1. “Blue Marble” - a famous photograph of the Earth, in which it is visible in its entirety. The photo was taken on December 7, 1972, when Apollo 17 left Earth orbit and headed towards the Moon. The sun was on the opposite side, and the crew was able to take this magnificent photo of the blue planet. The first complete photograph of the Earth.

2. The first photograph of the Earth from the Moon

In this photograph taken by spacecraft"Lunar-Orbiter 1" August 23, 1966, view of the Earth from the Moon. From a distance of about 380,000 km, we can see the surface of the Earth from Istanbul to Cape Town. In the areas to the west it is night.

3. The first color photograph of the rising Earth

When the program was launched in 1968 Apollo 8 was tasked with taking high-resolution images of the lunar surface. But after finishing the photo shoot on the far side of the Moon, the spacecraft crew took this now famous photo. Dubbed "Earthrise," this shot of the Earth rising above the lunar horizon reminds people of the fragility of their home.

4. The first photograph of Earth from Mars

This is the first image of Earth from Mars, taken on May 8, 2003 by the camera of the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. From a distance of 139 million kilometers, the Earth looks like an illuminated slice: only the western hemisphere is visible. From afar, the scale of the world in which we live is better understood.

5. The first panoramic photograph from the surface of Mars

Soon after the Viking 1 spacecraft landed on Mars on July 20, 1976, its camera 2 took this first image from the Martian surface. The panoramic (300-degree) photograph shows the Chris Planitia region, a low plain in the northern hemisphere of Mars. The camera's field of view included parts of the landing apparatus and stones ranging in size from 10 to 20 centimeters in diameter.

6. The first photograph of the Martian surface

July 20, 1976 Viking 1 spacecraft took the first ever photograph of the Martian surface. One of the spacecraft's three legs is visible, covered in dust on the rock-strewn surface of Mars. Cameras mounted at various locations on Viking 1 helped scientists determine distances on the red planet's remarkably Earth-like surface.

7. The first color photograph from Venus

Despite the temperature of 482 degrees and atmospheric pressure 92 times higher than Earth's, on March 1, 1982, the Soviet spacecraft Venera 13 was able to take the first color photographs of the desert surface of Venus. In addition to the surface, the photograph shows zigzag-shaped parts of the descent module. The 170-degree panoramic camera was equipped with blue, green and red filters.

8. First photo from Titan

As can be seen in this composition, the surface Saturn's moon is an almost flat plain strewn with rocks the size of oranges. For comparison, here is a photo from the surface of the Moon. On January 14, 2005, the Cassini-Huygens mission (a joint US-ESA project) took 1,100 images during its landing on Titan.

9. The first photo of an exoplanet

In this image taken by the Southern European Observatory, the first known exoplanet (a planet outside the solar system) was captured. The red sphere at the bottom of the image is a young planet, similar in physical properties to Jupiter. It orbits a brown dwarf - a dim, dying star with 42 times the mass of the Sun. This is an infrared camera image from a distance of approximately 230 light years.

10. First photograph of the Sun

Using something new for its time daguerreotype technology, on April 2, 1845, French scientists Louis Fizeau and Leon Foucault took the first successful photograph of the Sun. The original photo (at 1/60 shutter speed) was 12 centimeters in diameter and showed several sunspots. They are also visible in this reproduction.

11. Photo of the deepest space

800x exposure per 400 telescope rotations Hubble's orbit (from September 2003 to January 2004) produced this galaxy-filled image of deep space. Nearly 10,000 galaxies are visible in the image taken by the advanced camera for surveys as part of the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field program. Scientists say it's like looking at the sky for a long time through a 2.4-meter straw. So you get a piece of deep space.

12. Imprint on the Moon

Symbol of the giant step of all humanity- this small footprint of astronaut Edwin Aldrin on the surface of the Moon. The astronaut himself took this photo during NASA's Apollo 11 mission in 1969.

