3 Apollo stereos now on the web

["SIMON, MARTIN D." <MSIMON@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As anyone who has tried to find the legendary Apollo Moon stereos which were
shot by the astronauts knows, they are not so easy to find.  When I first
tried many years ago, I spent quite a bit of time in the NASA archives at
JPL.  I found stereo shots of Mars (which were not very easy to look at)
and the soil of the moon, but the human interest stereos were nowhere
to be found.  The indexes of the Apollo Hasselblad shots that I could
find did not mention stereo shots, and going through all the shots t
o see
which ones could be made stereo would be a tedious and expensive business.
Prints of the images would have to be ordered from Houston where the 
originals are stored in a vault.
    To make a long story sort, I eventually found a NASA archivist, Peter 
Schultz, who is also a stereophile.  He and his wife had spent many hours of
their own time going through the archive to find shots that worked as
stereo.  Fortunately, he was nice enough to share some images with me for
a book I was working on.
  Unfortunately, the images show the problems with
the "astronaut shuffle" method of stereo photography.  Hopping around the
moon in a bulky space suit with harsh lighting was not the best conditions
for good stereo.  It is more like accidental stereo.  There is movement,
rotation, and exposure changes between shots.  I think the exposure changes
might have been programmed to provide bracketing for mono shots.
    Since there is some curiousity, I have posted three of the best in 
anaglyph form on my
 web page at http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~msimon.  One 
image is almost identical to the image on page 24 of the July/August 1994 
Stereo World.  This appears in an article by Wolfgang and Mary Ann Sell on 
View-Master coverage of the space program.  The stereo pair was from a 
reel which was never released.  The Sell's article also shows stereo pairs 
of moon rocks and the famous footprint taken with the stereo camera which 
has been discussed here.
    I must say that after all the searching and an
ticipation the images
are a little disappointing, despite their historic significance.

Martin Simon   msimon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx    
3 Apollo images at http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~msimon


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