Earth Restored – 50 restored images of earth released

http://www.tobyord.com/earth

by cyberhost • 5 years ago

409 131 5 years ago

tobyord.com

ranguna• 5 years ago

Beautiful shots.

protoman3000• 5 years ago

Unbelievable that all life there ever was, is contained on this little marble.

driggs• 5 years ago

Given the scope of the universe, and aided by the perspective of photos like these, many would certainly describe this idea - that life has only ever existed and will only ever exist on Earth - as "unbelievable".

mattvot• 5 years ago

Don’t just look at the photos. Read the commentary. Adds an extra level of awe.

shash7• 5 years ago

Great photos, and a great website too.

vegetablepotpie• 5 years ago

It's hard to believe that it's been over 50 years since humans have been outside of low earth orbit. It's like we sprinted forward so fast, going from horse drawn carriage to space flight in a generation, only to get frightened and recede back from the highest point, never to go back.

Granted there has been an enormous amount of innovation in the last 50 years, but by some accounts we've been going backwards. Humans are no longer capable of mach 3 flight, or making Roman concrete.

I think we assume that technology will keep progressing. We assume Moore's law will continue into the future and we forget that there are people behind the progress. The technology that produced those pictures are gone, we might be able to take ones like them again, but never with the same rockets and never with the same photo-chemical processes. Progress is fragile, not inevitable and everything we have can be lost in a generation just as easily as it was made.

flohofwoe7• 5 years ago

You really need to take the power and "reality distortion effect" of propaganda during the Cold War into account.

Massive projects were started without much rational sense just to beat the other side in an imaginary race (and a very concrete military race). What's the point of landing a man on the moon, if the technology to do so was so rushed and held together by duct tape that it wasn't useful for anything else? What's the point of the Space Shuttle if launches were more expensive than disposable rockets? What's the point of the Buran, if the Soviets didn't feel like they need an answer to the space shuttle "just in case", even though they couldn't see any point in the shuttle design (except as a nuke carrier)?

Etc... etc... the list goes on for both sides. I rather have slow and steady progress that actually makes economical and scientific sense in the long run.

PS: I thought the secret of Roman concrete had been cracked long ago (a certain type of volcanic ash)? But it's just not economical to produce large quantities since modern sky scrapers are not expected to "survive" for thousands of years anyway (and AFAIK the Romans didn't know much about the special properties of their concrete either, it more or less was a "happy little accident").

leadingthenet4• 5 years ago

since modern sky scrapers are not expected to "survive" for thousands of years anyway

And maybe that’s a problem! Why exactly are we not building beautiful landmarks that will survive eons like the Romans did?

We have a throwaway culture, and nobody ever dares question it.

astroflask7• 5 years ago

What's the point of the Space Shuttle if launches were more expensive than disposable rockets? What's the point of the Buran, if the Soviets didn't feel like they need an answer to the space shuttle "just in case", even though they couldn't see any point in the shuttle design (except as a nuke carrier)?

Rather than nukes, I always thought the main advantage of the Shuttle was the ability to bring things back to Earth. Which it did, a few times:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-32

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-51-A

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-57

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-72

When then Shuttle was proposed, this was one of the main selling points. Having used it just 4 times over 133 missions... Well, that's not what was envisioned.

projectileboy2• 5 years ago

For what it’s worth, the space race along with the desire to build up missile technology in general are the reason we have computers today as we know them. Not many people outside of the space and defense industries were willing to shell out buckets of cash for a single transistor.

inimino• 5 years ago

without much rational sense just to beat the other side

Assumes that just beating the other side was not a sufficient rational motive. Which, given that the threat both sides faced was "you and your way of life will be utterly obliterated", is a pretty irrational criticism.

What's the point of <X>, if <something we only learned by doing X>? There's tremendous hindsight bias in criticising even the Shuttle program on the basis of what we know now, while disregarding the value of everything we learned from doing it.

Even copying another country's technology on the basis of speculative military applications may not be irrational, unless you're somehow privy to all the knowledge that was available at the time when those decisions were made.

The remarkable MAD doctrine itself can be criticised as inhumane or insane, but hardly irrational. It's a triumph of rationality and a counter-intuitive application of game theory, the iron laws of mathematics elevated to places where we really would rather see common sense and humanity prevail.

