Hello Aristarchus

After totality ended, it was fun watching the lunar surface re-emerge from the Earth's shadow, as the procession of familiar lunar features slowly moved into sunlight, it was like meeting old friends (in this case after only seeing them dimly for the last two hours in the Earth's shadow...). The bright crater Aristarchus appears at upper right shortly after emerging from the Earth's shadow. Aristarchus is an interesting site, known for producing most of the Lunar Transient Events which some think might be volcanic in origin. I suspect that they are mostly cases of the crater reflecting Earthshine back at us very efficiently, but no one really knows yet. Maybe someday when we go back, we can land a mission there to study it in detail. This image was taken at 300mm focal length with an exposure of 1/50 seconds at f/8, ISO 200.

Lunar Eclipse - near mid-eclipse

This is the eclipsed Moon near the middle of the eclipse. Note the deep orange-brown color, caused by the light scattered around the Earth's atmosphere that reaches the Moon. This image was taken at 300mm focal length with an exposure of 2 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 800. Note the trailing in the stars that are visible in this image. The lunar image is also smeared by that amount from top left to bottom right so that the image appears fuzzy, especially in that direction.

Lunar Eclipse

I just came inside as the still partially eclipsed Moon is setting in the western sky and the morning twilight is starting to turn the skies a deep blue. Just finished downloading all my pictures and here's one of them, taken just a few minutes before the total phase began. A sliver of the Moon is still in the Penumbra, lit by the sun just peaking over the edge of the Earth while most of the Moon is only lit by the light scattering through the Earth's atmosphere - imagine looking back from the Moon towards Earth - you'd see an orange ring around the Earth of sunlight scattered through the atmosphere and around that would be the Sun's Corona - what a sight that would be! This image was taken at 300mm focal length with an exposure of 1/2 second at f/8, ISO 400.

Spitfire

This British Spitfire sits across the gallery from the Me-109. This image was taken at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 1/30 seconds at f/3.5, ISO 800.

Me109

The Air & Space Museum has some excellent displays of planes and jets. This Messersmitt 109 resides in an impressive collection of WWII fighters. This image was taken at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 1/20 seconds at f/3.5, ISO 800.

Apollo-Soyuz

In 1975, the superpowers first attempt at cooperation in space - the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) flew the last Apollo mission into space to dock with a Soyuz spacecraft in Earth orbit. A special docking adaptor was used to mate the two spacecraft which each used rather different docking mechanisms. This effort led eventually to cooperative ventures in space including shuttle flights to the Mir space station and now the International Space Station. This exhibit in the Air & Space Museum shows the size of both spacecraft, both in relative and absolute scales. This image was taken at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 1/160 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 1600.

Explorer 1

This is a replica of the Explorer 1 spacecraft in the Air & Space Museum. It hangs roughly directly above the Viking lander. Explorer 1 was the first United States satellite and is credited with discovering the Van Allen radiation belts. It was launched on a Jupiter rocket in January 1958. This image was taken at 238mm focal length with an exposure of 1/160 seconds at f/6.3, ISO 1600.

Viking Lander

Two Viking landers successfully landed on Mars in 1976, the first on the 7th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon on July 20. The thing I remember most about that is that we were traveling across country, moving from New York to Seattle and passed through Salt Lake City at that time. When I saw the newspaper the next day and they had the first picture from Viking 1 on the surface of Mars, I thought "Sheesh! The landscape we just drove through looks just like that!" Nowadays, the images by our landers and rovers on Mars make me want to go take a hike over to the hills in the distance. This image was taken at 18mm focal length, with an exposure of 1/125 seconds at f/4.5, ISO 800.

Surveyor

The Surveyor Spacecraft landed on the Moon before the Apollo missions in order to study the surface characteristics as well as places that Apollo might not be able to get to. The Surveyor 3 spacecraft was even visited by the Apollo 12 astronauts. They brought back the scoop and the television camera that it carried to study the longterm affects of exposure to the lunar environment. This exhibit hangs above the LM and right next to the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft. This image was taken at 22mm focal length with an expsoure of 1/160 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 1600.

