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People have seen the whole Earth – their restored photography (tobyord.com)
2 points by clemo_ra on Oct 26, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment


>Only 24 people have journeyed far enough to see the whole Earth against the black of space. The images they brought back changed our world.

What "black of space"? It's black because of the dynamic range of those films and exposing for Earth. Otherwise it's full of stars, more and brighter than you'd see in a moonless night on Earth away from light pollution.

As Apollo 15 Astronaut Al Worden put it, going to the shaded side of the moon (as on the sun hit side reflections drown the stars):

“I curved around the moon to where no sunlight or Earthshine could reach me. The moon was a deep, solid circle of blackness, and I could only tell where it began by where the stars cut off. In the dark and quiet, I felt like a bird of the night, silently gliding and falling around the moon, never touching. I turned the cabin lights off. There was no end to the stars.

I could see tens, perhaps hundreds of times more stars than the clearest, darkest night on Earth. With no atmosphere to blur their light, I could see them all to the limits of my eyesight. There were so many, I could no longer find constellations. My vision was filled with a blaze of starlight".




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