WCityMike• 5 years ago

"It is durable due to its incorporation of pozzolanic ash, which prevents cracks from spreading."

Third sentence in the Wikipedia article. Later:

"The strength and longevity of Roman marine concrete is understood to benefit from a reaction of seawater with a mixture of volcanic ash and quicklime to create a rare crystal called tobermorite, which may resist fracturing. As seawater percolated within the tiny cracks in the Roman concrete, it reacted with phillipsite naturally found in the volcanic rock and created aluminous tobermorite crystals."

Neither seems to have been 'lost data'.

mrtksn• 5 years ago

I think it’s a case of picking the low hanging fruits once the technology is unlocked, then moving on.

We have the same not only with space but with everything.

Steampunk is essentially the feature we never had with advanced enough mechanical machines. Somehow we sprinted towards harnessing the energy of the steam stoping short from coal powered AI robots but was that the case? IMHO what happened is, we exploited the feasible part and moved on.

The same with space. With the science and tech we harnessed so far, it’s simply not feasible to do more than what we have done already. With the advancements made in recent decades, some more stuff might have moved within the range of feasible but nothing revolutionary. We are not going to the nearest star anytime soon and that’s not simply because we lost interest in it. The best we probably can do in human travel is Mars.

hyko4• 5 years ago

Technology has not regressed since the 1970s though. We have the latent capability to go any time we want, it’s just very expensive and there’s no point.

pbronez• 5 years ago

Still planning to do it again within the next decade just to reassure ourselves about it.

pmarreck5• 5 years ago

and there’s no point

How do you know "there is no point"? Also, at what points in history was exploration pointless, exactly?

himinlomax• 5 years ago

People have been hiking to the top of mount Everest for a while now, but you still can't ask an Uber to take you there.

Because there isn't much worthwhile to do there, the interesting thing is going there, not being there. At the moment. When/if it can be done for cheap and on the regular, there might be stuff to do.

pjc502• 5 years ago

Humans are capable of Mach 3 flight. It's just a "latent" capability. Something we could do but is not currently cost-effective.

The technology that produced those pictures are gone, we might be able to take ones like them again, but never with the same rockets and never with the same photo-chemical processes.

You can never step in the same river twice, and we are all mortal. This is just a statement about the passage of time.

Progress is fragile, not inevitable and everything we have can be lost in a generation just as easily as it was made.

This, on the other hand, is important, and why it's important not to let people wreck it by lying about everything.

Worth questioning the "whig view of history" backwards as well; a lot of what we call progress had very large costs for certain groups of people at the time and made their lives worse. Or got them killed.

astroflask7• 5 years ago

Okay, I came here to talk about how the images are a bit soft and a quick, subtle pass of Richardson-Lucy deconvolution restores some detail (and enhances the film grain, that's a plus for me but some people may find it a bit too much -- it is still there in the pictures though).

And then I read your comment and you totally throw me into a Wikipedia rabbit hole with the Roman concrete... Speaking of which, what do you mean we can't make Roman concrete nowadays? Wikipedia even says that there are corporations and municipalities looking into it as a viable, environmental-friendly, long-lasting alternative to regular concrete[0] !

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete#Modern_use

pjc502• 5 years ago

It's essentially an old meme; the exact details had been lost, since the technology was not in continuous use and no written record survived, but the footnote on Wikipedia details its reconstruction. This great paper: https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/msa/ammin/article/98/10/166...

Essentially it relied on volcanic ash from specific locations, and they forensically traced those locations.

tomnipotent• 5 years ago

Humans are no longer capable of mach 3 flight, or making Roman concrete

We have plenty of aircraft capable of mach 3 or faster just not for commercial purposes, and most modern concrete is superior to Roman concrete in most dimensions specifically cost (not to mention its modern mythos is completely based on a single study published in American Mineralogist).

ghaff2• 5 years ago

The supersonic passenger flight thing is the one I have to really chuckle at. Nothing against the work being done in this area--hey, not my money. But effectively you have lots of folks, who probably mostly fly coach, super-excited that maybe one day CEOs and high-end lawyers will once again be able to fly from NY to London to have lunch, shake hands on a deal, and be home in time for dinner.

