following right along
/hot

My favorite planet.

/i know - welcome to fark
//pale blue dot

The problem is that only four years later, the even more famous Big Blue Marble photo was taken -- the first full-disk photo of the earth ever taken. (It's probably impossible to know for sure, but it's often said to be the most duplicated photo in history.) Earthrise showed the world as a planet in space, effectively set off by the dominant foreground moonscape, and that helped people to understand the serious limitations of Spaceship Earth. Big Blue Marble, however, made the earth seem much bigger, and a lot of people took that to heart. The same mentality, of the earth being just too big for us to worry about, is at the heart of a lot of climate denial. ("How could we harm the atmosphere? It's so BIG!")

This is why my own favourite photo of our planet is this one:



The rays are an image artefact and not really there. In the more prominent one on the right, you can just make out the Pale Blue Dot of our tiny world, as seen from 6 million km (about 3.7 million mi.) Carl Sagan lobbied for years to have these last Voyager photos taken, before the craft travelled too far out to be able to image the planets. His point (and he delivered a very moving video essay about this) was to try to undo what he and many others considered the misleading impressions left by the Big Blue Marble image -- that the world is very big. It certainly is from the perspective of our much tinier species. But in context even just of our own solar system, it's incredibly tiny, almost invisible. Sagan wanted to pound home the message that this vanishingly small speck is the only home we have, maybe the only one we'll ever have. If we screw it up, we have nowhere else to go.

Sylvia_Bandersnatch: The rays are an image artefact and not really there. In the more prominent one on the right, you can just make out the Pale Blue Dot of our tiny world, as seen from 6 million km (about 3.7 million mi.)

Billions and billions, not millions, out beyond the orbit of Pluto. An amazingly humbling photo.

Brazzers.

TofuTheAlmighty: Sylvia_Bandersnatch: The rays are an image artefact and not really there. In the more prominent one on the right, you can just make out the Pale Blue Dot of our tiny world, as seen from 6 million km (about 3.7 million mi.)

Billions and billions, not millions, out beyond the orbit of Pluto. An amazingly humbling photo.

Darn it, my bad. Here's Sagan's monologue about it, as penance.

If that pic was groundbreaking, what do you think Google Earth is?

"...and on Saturday it is 50 years old." 1962 is 50 years ago. Not '68. Seems like everything is 50 years old today including the Beatles. Somebody do the math.

Yea... The article then proceeds to talk about books that are no longer respected in their field.

/In other words, good job.

dobro: "...and on Saturday it is 50 years old." 1962 is 50 years ago. Not '68. Seems like everything is 50 years old today including the Beatles. Somebody do the math.

Well that's 1. How many more will fail at reading comprehension?

Boatmech: dobro: "...and on Saturday it is 50 years old." 1962 is 50 years ago. Not '68. Seems like everything is 50 years old today including the Beatles. Somebody do the math.

Well that's 1. How many more will fail at reading comprehension?

Wrong, dude. I understand the publication "Silent Spring" is from '62 but the article is poorly written and leads the reader to believe the 50 year anniversary refers to the photograph. I'm sure you noticed that as well but if not, then the comprehension failure is yours.

The only way you can see an Earthrise from the Moon is from a spacecraft.

An observer on the moon sees the Earth fixed in space, rotating, changing phases, but never moving.

I really don't understand why Flat Earthers refuse to admit that they have chosen to believe the way they do and tell the real reason why they want so badly for it to be true that the earth is flat

dobro: Boatmech: dobro: "...and on Saturday it is 50 years old." 1962 is 50 years ago. Not '68. Seems like everything is 50 years old today including the Beatles. Somebody do the math.

Well that's 1. How many more will fail at reading comprehension?

Wrong, dude. I understand the publication "Silent Spring" is from '62 but the article is poorly written and leads the reader to believe the 50 year anniversary refers to the photograph. I'm sure you noticed that as well but if not, then the comprehension failure is yours.



Next person in line please.

Cloudchaser Sakonige the Red Wolf: I really don't understand why Flat Earthers refuse to admit that they have chosen to believe the way they do and tell the real reason why they want so badly for it to be true that the earth is flat

studebaker hoch: An observer on the moon sees the Earth fixed in space, rotating, changing phases, but never moving.

