Sunday, August 9, 2015

        THE BACK COVER OF THE WHOLE EARTH CATALOG   

      NASA  BELATEDLY  BRINGS  THE  BRIGHT SIDE  OF THE  DARK SIDE OF THE MOON  TO  LIGHT

As Nasa's art director's didn't want the Apollo astronauts stumbling around in the dark,  all the manned moon missions landed on Luna in broad daylight,  which while grand for doing geology,  put the kibosh on photo opportunities involving the dark far side of the moon,  which, despite all  the mind-bending pictures of Earthrise, never found its way on to the back  cover of The Whole Earth Catalog, or into the popular imagination  

Which may have done space exploration a good turn. Much as it must cheer CBS execs to know their logo has been on view for 4.7 billion years,  the partial eclipse of the Earth is not the stuff creation myths are made of, witness this stunningly unanticipated image from the 4 megapixel Whole Earth camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory  parked by NASA  orbiting the Lagrangian gravity well a million miles out , between the earth and the sun:



Tip of the hat to Al Gore for sheparding the DISCO satellite's funding across the fiscal dance floor through the doldrums of the Space Age.