2III7• 5 years ago

If you had the money, you could rent a rocket from SpaceX and send a film camera to take more pictures. But what would be the point?

avereveard2• 5 years ago

such a nihilistic view has little ground in reality

been outside of low earth orbit

we stopped pushing that frontier because we've been there and found it dull and empty, as a matter of fact, we decided zero g experiment were more important than playing with regolith, and build a freaking human habitat in the void to support that endeavor. beside, we've got regolith here on earth now, we can experiment on it in the commodity of our backyard if needed be.

mach 3 flight

except the routine space launches that ship scientist back and forth from the space station, going through literal plasma on the descent leg.

Roman concrete

this has just been widely romanticized, we don't use that because it's incompatible with fast building processes requirements, is too heavy for large structures and it's hard to dismantle when a structure is no longer needed or need renovation.

sure, some other stuff one can cite as having reached an apparent sub-optimal minima, like average speed of travel, but that's not because we're backward, it's because we're learning to take care of our own environment. slowly, but we're getting there. just because the tradeoff are different it doesn't mean that a golf id3 is just worse than a bugatti eb110 or a recess from peak technology.

Griffinsauce• 5 years ago

Your last point resonated with me. An extremely boring electric car that makes some significant leap in affordability, efficiency or whatever can be the thing that brings our entire society forward and literally saves it.

If anything you can argue that the latest Bugatti with a slightly larger engine is moving us backwards by the waste of resources (in design, production and use).

Peak technology right now is not the big sexy machine, it's whatever makes the good stuff boring for the masses.

kevin_thibedeau• 5 years ago

The primary purpose of ISS is to be a jobs program, not scientific experimentation. The Russians are involved specifically to keep their engineers from going to work for hostile states.

jeromenerf• 5 years ago

Meanwhile a little copter is spinning its wings. On Mars. Mars dammit.

pimlottc2• 5 years ago

I think we assume that technology will keep progressing. We assume Moore's law will continue into the future and we forget that there are people behind the progress. The technology that produced those pictures are gone, we might be able to take ones like them again, but never with the same rockets and never with the same photo-chemical processes. Progress is fragile, not inevitable and everything we have can be lost in a generation just as easily as it was made.

It's good to be aware of our blindspots. The idea of progress as a monotonically increasing upward trend is a very modern and Western perspective. It's not inevitable.

ascar• 5 years ago

"I was guided throughout by two principles:

- be true to the photographs

- be true to the Earth

[...]

The main changes I made were:

[...]

- adjusting the black point until the background of space appears truly black"

These shots are beautiful, but is making the background completely black really doing reality justice? In our unfortunately light polluted night sky we can barely see the stars, but shouldn't the astronauts see the earth within a shimmer of billion stars? Or is the source material not showing stars due to a lack of exposure?

flohofwoe7• 5 years ago

A bright moon surface and fully lit Earth hanging in the sky is also a sort of "light pollution" for the human eye ;) (at least it will cause the pupil to close and let less light through, tuning out the dim stars, same effect why there are no stars in the moon photos). Of course I haven't been to the moon so far and can't really know what the sky actually looks like during "moon day" :)

enriquto3• 5 years ago

I'm pretty sure that some images have had the blue color enhanced. The oceans look a dullish gray from space, not blue.

astroflask7• 5 years ago

In our unfortunately light polluted night sky we can barely see the stars, but shouldn't the astronauts see the earth within a shimmer of billion stars?

No, you have to be in the night side, or looking into the void (no Earth surface visible, definitely not the Sun in sight, not any part of your spacecraft being shined upon) for your eyes to adjust to the darkness and then you get to see the stars. Being near the Moon, I'd add "no moon surface" to that list.

Or is the source material not showing stars due to a lack of exposure?

I'm not sure there... Film behaves differently than image sensors. Maybe if we had access to the negatives you could do some chemical magic to bring in detail. I don't know how hard/destructive that could be on the negatives, as film isn't a medium I've ever really used. Grew up in the 90's with a few film cameras, but digital took over before I had the chance to seriously get into photography and was also far cheaper (so, easier to pick up as a hobby for a teenager). Now I'm into digital image processing and that's a totally different beast on its own.

tubabyte• 5 years ago

Collins, who remained in orbit on the Command Module, is behind the lens. Every other human is in front of it.

