Ho-hum. It’s a boring old Wednesday. So why don’t we take a little trip to…Luna, courtesy of the interactive geniuses at Panoramas.dk. Just click here to instantly transport yourself to the lunar surface, click on the Apollo 17 lunar image and you’ve got a full-screen Quicktime (yes, you have to have Quicktime!) panorama, plus a few audio clips from the astronauts singing (singing?) and talking about what the Apollo missions and history. Just drag your mouse to rotate the view a full 360 degrees. Very, very cool. And you can also scroll down to click open views from Apollo 11 (which includes spine-tingling audio of Neil Armstrong describing in detail what the moon is like and uttering his famous “One small step…”), and Apollo 12. How did they do it? Here’s how:
“On July 20 ( July 21 GMT ) 1969 the first man stepped on the moon. During the next 3 years 6 missions to the moon was made and a total of 12 astronauts walked on the moon. One of the missions Apollo 13 failed and they had to return.
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).
Less known is that during all the missions they made image sequences which with todays computer technics can be stitched together into 360o interactive panoramas giving you the possibillity to view the moon almost as you were there…”
And if you ever get bored of the Moon, hey just head on over to Mars…
Buzz “Big Dog” Aldrin: “Hey, Neil! Enough with the photos and that blinding flash. Let’s go play golf…”
The Earthist Chronicles 