from Hacker News

Earth Restored – 50 restored images of earth released

by cyberhost on 4/24/21, 8:34 AM with 131 comments

• by vegetablepotpie on 4/24/21, 9:29 AM

  It's hard to believe that it's been over 50 years since humans have been outside of low earth orbit. It's like we sprinted forward so fast, going from horse drawn carriage to space flight in a generation, only to get frightened and recede back from the highest point, never to go back.

  Granted there has been an enormous amount of innovation in the last 50 years, but by some accounts we've been going backwards. Humans are no longer capable of mach 3 flight, or making Roman concrete.

  I think we assume that technology will keep progressing. We assume Moore's law will continue into the future and we forget that there are people behind the progress. The technology that produced those pictures are gone, we might be able to take ones like them again, but never with the same rockets and never with the same photo-chemical processes. Progress is fragile, not inevitable and everything we have can be lost in a generation just as easily as it was made.

• by st_goliath on 4/24/21, 10:54 AM

  In case you are interested in more photographs from the Apollo missions, back in 2015, NASA released a whole digitized archive:

  https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/albums

  The link is from a hand full at the bottom of the article, where it also lists other archive overview pages and leads to ~15k scanned photos.

• by tubabyte on 4/24/21, 9:41 AM

  > Collins, who remained in orbit on the Command Module, is behind the lens. Every other human is in front of it.

  This caption is so powerful.

• by timdaub on 4/24/21, 9:53 AM

  I always wonder what happens to you psychologically when you see something like this. As one of the astronauts I mean.

  Surely, once you've returned, nothing will be as it used to.

• by sizzzzlerz on 4/24/21, 1:26 PM

  Missing is the Voyager 1 image looking back to Earth from 4 billion miles, the one referred to by Carl Sagan as "the pale blue dot, a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam". It doesn't have the resolution these images have but it's impact on our civilization is over-whelming.

• by matsemann on 4/24/21, 12:02 PM

  I once saw a video (reenactment but original voices maybe?) of how one of these images was taken. How the earth appeared over the horizon and they scrambled to find a camera or so. Anyone knows which video I'm talking about and could help me find it?

  Edit: finding out the picture in question had a name, Earthrise, made it easier to find. Here's the video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dE-vOscpiNc

• by ascar on 4/24/21, 9:39 AM

  > "I was guided throughout by two principles:

  - be true to the photographs

  - be true to the Earth

  [...]

  The main changes I made were:

  [...]

  - adjusting the black point until the background of space appears truly black"

  These shots are beautiful, but is making the background completely black really doing reality justice? In our unfortunately light polluted night sky we can barely see the stars, but shouldn't the astronauts see the earth within a shimmer of billion stars? Or is the source material not showing stars due to a lack of exposure?

• by proc0 on 4/24/21, 7:33 PM

  So stars are not visible from space? I'm assuming not because they're not in the pictures, but because there are no pictures of just stars from space, which I assume would be a point of interest for any astronaut. That is weird, and I wonder if almost every single sci-fi scene in space should have no stars as well.

• by mattvot on 4/24/21, 9:16 AM

  Don’t just look at the photos. Read the commentary. Adds an extra level of awe.

• by quercusa on 4/24/21, 8:09 PM

  This is a great line:

  >With great foresight, NASA equipped the astronauts with some of the best cameras ever made — specially modified Hasselblads, with Zeiss lenses, and 70mm Kodak Ektachrome film.

• by ThinkingGuy on 4/24/21, 4:15 PM

  Amazing article and incredible pictures, but this one line has me scratching my head:

  "Only 24 people have journeyed far enough to see the whole Earth against the black of space"

  The Apollo missions from 8 through 17, with the exception of Apollo 9 (LM test in Earth orbit), all reached lunar orbit, even if 8, 10, and 13 didn't actually land. Each carried 3 crew members. Doesn't that make 27 people?

• by jordemort on 4/24/21, 4:56 PM

  As a kid, I really wanted to be an astronaut. I didn't make it, although I did go to Space Camp. It's mostly something I don't think about anymore, until I see pictures like this - looking at the entire planet just floating there in space does something to my brain. I hope space tourism will become accessible to non-billionaires in my lifetime!

• by faebi on 4/24/21, 10:53 AM

  Beautiful. I would like to buy them as posters. Is it possible to buy these somewhere?

• by protoman3000 on 4/24/21, 9:10 AM

  Unbelievable that all life there ever was, is contained on this little marble.

• by petee on 4/24/21, 11:08 AM

  My first reaction was that this was a set of AI generated photos of what earth looked like if we hadn't been developing it, like restored to nature.

  But I certainly wasn't disappointed. Very beautiful

• by pmarreck on 4/24/21, 4:47 PM

  I can't stand SPA's.

  I can't link anyone to any specific photo because the URL doesn't update when the view does.

  Beautiful photos though

• by Razengan on 4/24/21, 4:55 PM

  Ugh, cannot zoom in or save on iOS (easily, but I better not mention how in case they disable that workaround too)

• by mzz on 4/24/21, 11:38 AM

  There’s so much more art in nature itself than it is art.

  By the way, his book “The Precipice” is quite worthwhile to read!

• by loudlambda on 4/24/21, 2:39 PM

  How does this picture make any sense? Europe, Asia, Both America's, and Australia all fit on the other half?

  https://static1.squarespace.com/static/562652dbe4b05bbfdc596...

• by runj__ on 4/24/21, 9:43 AM

  I cried a little at the the shot of the lander and earth from the command module, the thought of every single other human in the same frame is just too much.

• by shash7 on 4/24/21, 9:29 AM

  Great photos, and a great website too.

• by ranguna on 4/24/21, 9:00 AM

  Beautiful shots.

• by abhayhegde on 4/24/21, 9:49 AM

  Site seems to be down.