I remember reading about some guy who dreamed of building a hotel on the moon from which people could watch the Earth rise up over the horizon.
And then somebody commenting that he was an idiot for not understanding what you wrote.

studebaker hoch: The only way you can see an Earthrise from the Moon is from a spacecraft.

An observer on the moon sees the Earth fixed in space, rotating, changing phases, but never moving.

I can honestly say I never thought about it that way before, but you're right: that really is how it would look, wouldn't it?

But then, it was taken from a spacecraft: Apollo 8 didn't land.

How did they get the Earth in a sound stage??

I think C. Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder) also summed it up pretty well in the Naturalis Historae (Natural History), Chapter 63: On the Nature of the Earth (link opens new window). Here are some highlights:

She receives us at our birth, nourishes us when born, and ever afterwards supports us; lastly, embracing us in her bosom when we are rejected by the rest of nature, she then covers us with especial tenderness; rendered sacred to us, inasmuch as she renders us sacred, bearing our monuments and titles, continuing our names, and extending our memory, in opposition to the shortness of life. In our anger we imprecate her on those who are now no more, as if we were ignorant that she is the only being who can never be angry with man.

The water passes into showers, is concreted into hail, swells into rivers, is precipitated in torrents; the air is condensed into clouds, rages in squalls; but the earth, kind, mild, and indulgent as she is, and always ministering to the wants of mortals, how many things do we compel her to produce spontaneously! What odours and flowers, nutritive juices, forms and colours! With what good faith does she render back all that has been entrusted to her!

[and later:]

We tear out her entrails in order to extract the gems with which we may load our fingers. How many hands are worn down that one little joint may be ornamented!

It's too long to post in full, but I highly recommend a read of that chapter. A lot of the Natural History is dry (it's an early encyclopaedia, after all). But there are brilliant passages that make you stop and think, plus more than a few good stories. Many common misconceptions about Roman science (and ancient science, agriculture, medicine, etc. in general) get blown away. E.g. they didn't think the world was flat, or at least not all of them did. On the other hand, some of their "common knowledge" seems quaint and amusing by our standards. As an example, the same chapter quoted above references a commonly held belief of that time that snakes could not return to their burrows after biting someone. All in all, well worth the time invested in reading it.

Man, if I could really travel back in time to 1968, the last thing I'm gonna do is sit around looking at pictures.

Boatmech: Cloudchaser Sakonige the Red Wolf: I really don't understand why Flat Earthers refuse to admit that they have chosen to believe the way they do and tell the real reason why they want so badly for it to be true that the earth is flat

[i224.photobucket.com image 500x391]

"Flat Earth" =/= Religion.

unlikely: I was alive then. I was less than a month old.

My girlfriend was born in April 1973.

Every time we've been to the moon has been within my lifetime.
There has not been a human on the moon in her lifetime.

But is she hot? :)

One of the enduring images of the 20th century, up there with the mushroom cloud for iconic power.

I interviewed Bill Anders, the guy who took that picture, for an article about the Heritage Flight. He and Frank Borman flew their P-51s for the flight a while back. For years, Borman claimed he was the one who took it, but finally admitted it had been Anders. Whatever - it's an iconic photo that really brings home the fragility of our planet. And contrasted with the Moon's forbidding terrain, it shows that we'll all passengers on the same lifeboat.

I have an "official" copy of that shot. I think dad either purchased it or was given it by NASA/IBM since he worked on the tracking ships for the space shots at the time.

Was impressive then and still is impressive now.

As I remember, the earth was on the tv screen in black and white, while they took turns reading from Genesis. Hearing them speak those words from way out there, far from home at Christmas yet probably thrilled as hell to be there at all, was more moving to me as a kid than seeing the picture.

0Icky0: I remember reading about some guy who dreamed of building a hotel on the moon from which people could watch the Earth rise up over the horizon.
And then somebody commenting that he was an idiot for not understanding what you wrote.

Now that I think about it, you actually could build a hotel on the moon in a place from which people could get an Earthrise-like view. It wouldn't be a true Earthrise, of course, since it wouldn't move, but it would strongly resemble the picture: the Earth partially above the lunar horizon.

The catch is that to do this, you'd have to build the hotel on the far side of the Moon: not necessarily all that far in, but by definition far enough in that the lunar horizon would partly obscure the view of Earth. That poses problems for communications, and there's also the fact that the far side of the Moon seems to be rather vulnerable to falling objects.