11 thoughts on “The Earthrise Image”

    1. Given that’s what a “rise” is in the first place, I’m not seeing the point of the distinction.

      1. Ask Rand, he made the distinction. Prompted by Zimmerman’s reflection on the original orientation of the picture, in which he may be reading too much into how Anders held the camera. Maybe that’s just how he happened to grab ahold of it?

  1. The picture can be rotated to any angle and still be correct. That we humans relate to a horizon should not be so cavalierly dismissed. We also think of the center of a planet as being “down.” Think about it, from the perspective of the astronaut in weightlessness, placing the earth below the limb of the moon is just as valid, but although interesting, it would be weird from our perspective. When we look at that picture, we see the curvature of the Moon and immediately understand which way is “down.” That given, we know how to orient the image–it should be landscape. But to adhere to astronomical (and geological) convention, the portrait orientation places north at the top and south at the bottom. That is most likely why the picture was taken in the aspect touted in the article.

    1. I haven’t asked him (I could), but I suspect he took it that way because he was in orbit around earth, in orbit around the moon, and wanted to take the picture in the plane of the trip, with earth north pole…well…north, and thus up.

  2. So if someone takes a photo in Earth orbit, rather than having the Earth below, they’re supposed to have North at top? Nuts to that.

  3. The controls for the Hasselblad are oriented for landscape photography. The negatives will probably show that Anders did actually orient himself and the camera with the moon’s horizon down.

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