Photographing Apollo – The Birth of Space Photography

Peter is a photography enthusiast and has been taking photographs for over 40 years.  About two years ago he treated himself to a nice new Nikon Z7 Mark II.

He is also a member of Bedford Astronomical Society, which was founded in 1987 and is based at Bedford School.  They have the use of a 16 inch telescope in a dome and 12 and 14 inch portable telescopes.  The Society has appeared in several media events, such as “The Sky at Night” and BBC Look East’s coverage of the partial solar eclipse in 2015.

To set the scene, Peter outlined the three big NASA programmes to put humans in space – Mercury (six manned missions 1961 to 1963), Gemini (ten manned missions 1964 to 1966, including the first US spacewalk), and Apollo (eleven manned missions 1967 to1972, including the first lunar landing in July 1969).

NASA recognised the potential benefits of photography early on and there were cameras on the Mercury and Gemini missions.  Buzz Aldrin took the first selfie in space on Gemini 12 in 1966.

Peter described how Hasselblad and Maurer cameras, with Zeiss lenses and especially thin Kodak film, were developed and adapted to function in extreme conditions (including temperatures ranging from minus 100C up to plus 120C).  He also showed, with many illustrations, how these still cameras, together with video and TV cameras, were used to document and publicise the progress and achievements of the Apollo missions.

He went through all the Apollo missions with details of the cameras deployed and plenty of examples of the images captured.

Many photographic “firsts” were achieved, including:

• Apollo 7 – the first live TV broadcast from a crewed mission;
• Apollo 8 – the first humans to see the far side of the Moon and the first Christmas greeting from space to Earth (which attracted the largest TV audience in history);
• Apollo 9 – the first docking of two crewed crafts;
• Apollo 10 – the first live colour TV pictures from space;
• Apollo 11 – the first mission on which colour film was used and of course TV and photographic coverage of the first men walking on the surface of the Moon (Glen Armstrong took most of the photographs, as the camera was attached to the front of his suit, while Buzz Aldrin did most of the work);
• Apollo 12 – the first solar eclipse viewed from space;
• Apollo 15 – the first ground-controlled TV camera was deployed and the first moon buggy (Rover the Lunar Roving Vehicle) was filmed in action;
• Apollo 16 – the first use of an ultraviolet camera on the Moon;
• Apollo 17 – the first ever “full picture” of the Earth – “The Blue Marble”.

Subsequently, the photographs taken on Apollo missions have been reprocessed using digital scanning and modern software.  State-of-the-art post-processing, recovery, and restoration techniques have produced ever more stunning images.  These have been published in books such as “Apollo: The Panoramas” and “Apollo Remastered” for all to enjoy.

This was a fascinating look at both the Apollo missions and the photographic kit developed to capture thousands of historically significant images.  Peter’s presentation was extremely informative, richly illustrated with the superb images, and enlivened by his illuminating commentary.

He even explained, to debunk any conspiracy theories about the missions being faked, why there are no stars in any of the pictures – it is simply that the camera settings needed to capture these images were the wrong settings for capturing images of stars.