, that there will be pull of gravity and the camera would start to move relative to the spacecraft. But may not fast enough for a short exposure
They’re not circling the Earth, but they’re still orbiting it. Their orbit is highly eccentric, and will be near the Moon at apogee.
Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#286Fun question: What time was this taken? The exif includes time, but not time zone. They are not quite at the moon, and Lunar Time is under active development but not official. Also clocks tick slower under the moon's weaker gravity. (Or is it faster?) Anyway, what time was this taken?
I think the clocks on board Orion are set to Houston time, which would be 5 hours behind UTC (because of Daylight Saving). But I'm not sure. I would expect the EXIF time to be in whatever time zone the spacecraft's clocks are set to. > clocks tick slower under the moon's weaker gravity. (Or is it faster?) Compared to clocks at rest on Earth, clocks on board Orion right now are ticking faster, because it's at a high e…
> So clocks on the ISS, for example, tick slower than Earth clocks; but clocks on the GPS satellites (orbiting at 4.2 Earth radii) tick faster (and there is an adjustment made for this on each satellite so that the time signals they send out match Earth clock rates)
I'm curious, and hope you or somebody else might be able to answer this: is it a single adjustment for each thing, where they just set it to always adjust by X ratio, or does it vary (enough to matter) as it orbits, such that the adjustment needs to be constantly varying slightly?
Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#287I was confused when I first saw this photo, as I don't think I've ever before seen a nightside, moonlit Earth, exposed so that it looks like the dayside at a first glance. I wonder how many casual viewers actually realize it's the night side. A nice demonstration of how moonlight is pretty much exactly like sunlight, just much much dimmer. In particular it has the same color, even though moonlight is often thought of…
What does it look like to human eyes? Is there enough light for a person up there to see colour, or would it look like black and white (like a moonlit scene on the ground).
Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
The photograph appears to show nightime on Earth with just a sliver of daytime. Beyond cities in Iberia and along the coast of Africa, most of what we can see would be reflected light from the Moon? We are just past full moon on April 1.
1/4 exposure time so 250 ms of light. the light is coming from all the light sources in the universe, plus the moon, plus the sun's rays refracting through the atmosphere which happens even at night. The natural blue light is coming from the oxygen in the atmosphere but it's so overwhelming in that spot that it turns the light pure white. The red/orangish is coming from particulates and the green/red from aurora. My…
so the atmosphere acts as giant lamp lit from behind by Moon? never thought of it that way
Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#289"It is the first time since 1972 that humans have travelled outside of the Earth's orbit." But they're not tho (Earth's gravitational dominance extends 4x the distance to the moon)
Technically correct, the best kind of correct. After all, the moon is in Earth's orbit.
One would hope they’re still in Earth’s orbit - if they’ve achieved escape velocity they’re not coming back.
Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wide open generally sacrifices lens sharpness.
Sure, but less grain is often worth it. There's a reason why fast lenses exist. The high quality lens being used here can probably still resolve 20 MP adequately even wide open.
I had that lens. It’s soft as fuck around the edges open.
Peak sharpness is about f/8. They should have had the D5 on aperture priority auto iso, pushed the exposure comp either way and then just fired at f/8 and let the camera make the decisions.
But they are astronauts not photographers :)
The modern Z lenses are far better and sharper open but much larger generally.