This caption is so powerful.

enriquto3• 5 years ago

Climb a hill and take a photo of the floor with your telephone. If there are no planes/spatial stations nearby, then you'll have the same thing.

willis9365• 5 years ago

If you have a 179.99 degree wide angle lens.

ape4• 5 years ago

Good point. Clearly us humans are not spread out enough.

Xophmeister• 5 years ago

I was going to post exactly the same thing. It's such an understated way of phrasing it and a really beautiful photo. I wonder how Collins felt? There's a quote from him on the page, but it's more about the photo rather than himself. Surely that's been discussed...

embedded_hiker• 5 years ago

Collins wrote a book about his experiences - more of an autobiography up to 1974. He talks about this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_the_Fire

xwdv• 5 years ago

If he had taken a selfie it would be a photo with every human in front of the lens.

runj__• 5 years ago

I cried a little at the the shot of the lander and earth from the command module, the thought of every single other human in the same frame is just too much.

abhayhegde• 5 years ago

Site seems to be down.

timdaub• 5 years ago

I always wonder what happens to you psychologically when you see something like this. As one of the astronauts I mean.

Surely, once you've returned, nothing will be as it used to.

Leszek• 5 years ago

It's called the "overview effect": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect

squarefoot• 5 years ago

I can get just a tiny grasp of the power of that sight just by looking at the photos, and can't imagine what would be like experiencing it in 1st person. This brings the hope that one day when every human would be able to experience it, we'll create a utopistic Trek-ish reality in which people suddenly become less selfish and put the common good above idiocies such as nationalism or the pursuit of immense wealth at the expense of others. Hopefully one day seeing the Earth from orbit will become sort of a rite of passage for kids.

ernopp2• 5 years ago

I wonder how we could get more people to experience this effect... Something like what Stewart Brand did by pushing for and publicising the first whole earth picture (in part via the Whole Earth Catalog) but more for the internet age.

I was toying with an idea of a site called "Get Some Perspective" where you'd start off with a FPS view and as you scroll you gradually zoom out, eventually to the whole observable universe. You could send this link to people if they're being short-sighted, callous, etc and hopefully instill a bit of the Overview effect in them...

ernopp2• 5 years ago

I love this quote from Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14) on seeing Earth from the Moon:

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch."

curtainsforus5• 5 years ago

I'm sure it's hyped up to the point that if you went up there, expecting a cosmic experience, you'd be disappointed.

curtainsforus5• 5 years ago

I'm sure it's hyped up to the point that if you went up there, expecting a cosmic experience, having imagined and simulated it a million times, you'd be disappointed by the reality.

geoduck142• 5 years ago

I'm ready to be disappointed.

dylan6042• 5 years ago

I used to think that about the Grand Canyon, then I went. Nope, it's just as impressive as they say being there experiencing it in person vs looking at all of the videos/images available. Seeing an image that required a special lens to take it all in looks nice. Standing in the same spot the camera was is a completely different experience when you have to turn your head left/right to see the same thing the image does. Anyone that says different has not actually taken the pepsi challenge

faebi• 5 years ago

Beautiful. I would like to buy them as posters. Is it possible to buy these somewhere?

st_goliath• 5 years ago

In case you are interested in more photographs from the Apollo missions, back in 2015, NASA released a whole digitized archive:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/albums

The link is from a hand full at the bottom of the article, where it also lists other archive overview pages and leads to ~15k scanned photos.

astroflask7• 5 years ago

From the lengthy blog post under the images, it'd seem he used those archives. I have the impression that I've seen these pictures as TIF files instead of JPGs somewhere (the Internet Archive perhaps?), but I can't remember precisely now. Maybe the author used those, as I imagine they'd give a bit more leeway and flexibility in a restoration effort.

petee• 5 years ago

My first reaction was that this was a set of AI generated photos of what earth looked like if we hadn't been developing it, like restored to nature.

But I certainly wasn't disappointed. Very beautiful

mzz• 5 years ago

There’s so much more art in nature itself than it is art.