13. The first photographs from the surface of another planet

From June to October 1975, the Soviet space probe Venera 9 photographed Venus. It became the first spacecraft to enter orbit around another planet and land on its surface. Venera 9 consisted of a descent vehicle and orbiters: they separated in orbit. The 2,300-kilogram orbiter maintained communications and photographed the planet in ultraviolet light. And the descent capsule entered the planet’s atmosphere and sank to the surface with the help of several parachutes. A special panoramic photometer on board the probe took these 180-degree panoramic photographs of the surface of Venus.

October 25, 2016 at 04:09 pm

70 years since the first photograph of the Earth from space

• Photographic equipment,
• Cosmonautics

The first photograph of the Earth from space was taken on film on October 24, 1946, from a V-2 ballistic missile.

On October 24, 1946, long before the Soviet Sputnik 1 officially ushered in the space age, a small search party of American scientists and soldiers gathered in the New Mexico desert. They were tasked with finding the crash site of a V-2 rocket and a cassette with 35mm film.

People were preparing to see something incredible for the first time in their history: what the Earth looks like from space.

On that day, a V-2 ballistic missile was launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, USA. Unlike Wernher von Braun's previous rocket launches, the V-2 was now launched vertically.

A movie camera loaded with 35mm film took one frame every 1.5 seconds. The rocket rose to a height of about 105 kilometers and then fell down, crashing into the ground at a speed of 150 meters per second. The camera was completely broken, but the film itself in the steel cassette remained intact.

19-year-old US Army private Fred Rulli was one of the members of the search party sent on October 24, 1946. The military members of the expedition were not particularly impressed by the find. But something incredible happened to the scientists. When they found the steel cassette intact, they were overcome with utter delight: “They jumped like children,” recalls Rulli. Complete madness began when the film was delivered to the launch site, developed and the photographs were shown on the screen for the first time: “The scientists just went crazy,” stated a private.

Until that time, the record photograph of the earth's surface taken from the highest altitude remained the image from the American military helium balloon Explorer II, which rose into the air at 22,066 m in 1935. High enough to record the curvature of the globe (for the first time in the history of photography, the curvature of the horizon was captured on August 31, 1933 by aeronaut Alexander Dalya).

The camera on the V-2 rocket broke the record more than five times. People saw how our bright planet looks against the backdrop of the darkness of space.

"The photographs show for the first time what our Earth looks like to aliens arriving in spacecraft," Clyde Holliday, a rocket camera designer, said in a commentary for National Geographic. This magazine published an article about unique photography in 1950, when film frames were glued together into a single whole.

The result of a montage of footage taken during the launch of the V-2 on October 24, 1946

It was an amazing event.

Engineer Wernher von Braun (with a handkerchief in his jacket pocket)

The launch on October 24, 1946 was one of many experiments in the V-2 research program conducted by a group of engineers led by Wernher von Braun who were brought to work in the United States after the war as part of Operation Paperclip. For them, the US Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) created fictitious biographies and removed references to NSDAP membership and ties to the Nazi regime from public records. The general public learned about this secret operation by accident in December 1946, when chief design engineer Walter Riedel became the subject of a published article, “German Scientist Claims American Food Is Tasteless and Chicken Like Rubber.”

From 1946 to 1950, thanks to the V-2 launches, the Americans took more than 1,000 photographs of the Earth from altitudes of up to 160 km.

The famous German engineer Wernher von Braun began working on a liquid fuel rocket in 1930. A key influence on him was Professor Hermann Oberth, who is called one of the six founders of modern rocketry and astronautics, along with Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Yuri Kondratyuk (and at the beginning of the twentieth century, Kondratyuk calculated the optimal flight path to the Moon, which NASA later used in the Apollo lunar program ), Friedrich Zander, Robert Hainault-Peltrie and Robert Goddard.

Wernher von Braun later recalled his mentor: “Hermann Oberth was the first who, having thought about the possibility of creating spaceships, picked up a slide rule and presented mathematically based ideas and designs... Personally, I see in him not only the guiding star of my life, but I also owe him my first contacts with theoretical and practical issues of rocketry and space flight.”

