image by Lunar Orbiter I andDon Davis
Where were you on August 23, 1966? The first American spacecraft to orbit the Moon, Lunar Orbiter I, was just over the eastern limb and snapped this picture looking across the lunar surface to Earth. This was the first image of Earth taken from near the Moon. Although it is hard to recognize surface features on the Earth, the terminator reportedly passes through Turkey. Because of the oblique view and high Sun conditions it is also difficult to recognize features on the the lunar surface, but the area is near the crater Pasteur at 105°E, 12°S. Using The Clementine Atlas, I see that Meitner is the crater near right foreground of this truncated view, and Pasteur is the ill-defined larger crater between Meitner and the limb. To answer my question, on August 23, 1966 I was about to leave Tucson and start training to become a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya.
Technical Details:
LOI-102 H1, 2 & 3. High-resolution camera (610 mm focal length). Like all Lunar Orbiter images this one was composed of long framelets that were laid down next to each other and rephotographed. Mattias Malmer removed some of the striping and Don Davis manually removed the remainder.
Related Links:
Rükl p. 191.
Today’s LPOD is only part of the complete Lunar Orbiter image
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