Lunar Orbiter

The Lunar Orbiter spacecraft were used to take a close look at the Moon for potential landing sites for Apollo. Later, it did a more general survey of the Moon and produced closeups of a number of features of interest on the Moon before Apollo orbited the Moon at the end of the 1960s. The spacecraft used two cameras, one with a narrow field of view and the other with a wider field of view, imaging on film which was developed onboard the spacecraft before being scanned and transmittted electronically back to Earth. You can see the twin lenses of the camera system near the center of the spacecraft. Lunar Orbiter II took an oblique image of the prominant crater Copernicus which was called the "Photo of the Century" at the time it was published. This Lunar Orbiter hangs above LM-2. This image was taken at 49mm focal length with an exposure of 1/125 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 1600.

Spaceship One

Spaceship One hangs in the main gallery at the Air & Space Museum, not far from Columbia. Behind it you can see the Bell X-1 airplane that Chuck Yeager flew past the speed of sound for the first time and to its left is Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis. Spaceship One carried the first private pilot into Space, rocketing to an altitude of just over 100 kilometers. This image was taken at 55mm focal length with an exposure of 1/60 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 400.

Apollo 11 CM

The Apollo 11 CM "Columbia" is a big attraction at the Air & Space Museum. There wasn't a moment that it did not have a crowd around it. It is amazing to consider that of the Saturn V launch vehicle that left Earth on July 16, 1969 - all 363 feet of it, only this tiny capsule returned to Earth on July 24 after the successful landing on the 20th. This image was taken at 70mm focal length with an exposure of 1/160 seconds at f/6.3, ISO 1600.

3D LM

This 3D anaglyph of the Lunar Module at the Air & Space Museum was made with Stereo Picture Maker. You'll need your red-cyan anaglyph glasses to see it properly.

Pigeons of the sea...

One of the most common and aggressive birds on the beach are the seagulls. These two are looking for anything that might be edible while eying beachgoers and other birds along the waters edge. This image was taken at 300mm focal length with an exposure of 1/1000 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 100.

Another one for Frank...

This young lady was just packing up to leave after enjoying an afternoon under the sun. Gotta love bikinis.....

A picture for Frank...

This one is for Frank - actually, I know that several of my friends will enjoy this one too.... We drove out to the Delaware and Maryland beaches near Lewes and Dewey Beach to enjoy the surf and sand and sun. Of course, the pretty scenery walking the beach was easy on the eyes as well.....

Gene Cernan's lunar spacesuit

This is the spacesuit worn by Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan while he walked the Taurus-Littrow Valley in December 1972. Compare this suit to the previous image of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin's suit. This suit was an improvement on the earlier suit, allowing the astronaut more flexibility (for example easier to bend at the waist so he could sit on the Lunar Rover). The most obvious difference is in the arrangement of the suit connectors for the various hoses as well as with the red stripes that were used starting on Apollo 13 to distinguish the commander from the lunar module pilot in the lunar photography and video. This image was taken at 24mm focal length with an exposure of 1/25 seconds at f/1.8, ISO 800, with a flash.

Buzz's lunar spacesuit

Here is Buzz Aldrin's suit which he wore on the surface of the Moon during the Apollo 11 flight. The slight grey color is moondust. This image was taken at 24mm focal length with an exposure of 1/25 seconds at f/1.8, ISO 800, with a flash.

70mm Hasselblad

This is an Apollo Hasselblad 500 EL camera like those used on Apollo 11. This is possibly an interior camera as it does not have the silver coatings that helped protect the camera and film from heating by sunlight. Magazine "N" is attached to the back of the camera and you can see flanges on the lens that allowed a gloved hand to adjust the focus and exposure settings of the camera. The shutter button is on the front of the base of the camera at right. The surface cameras also had a mounting bracket that allowed it to be attached to the chest mounted RCU and they also had a pistol grip attached to the bottom to allow the camera to be handheld. The pistol grip also had a shutter trigger. This image was taken with my 24mm lens with an exposure of 1/20 seconds at f/1.8, ISO 800.