After the launch of the first satellites, photographing the Earth became one of the main tasks of government and then private programs. The Earth was filmed not only from satellites, but also from other spacecraft. For example, the American manned spacecraft Gemini 11, launched on September 12, 1966, took a picture from an altitude of 1368 km.

Photo from Gemini 11

Three years later, in July 1969, the crew of Apollo 11 took the famous photograph of the Earth above the lunar horizon. The image was taken from lunar orbit at a distance of about 400,000 km from Earth.

Photo from Apollo 11

Another scale of the Earth is shown in a photograph taken by the crew of Apollo 15 on July 26, 1971.

Photo from Apollo 15

With each passing decade, our spacecraft moved further and further into space, exploring the vastness of the solar system. On November 3, 1973, NASA launched Mariner 10, the first successful launch in the Mariner series. She became the first to visit Mercury on March 29, 1974. On the way to Mercury, the device took a photograph of the Earth and the Moon from a distance of 2.57 million km, photographing them together for the first time.

Perhaps the most remarkable photograph of the Earth was taken by the Voyager 1 probe on June 6, 1990, ten years after the start of its journey.

Photo of Earth from Voyager 1 (distance 6.05 billion km)

This photo went down in history as

The nature of our planet is diverse and unique. Traveling around our planet and photographing nature, you can create amazingly beautiful pictures. Photographs of the Earth from space, from an altitude of more than 700,000 m, are not similar to the photographs of nature that we are accustomed to. They are more reminiscent of paintings by abstract artists.

The US Geological Survey has published unique photographs of the Earth obtained from the Lanstad 7 space satellite. These images clearly show natural landscapes and human creations. They photograph the destruction caused by natural anomalies and the negative consequences of human activity. These images are actual satellite photographs of the Earth's surface, created by transferring visible and infrared data to print in colors visible to the human eye. Special range and color combinations were chosen to optimize these stunning shots.

Bogda Mountains in China

The Turpan Depression, located at the foot of the Bogda Mountains, consists of salt lakes and sand dunes. The Turpan depression is notable for the fact that it is the deepest in Central Asia and the third in the world after the Dead Sea basin and Lake Kinneret.

Southwestern coast of the Netherlands

The delta region in the southwest of the country, formed by the mouths of several rivers, is protected from flooding by a series of levees and dams. After unusually powerful tides devastated the area in the spring of 1953, a complex system of dikes, canals, barrages and bridges was built to hold back the North Sea.

Akpatok Island, Canadian Arctic Archipelago

The island is located at the northwestern entrance to Ungava Bay. The island is surrounded by steep cliffs ranging from 40 to 250 meters in height. The island is a reliable refuge for migratory and nesting birds. Numerous ice floes around the island attract walruses and whales, making Akpatok a traditional hunting ground for the indigenous Inuit people.

China

An alluvial fan formed between the Anlong and Kunlong mountain ranges on the southern border of the Taklamakan Desert in China. Alluvial cones are formed on land, at the foot of mountains, where water flows carrying debris material, which is deposited in the shape of a convex semi-cone, with its apex facing the place of removal.

Anti-Atlas Mountains, Morocco

The southwestern part of the Atlas Mountains, located in western North Africa. It is home to some of the richest yet untapped mineral deposits in the world.

Bolivia

This photo shows how the virgin Amazon rainforests are being brutally cut down. The surviving untouched forests are highlighted in red.

Brandberg mountain range, Namibia

Located in Damaraland, in the northwestern part of the Namib Desert, close to the coast and covering an area of ​​approximately 650 square kilometers. Brandberg is the result of an ancient earthquake, as a result of which molten granite flowed through the resulting fault onto the surface of the earth. Unique communities of plants and animals inhabit its high-altitude environment, and prehistoric rock art adorns the steep cliffs.

Cabo San Antonio, Province of Buenos Aires

Cape San Antonio in Argentina, more than 500 kilometers long, wedges into the Atlantic Ocean.