By the way, his book “The Precipice” is quite worthwhile to read!

matsemann• 5 years ago

I once saw a video (reenactment but original voices maybe?) of how one of these images was taken. How the earth appeared over the horizon and they scrambled to find a camera or so. Anyone knows which video I'm talking about and could help me find it?

Edit: finding out the picture in question had a name, Earthrise, made it easier to find. Here's the video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dE-vOscpiNc

pimlottc2• 5 years ago

Wow, what a great video, very cool how they combined the original photos, mission audio and 3D models of the lunar surface. Thanks for the link!

sizzzzlerz• 5 years ago

Missing is the Voyager 1 image looking back to Earth from 4 billion miles, the one referred to by Carl Sagan as "the pale blue dot, a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam". It doesn't have the resolution these images have but it's impact on our civilization is over-whelming.

dieortin• 5 years ago

Would you happen to have a link?

pomian• 5 years ago

Here is one: https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot

richthedev• 5 years ago

Here's one https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pale-blue-dot-revisited

loudlambda2• 5 years ago

How does this picture make any sense? Europe, Asia, Both America's, and Australia all fit on the other half?

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/562652dbe4b05bbfdc596...

projectileboy2• 5 years ago

The Pacific Ocean is enormous.

shawncampbell• 5 years ago

Yes, they do. Try orienting the globe for yourself here:

https://www.echalk.co.uk/Science/physics/solarSystem/Interac...

loudlambda2• 5 years ago

You're right! But with my globe at home, and that site you listed, at the same angle I can clearly see part of India and Australia, it's weird that they don't seem to show up in this picture.

alexjudson• 5 years ago

Keep in mind that you are not seeing a complete "half" of the earth in this picture. As your distance increases, the effective horizon encompasses more of the surface. Only at infinite distance would you see exactly half of a sphere (mathematically speaking).

Try taking a picture of your globe closer and closer to the surface and watch as less of the surface is visible in each.

ThinkingGuy2• 5 years ago

Amazing article and incredible pictures, but this one line has me scratching my head:

"Only 24 people have journeyed far enough to see the whole Earth against the black of space"

The Apollo missions from 8 through 17, with the exception of Apollo 9 (LM test in Earth orbit), all reached lunar orbit, even if 8, 10, and 13 didn't actually land. Each carried 3 crew members. Doesn't that make 27 people?

roywiggins2• 5 years ago

Three crew members went twice.

ThinkingGuy2• 5 years ago

I’d overlooked that fact. Thanks for the reminder!

pmarreck5• 5 years ago

I can't stand SPA's.

I can't link anyone to any specific photo because the URL doesn't update when the view does.

Beautiful photos though

Razengan• 5 years ago

Ugh, cannot zoom in or save on iOS (easily, but I better not mention how in case they disable that workaround too)

jordemort• 5 years ago

As a kid, I really wanted to be an astronaut. I didn't make it, although I did go to Space Camp. It's mostly something I don't think about anymore, until I see pictures like this - looking at the entire planet just floating there in space does something to my brain. I hope space tourism will become accessible to non-billionaires in my lifetime!

quercusa3• 5 years ago

By middle school I knew I'd never be an astronaut but I would have really liked to go to Space Camp.

proc03• 5 years ago

So stars are not visible from space? I'm assuming not because they're not in the pictures, but because there are no pictures of just stars from space, which I assume would be a point of interest for any astronaut. That is weird, and I wonder if almost every single sci-fi scene in space should have no stars as well.

evan_• 5 years ago

Stars are visible in space but the Earth is so bright that if you expose it properly, the stars are underexposed. It’s basically the same reason we don’t see the stars in the daytime: the sun is much brighter.

proc03• 5 years ago

Right but does that mean astronauts don't see stars because it's always "daytime" in space? If we can see the Milky Way in the night sky of remote places away from cities, then the atmosphere must be playing a huge role in allowing us to see stars. I'm just wondering if those night skies are also visible in space, perhaps from the dark side of the moon.

quercusa3• 5 years ago

This is a great line:

With great foresight, NASA equipped the astronauts with some of the best cameras ever made — specially modified Hasselblads, with Zeiss lenses, and 70mm Kodak Ektachrome film.

Earth Restored – 50 restored images of earth released

Related Stories