P3D Re: Moon Landing VM

[roberts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (John W Roberts)]

>Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 12:05:42 -0600
>From: aifxtony@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Tony Alderson)
>Subject: P3D Re: Moon Landing VM

>There has been some discussion of how the lunar flight stereos in the VM
>packet were made, especially as some flat images were included due to
>historical significance.

Naturally, I bought one at the NSA convention. :-)

>To my knowledge, the only stereo camera on the Apollo missions was a
>close-up camera intended to record rock samples in place before collection.

Agree. An additional item that was of interest - the structure of undisturbed
*soil*. (Since the placement of the soil particles had not been influenced by
wind and water, just by impacts and billions of years of thermal cycling,
there was considerable interest in just what the soil structure would be.

>Stereo World reprinted an article about the Apollo stereos in the
>July/August 1990 issue (vol.17 no.3)

That issue was for sale at the NSA booth.

>Charlie Piper has an extensive discussion of photographing the moon in
>stereo in his "The Technical Page." I believe he still has copies
>available.

I bought two Holmes stereo cards of the moon at the convention. One of them
showed the moon in stereo better than I've ever seen it before. (I once spent
the evenings of several months trying to take a stereo moon image, without
much luck.)

Moral: go to the convention! :-)

>"Astronomy" magazine had a 3D issue March 1998. They didn't say much about
>how the deep space stereos were taken, I presume they resulted from the
>parallax of our path thru the cosmos. You might find some leads at their
>website, and perhaps get a back issue ( I haven't visited for a while
>myself):     www.astronomy.com

None of the nebula ones were true stereo photographs. I think they were
intended as reconstructions of what these formations are thought to look
like in 3D. Star groupings, etc. can often be reconstructed in 3D by
angular position and evidence regarding distance to the Earth. Features
in the solar system can often be photographed in stereo. It was a very
interesting issue.

John R


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