Cancun

Famous for its beaches and hotels, Cancun is located on the Yucatan island. Located in the depths of the peninsula, tropical forests hide the ruins of Mayan buildings.

Volcano Colima, Mexico

A volcano in western Mexico, 80 km from the Pacific coast. Mexico's most active volcano, it has erupted more than 40 times since 1576. It includes two peaks: one is extinct, the other is active.

State of Campeche, Mexico

Named after the ancient Mayan province, Campeche includes most of the western Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. In the West it is washed by the Gulf of Mexico. More than 40% of the state is considered a protected natural area.

Coahuila, Mexico

This desert landscape is part of the Siedra Madre mountain system, which crosses the state of Coahuila from northwest to southeast.

Dasht-Kevir, Iran

Dasht-e Kavir (Great Salt Desert), is the largest desert in Iran and one of the most lifeless deserts on Earth. The surface of the desert is covered with crusts of salt, which protects the meager moisture from complete evaporation.

Demini River, Brazil

A section of the swampy Demini River in northwestern Brazil, which flows into the Amazon.

Devastation Canyon, USA

The Green River, a tributary of the Colorado River, flows through three states: Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. The river flows along the high mountain plateau of Tavapust (above), then among gorges and canyons. Passing along the Canyon of Devastation (in the center), its banks become steep and sheer and reach 5-6 thousand pounds in height. Devastation Canyon is the second largest in the United States after the Grand Canyon.

Mongolia

A transition zone located between the Mongolian steppes in the north and the dry arid desert of Northern China in the south. In the local dialect Edrengiyn Nuruu.

Ganges Delta

At the point where it flows into the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges River forms a vast delta. The delta area is covered by swampy forests known as the Sunderbans, which is home to the Royal Bengal tiger.

Garden City, Kansas, USA

This space photo is like a fantastic mosaic panel. This is what Garden City, USA looks like from space.

Ghadames River, Libya

Dry bed of the Ghadames River on a plateau near the Tinhet Mountains in Libya.

Gosses Bluff Crater

About 130 million years ago, an asteroid or comet impacted Australia's Mission Plains and created a crater 14 km in diameter and 4 km deep. In the language of the locals, it is called Tnorala, that is, “Devil's rock of the fiery tread of the sun.”

Great Salt Desert, Iran

The shallow lakes and winding desert valleys look more like splashes of paint on a canvas than a desert landscape. The desert is located in an uninhabited area in Iran.

Sand dunes, Australia

There are no other deserts equal in size to it in Australia. Due to the arid climate, agricultural activities are impossible here. The variegation of color is caused by the complexity and diversity of the geological structure of the desert.

Sand dunes, Australia

The photo shows part of Australia's Great Sandy Desert. Sand dunes are indicated in the image with yellow horizontal lines. The brightest spot in the photo is the fire mark.

Baffin Sea

Baffin Bay, between Greenland and Baffin Island, is covered with ice most of the year.

Guinea-Bissau

A small country in West Africa. The country's extensive river system washes large amounts of silt into the ocean. This silt appears light blue in satellite photos. In red are tropical forests.

Harrat Al Birk, Saudi Arabia

The dark volcanic cones in the lava fields, formed from igneous solidified lava, along the Red Sea coastline are known as Harrat Al Birk. Such lava fields are often found on the Arabian Peninsula, their age ranges from 2 to 30 million years.

Himalayas

The mountain system, located between the Tibetan Plateau in the north and the Indo-Gangetic Plain in the south, stretches 2900 km in length and 350 km in width. Glaciers are located mainly around the largest mountain ranges and the highest peaks.

Location of the Iraqi Army

The area where Iraqi troops are stationed north of the city of Al-Basra. Previously there was a marshy area, which was subsequently drained and fenced. Today it is a military training area.

