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| Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin on the Moon (NASA) |
It’s unlikely that anyone reading these words will ever walk on the Moon. Only a handful of people ever have. However, new technology is bringing the Moon to us. For the 35th anniversary of Apollo 11, Panorama.dk took photographs taken on the six moon landings to create full-screen 360-degree panoramic views of the Moon. Here’s how they did it, according to Hans Nyberg:
During these missions thousands of images were taken, most of them with the Hasselblad EDC. A special version of the Hasselblad 500 EL. Many of these images are famous, like the one from Apollo 11 showing Buzz Aldrin with Neil Armstrong reflected in the glass of his helmet. (It is available in super resolution from the panorama).
The Hasselblad was mounted on a special belt on the chest and the astronauts could not look into a viewer.
Less known is that during all the missions they made image sequences which with today’s computer technics can be stitched together into 360o interactive panoramas giving you the possibility to view the moon almost as you were there.
Many of these panoramas have been published before but in low resolution and displayed in small sizes.
During the last years (2000-2005) the original films have been re-scanned in high resolution and the Apollo 11 images were released the week before the 35 year anniversary. I can now present you for the first time the Moon in interactive 360 degree full screen Quicktime VR.
Stitching these images to make 360 degree panoramas is a difficult task as the astronauts did not know anything about interactive panoramas and the stitching methods which would come 25 years later.
Besides stitching them to panoramas the images are kept as much as possible in their original
In several of the panoramas the sun is very low and shining directly into the camera which causes very large flares. I have tried to keep this as much as possible like the originals but in some the visible errors from this has been covered by a Photoshop generated flare.
Check out the amazing details using Quicktime VR at Panoramas.dk
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<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="36803 ">4 Comments
Can't they just let us go to the studio where they filmed the moon landing? jk
That is really amazing. I'd much prefer that to the real thing. Just not that adventurous.
Nice! we need more moon rocks!
We need more Pauline Hickey lookalikes (as the bird was in 1985 when the bird was 17, not as the bird is now obviously).