Worlds Far and Near

There's much excitement about the release of genuine images of planets circling not just one but two stars far beyond our own. Of course, it's significant; I can think back to when the first news of "extrasolar planets" detected by wiggles in the spectra of stars was coming out, and a mailing list acquaintance working as a planetary scientist was skeptical, saying it had to be something else happening to the stars... Things have changed in even the years since. However, in checking the official NASA site yesterday for updates on the space shuttle launch scheduled for tonight, I happened to see a picture of a world much closer to home that also resonated for me...

Some work is being done on enhancing the photographs taken by the Lunar Orbiter probes in the mid-1960s (which involves hunting down period tape drives), and the picture that was released was of the Earth rising beyond the Moon. It predated the pictures taken by astronauts, and yet I don't quite have an impression of it being as iconic in its time: rather of it getting the jocular caption "the man in the Earth"... (I suppose it's tempting to make comments about someone programming a camera by remote control versus someone being there to take the picture; of course, that seems to lead into deep waters.) Now enhanced, the characteristic "stripy" look of the Lunar Orbiter pictures, taken on film and developed on board but transmitted back one thin strip at a time, is just about gone. More than that, though, there's a broader range of grey tones to the picture, and all of a sudden the Earth, even still in black and white, looks much more "itself" somehow for me, less a subtle joke. Adding that to historical significance just seems to make it more meaningful to me than more modern pictures taken by new Moon probes, perhaps even somehow like the pictures taken by someone there.

Night Launch again

I watched the live online feed of the launch of space shuttle Endeavour, lucky enough that it didn't happen while I was at work. That did put the liftoff at night, but that was interesting in its own way; I got a sense of how quickly the solid rocket boosters gutter out to glowing coals after they stage away, and then a long tracking shot of a lone point of light in the night sky before things shifted to the external tank camera and some strange, almost auroral light effects.

It's been a good number of months since the last mission, which launched just before the Phoenix probe landed on Mars. This one just followed Phoenix being swallowed by Martian winter, although I suppose the last flight to the space telescope was postponed because of a malfunction with the telescope itself. Now for the addition of crew support equipment to the space station and work on one of the solar panel wings, which sounds challenging.