Jau National Park, Brazil

One of the largest national parks in Brazil. The Jau Park is located primarily in the Jau River basin, one of the small tributaries of the Rio Negro. The park's area covers the territories of several natural ecosystems of the Amazon: moist equatorial forests, never-flooded interfluve areas, periodically flooded high floodplains and low floodplains that are flooded for many months. A large variety of fauna is also associated with the so-called “black rivers”. These rivers are usually deeper, the water in them is clear and has a darkish tint due to the organic remains of decaying plants.

Jordan

The river network of Jordan is formed by wadis - temporary watercourses that are full only in winter during the rainy season. In summer they dry out or become very shallow.

Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia

The eastern part of the Kamchatka coast, covered with ice. On the right in the photo is the Bering Sea.

Von Karman Vortexes, Aleutian Islands

The picture shows circular vortices of clouds (the so-called von Kármán vortices) resulting from the separation of air mass flows over land masses, in this case occurring over the Aleutian Islands of North America.

Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

Mount Kilimanjaro is clearly visible from almost all points of the savannahs of Tanzania and Kenya - steep slopes rise to a flat top. The gigantic size of the mountain forms its own microclimate.

Lake Konari, Iran

The small town of Konari in the Zagros Mountains. In the lower left corner is the Caspian Sea.

Lake Amadeus, Australia

Endorheic salt dry Lake Amadeus in central Australia (top right). During the dry season, the surface of the lake turns into a surface sparkling with salt crystals. The yellow strokes in the photo are sun-scorched vegetation.

Lake Carnegie, Australia

Lake Carnegie fills with water during the rainy season. During dry periods it turns into a swamp.

Lake Disappointment, Australia

Salt Lake in Western Australia. It dries out during the dry months. It got its name thanks to the traveler Frank Hann. Having explored a large number of streams in the study area, he hoped to find a freshwater lake. But to his disappointment, this lake also turned out to be salty.

Lena River Delta, Russia

This is the largest river delta in the world. For approximately seven months of the year, the river delta is covered with ice. Not far from the Lena River basin is the largest nature reserve in Russia. The dark blue color on top is the Arctic Ocean.

Malaspina Glacier, Alaska, USA

Glacier named after the navigator and geographer Alessandro Malaspina. The blue color reflects the cold water of the melting glacier.

Mississippi River Delta, USA

The Mississippi is the longest river flowing in North America. Approximately every thousand years, the restless Mississippi River chooses new tributaries, having already furrowed about 320 km of the Gulf of Mexico coastline in the delta.

Volcano Etna, Italy

Etna is an active, highest volcano in Europe, located on the east coast of Sicily. The photograph captured the volcano's eruption in 2001. Columns of steam and smoke are visible escaping from the crater and lava flows on the slopes of the mountain.

Namib Desert, Namibia

Coastal winds create sand dunes 300 meters high, which are visible even from space.

Niger River, Africa

The river delta, which is 250 kilometers long and 325 kilometers wide, is the largest in Africa. The Niger River originates in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, in the highlands of Guinea. From there it turns northeast through Mali, passing through the southern Sahara Desert, then turning south and passing through the territory of Niger and Nigeria, emptying into the Gulf of Guinea.

Fjords of Norway

In the northern part of the west coast of Norway there are fjords that were formed during the last ice age. Norway has the largest concentration of fjords in the world. The entire coast of Norway is indented by fjords. Some specimens go to depths of hundreds of meters.

Ocean sands of the Bahamas

This satellite photo shows underwater sands off the coast of the Bahamas, formed by waves and ocean currents. The greenish color is algae.

Kalahari Desert, Namibia

The Kalahari is a vast kingdom of sand. Sand dunes are rapidly encroaching on once fertile and arable land. In the picture they are indicated by stripes. The pale pink color in the photo shows healthy vegetation.

Parana River Delta, South America

The Parana River flows in the southern part of the continent through Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. The Paraná is the main waterway providing water supply and navigation in the region. The photograph clearly shows the contrast between the swamps (green) and the forests (reddish).