70mm Hasslblad magazine

Here is a view of the front end of the 70mm Hasselblad magazine where it would attach to the camera. A dark slide would protect the film and is removed before attaching the magazine to the camera and you can see the gears for the film drive on the left. This image was taken at 24mm focal length with an exposure of 1/10 seconds at f/1.8, ISO 800.

70mm Hasselblad magazine

Back in the National Air & Space Museum in the Space gallary, I found this Hasselblad 70mm film magazine. Apollo used several of these magazines which contained different types of film, typically a black and white film and a version of Ektrachrome. The top of the magazine shows a decal that helps the crewman select the best exposure. This image was taken at 24mm focal length with an exposure of 1/20 seconds at f/1.8.

Tide Point

We went to dinner on Saturday night with one of Karri's friends and ended up in the inner Harbor of Baltimore. This view across the harbor shows some docks and a cargo ship's bow at right as well as the prominent brightly lit sign near center. This image was taken with the kit lens at 43mm focal length with an exposure of 6 seconds at f/6.3, ISO100.

Majestic Enterprise

It's hard to imagine just how big a Space Shuttle is, but you can get an idea at the Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air & Space Museum near Dulles Airport by standing right next to one. This is the Shuttle Enterprise which has never flown in space, but was used in the late 1970s in drop tests to qualify the Shuttles for their gliding landings, as well as in launch pad fit tests at the Kennedy Space Center long before a space worthy orbiter was ready to fly. This view of Enterprise was taken from the center of the NASM annex. You can also see an astronaut in an MMU hanging above and left of the orbiter. This image was taken with the kit lens at 53mm focal length with an exposure of 1/80 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 800.

LM-2 Landing gear detail #2

Here's another closeup, this time of the lower landing gear actuator hardware at the base of the descent stage where the landing gear hinges from the stage.

Landing Gear attach point, LM-2

This is a closeup of the mounting point on the outriggers of the landing gear on LM-2 in the National Air & Space Museum. After orbiting around the LM with a wider angle lens, I put on my 70-300mm zoom and started taking closeups of details of the vehicle. I wanted to see the nuts and bolts up close. This image was taken at 119mm focal length with an exposure of 1/200 seconds at f/4.5, ISO 3200.

Another view of LM-2

Another view - this one from ground level - of LM-2 in the National Air & Space Museum in Washington DC. This image was taken with the kit lens at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 1/250 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 1600.

LM-2

LM-2 was to be used for the 2nd unmanned test flight of a Lunar Module in Earth orbit, but the flight of LM-1 went so well, that LM-2 was not needed. Since it was an early production model intended for unmanned flight, it remained the only early production Lunar Module that didn't get used for manned tests. So when it was donated to the Smithsonian and prepared for display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, it was redressed to look like LM-5 which carried the first crew of humans to the surface of the Moon in July 1969 as the Eagle of Apollo 11. This image was taken with the kit lens at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 1/60 seconds at f/4, ISO 400.

Sunset Crater

Sunset Crater, northeast of Flagstaff Arizona erupted in 1064 AD, burying some contemporary villages which had been abandoned as the volcano came to life. This view is from along the trail near the base of the crater and winds around lava flows and cinder as well as past fumeroles and lava tubes. Northern Arizona is covered in volcanoes with many in the area around Sunset Crater including the nearby Humphries Peak, site of a Mt. St. Helens like collapse structure.

Humphries Peak

Looking across a Sunset Crater lava flow towards the west shows the collapse structure of Humphries Peak - the largest mountain in Arizona. Humphries Peak used to be considerably taller before it suffered a lateral collapse much like Mount St. Helens did in 1980. The whole region to the northeast of the mountain is covered in debris from the event.

I'll be on vacation for a week, Wednesday to Wednesday and I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post pictures, but if I get a chance, you can be sure I will. I'll save my destination as a surprise.