Volcano Pinacate, Mexico

In the north-west of the Mexican state of Sonora, on the territory of the desert of the same name, there is a zone of extinct activity of the Pinacate volcano. Peace and quiet reign here, occasionally disturbed by sudden eruptions of volcanic rocks. Crater cones extending deep into the earth are chaotically scattered throughout the desert.

Geological structure of Richat, Africa

The Richat structure is a geological formation in the western part of the Sahara Desert, called the “Eye of the Sahara” or “Eye of the Desert”. The diameter of the crater is 50 km. The origin of the structure is still controversial among scientists and it is believed that the sedimentary rocks of the Richat structure are the result of erosion of the earth's crust.

Shoemaker Crater, Australia

A crater formed as a result of a meteorite falling about 1700 million years ago. The diameter of the crater is about 30 km.

Sulaiman Mountains, Pakistan

The Sulaiman Mountains are located in the Pakistani province of Balochistan and in the Afghani province of Zabul. The length of the mountains is about 600 km.

Syrian desert

The Syrian Desert is a desert in the Middle East, between the Euphrates River valley and the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It is located on the territory of the states of Syria, Jordan, and Iraq.

Oasis Terkezi, Chad

Sands of the Sahara Desert, near the Terkezi oasis in Chad.

Ugab River, Namibia

The Ugab River is vital to Namibia. During the dry season it dries out. During the heavy rainy season, the Ugab River valley becomes a refuge for elephants.

Vatnajokull Glacier, Iceland

Vatnajokull is the largest glacier not only in Iceland, but also in Europe. Most of the country's rivers originate here. Vatnajökull (translated from the Spanish as “lake glacier”) was named so because of the lakes located under the ice in its volcanically active central part.

Volga River Basin, Russia

The basin of the Volga River, which splits into more than 500 channels. One of the largest rivers in the world. Flows into the Caspian Sea.

Westfjords, Iceland

The Westfjords are a group of several peninsulas located in the northwest of Iceland.

Yukon River Delta

A river flowing in northwestern Canada and the United States and emptying into the Bering Sea. The complex, winding and tangled waterways of the river are like blood vessels. Currently it is a national reserve.

I often come across interesting views of the Earth from space. It’s somehow not interesting to publish them separately, but by putting some effort and putting them together, you can get a very informative note. In fact, the photographs were collected and remembered for at least two years. So, I think this is one of the most detailed materials on this topic. All images are clickable.

Earthrise(Earthrise) is the title of a photograph of our planet taken by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, during the flight of the Apollo 8 spacecraft around the Moon. Perhaps the most famous view of the earth from space.

Blue ball(Blue Marble) is a photograph of planet Earth taken on December 7, 1972 by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft from a distance of approximately 29 thousand kilometers from the Earth’s surface.

In 2002, NASA stitched together a new version of the famous photograph from a huge number of images.

This is currently available.

Distant Earth and Moon. The photograph was taken on September 18, 1977 by Voyager 1 from a distance of 11.5 million kilometers.

And this is a composite image collected from photographs of the Galileo spacecraft.

The image is a composite of 165 photographs taken by the Cassini spacecraft on September 15, 2006. Our planet is a point on the top right in the void between the dense rings and the penultimate ring.

Pale blue dot(Pale Blue Dot). Earth as seen by Voyager 1 from a record distance of 5.9 billion kilometers. (Dot on the right side of the top line)

Niger River, Republic of Mali.

The sun rises over the Pacific Ocean.

The image is a composite of four photographs taken by ESA's OSIRIS space camera.

No matter how usual it is to see the northern lights from below, from Earth, from space they look much more spectacular.

Russian space station Mir Above the Earth. Photo taken from the Atlantis shuttle in June 1995.

The photo shows the shadow of the moon over Cyprus and Turkey. This total solar eclipse occurred on March 29, 2006.

NASA astronaut Robert L. Stewart soars above the clouds. Photo taken from the Challenger shuttle in February 1984.

Planet earth reflected in the helmet of astronaut Clayton C. Anderson on August 15, 2007.

And earlier I showed you the most beautiful and stunning ones.

August 16th, 2016

Photos from space published on the websites of NASA and other space agencies often attract the attention of those who doubt their authenticity - critics find traces of editing, retouching or color manipulation in the images. This has been the case since the birth of the “moon conspiracy,” and now photographs taken not only by Americans, but also by Europeans, Japanese, and Indians have come under suspicion. Together with the N+1 portal, we are looking into why space images are processed at all and whether, despite this, they can be considered authentic.

In order to correctly assess the quality of space images that we see on the Internet, it is necessary to take into account two important factors. One of them is related to the nature of interaction between agencies and the general public, the other is dictated by physical laws.

Public Relations

Space images are one of the most effective means of popularizing the work of research missions in near and deep space. However, not all footage is immediately available to the media.

Images received from space can be divided into three groups: “raw”, scientific and public. Raw, or original, files from spacecraft are sometimes available to everyone, and sometimes not. For example, images taken by the Mars rovers Curiosity and Opportunity or Saturn's moon Cassini are released in near real time, so anyone can see them at the same time as scientists studying Mars or Saturn. Raw photographs of the Earth from the ISS are uploaded to a separate NASA server. Astronauts flood them with thousands, and no one has time to pre-process them. The only thing that is added to them on Earth is a geographic reference to make searching easier.

Typically, public footage that is attached to press releases from NASA and other space agencies is criticized for retouching, because they are the ones that catch the eye of Internet users in the first place. And if you want, you can find a lot of things there. And color manipulation:

Photo of the landing platform of the Spirit rover in visible light and capturing near-infrared light.
(c) NASA/JPL/Cornell

And overlaying several images:

Earthrise over Compton Crater on the Moon.

And copy-paste:

Fragment of Blue Marble 2001
(c) NASA/Robert Simmon/MODIS/USGS EROS

And even direct retouching, with erasing some image fragments:

Highlighted shotApollo 17 GPN-2000-001137.
(c) NASA

NASA’s motivation in the case of all these manipulations is so simple that not everyone is ready to believe it: it’s more beautiful.

But it’s true, the bottomless blackness of space looks more impressive when it’s not interfered with by debris on the lens and charged particles on the film. A color frame is indeed more attractive than a black and white one. A panorama from photographs is better than individual frames. It is important that in the case of NASA it is almost always possible to find the original footage and compare one with the other. For example, the original version (AS17-134-20384) and the “printable” version (GPN-2000-001137) of this image from Apollo 17, which is cited as almost the main evidence of retouching of lunar photographs:

Comparison of frames AS17-134-20384 and GPN-2000-001137
(c) NASA

Or find the rover’s “selfie stick,” which “disappeared” when creating its self-portrait:

Curiosity images from January 14, 2015, Sol 868
(c) NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Physics of Digital Photography

Typically, those who criticize space agencies for manipulating color, using filters, or publishing black-and-white photographs “in this digital age” fail to consider the physical processes involved in producing digital images. They believe that if a smartphone or camera immediately produces color frames, then a spacecraft should be even more capable of doing this, and they have no idea what complex operations are needed to immediately get a color image onto the screen.

Let us explain the theory of digital photography: the matrix of a digital camera is, in fact, a solar battery. There is light - there is current, no light - no current. Only the matrix is ​​not a single battery, but many small batteries - pixels, from each of which the current output is separately read. Optics focuses light onto a photomatrix, and electronics reads the intensity of energy released by each pixel. From the data obtained, an image is constructed in shades of gray - from zero current in the dark to maximum in the light, that is, the output is black and white. To make it color, you need to apply color filters. It turns out, oddly enough, that color filters are present in every smartphone and in every digital camera from the nearest store! (For some, this information is trivial, but, according to the author’s experience, for many it will be news.) In the case of conventional photographic equipment, alternating red, green and blue filters are used, which are alternately applied to individual pixels of the matrix - this is the so-called Bayer filter .

The Bayer filter consists of half green pixels, and red and blue each occupy one quarter of the area.
(c) Wikimedia

We repeat here: navigation cameras produce black and white images because such files weigh less, and also because color is simply not needed there. Scientific cameras allow us to extract more information about space than the human eye can perceive, and therefore they use a wider range of color filters:

Matrix and filter drum of the OSIRIS instrument on Rosetta
(c) MPS

Using a filter for near-infrared light, which is invisible to the eye, instead of red, resulted in Mars appearing red in many of the images that made it into the media. Not all of the explanations about the infrared range were reprinted, which gave rise to a separate discussion, which we also discussed in the material “What color is Mars.”

However, the Curiosity rover has a Bayer filter, which allows it to shoot in colors familiar to our eyes, although a separate set of color filters is also included with the camera.

(c) NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The use of individual filters is more convenient in terms of selecting the light ranges in which you want to look at the object. But if this object moves quickly, then its position changes in pictures in different ranges. In the Elektro-L footage, this was noticeable in the fast clouds, which managed to move in a matter of seconds while the satellite was changing the filter. On Mars, a similar thing happened when filming sunsets at the Spirit and Opportunity rover - they do not have a Bayer filter:

Sunset taken by Spirit on Sol 489. Overlay of images taken with 753,535 and 432 nanometer filters.
(c) NASA/JPL/Cornell

On Saturn, Cassini has similar difficulties:

Saturn's moons Titan (behind) and Rhea (front) in Cassini images
(c) NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

At the Lagrange point, DSCOVR faces the same situation:

Transit of the Moon across the Earth's disk in a DSCOVR image on July 16, 2015.
(c) NASA/NOAA

To get a beautiful photo from this shoot suitable for distribution in the media, you have to work in an image editor.

There is another physical factor that not everyone knows about - black and white photographs have higher resolution and clarity compared to color ones. These are so-called panchromatic images, which include all the light information entering the camera, without cutting off any parts of it with filters. Therefore, many “long-range” satellite cameras shoot only in panchrome, which for us means black and white footage. Such a LORRI camera is installed on New Horizons, and a NAC camera is installed on the LRO lunar satellite. Yes, in fact, all telescopes shoot in panchrome, unless special filters are used. (“NASA is hiding the true color of the Moon” is where it came from.)

A multispectral “color” camera, equipped with filters and having a much lower resolution, can be attached to a panchromatic one. At the same time, its color photographs can be superimposed on panchromatic ones, as a result of which we obtain high-resolution color photographs.

Pluto in panchromatic and multispectral images from New Horizons
(c) NASA/JHU APL/Southwest Research Institute

This method is often used when photographing the Earth. If you know about this, you can see in some frames a typical halo that leaves a blurry color frame:

Composite image of the Earth from the WorldView-2 satellite
(c)DigitalGlobe

It was through this overlay that the very impressive frame of the Earth above the Moon was created, which is given above as an example of overlaying different images:

(c) NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University

Additional processing

Often you have to resort to the tools of graphic editors when you need to clean up a frame before publishing. Ideas about the perfection of space technology are not always justified, which is why debris on space cameras is common. For example, the MAHLI camera on the Curiosity rover is simply crap, there’s no other way to put it:

Photo of Curiosity by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on Sol 1401
(c) NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

A speck in the STEREO-B solar telescope gave rise to a separate myth about an alien space station constantly flying above the north pole of the Sun:

(c) NASA/GSFC/JHU APL

Even in space, it is not uncommon for charged particles to leave their traces on the matrix in the form of individual dots or stripes. The longer the shutter speed, the more traces remain; “snow” appears on the frames, which does not look very presentable in the media, so they also try to clear it off (read: “photoshop” it) before publication:

(c) NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Therefore, we can say: yes, NASA photoshops pictures from space. ESA photoshops. Roscosmos photoshops. ISRO photoshops. JAXA photoshops... Only the Zambian National Space Agency does not photoshop. So if someone is not satisfied with NASA images, then you can always use their space images without any signs of processing.