Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Magnificent Desolation

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[edit] Magnificent Desolation

Original - Edwin Aldrin, the second astronaut (after Neil Armstrong, descends the ladder of the Eagle landing module onto the surface of the moon during the Apollo 11 mission. After remarking to Neil on the beautiful view ("magnificent desolation"), he jumps from the lander's footpad onto the surface.

Reason: I think this is the only Apollo 11 video footage from the surface of the moon that we have.
Articles this image appears in: Apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin, Wikipedia:Creation and usage of media files
Creator: NASA

Support as nominator Spikebrennan (talk) 21:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Support I'm a sucker for this. Durova^Charge! 23:01, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Comment What on earth is going on in the background from about 1:00 onwards? There seems to be a man not in a spacesuit skulking up from behind Buzz then off the right-hand side of the shot? TSP (talk) 01:58, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- That is weird. Purple Is Pretty (talk) 04:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
  - Deduction says that would be neil armstrong, the first man on the moon, in a spacesuit. Potatoswatter (talk) 06:06, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
    - So who's holding the camera? --mikaul
      - Obviously, the studio cameraman at the backlot where they faked it. No, the camera's probably on a tripod that Armstrong placed before Aldrin came down the ladder, or else it's attached to the lander itself. Spikebrennan (talk) 19:47, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
        
        Ah, yes, I see the spacesuit now. The low contrast had made it look like he had a much smaller silhouette where he blends into the background. I'd also assumed that Armstrong was holding the camera, as it's not a totally static shot (I wonder why that is - vibrations from machinery on the lander, perhaps?), but it is of course precisely the same viewpoint as the better-known shot of Armstrong's first steps on Mars.
        
        As a sidenote, it's not utterly impossible that there could be non-moon-sourced material on this clip - the camera used was incompatible with the television broadcast technology of the time, so what viewers actually saw came from camera pointed at large screens, onto which were projected the images from the moon, so if the clip came from the TV footage it might include artefacts from this. TSP (talk) 11:28, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

^talk 13:48, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Question. Isn't all the NASA movie footage freely licensed like their photos seem to be? I'm not sure whether the reason is saying that this is the only such footage on Wikipedia or the only such footage in existence, because I thought there was quite a bit of this footage around, and at better sizes, and possibly quality. --jjron (talk) 07:52, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes it is (licensing). I think the issue is not enough people having the connection speed, the software (ff2mpeg) and/or the know-how to convert videos to ogg and upload them. Not to mention the 20MB upload limit: video files get very large very quickly (bug spam). A how-to would be ideal for the dispatches section of the Signpost. MER-C 09:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Oppose, low quality. And there is higher quality footage available somewhere--such as we can rip it from DVDs, etc., gren グレン 03:01, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

There is no "high-quality" footage of this, anywhere! It's a capture of the first TV transmission from the moon, using a "smeary" vidicon camera. In full-size (720 x 486) the quality is even more horrible... --Janke | Talk 08:49, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean that the footage was not recorded on film? 16mm and 8mm cameras were available in hand held size for many decades before the moon landing Thisglad (talk) 13:29, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

This particular footage came from the camera mounted in an assembly on the lunar module's side, to capture the first steps onto the moon (when obviously there was no-one there to hold the camera).

They COULD have made this camera a film camera, but I'm not sure that people would have responded well to, "People have stepped on the moon - we'll have some pictures in a couple of weeks when the film gets to earth" :-) I'm also not sure how well a film camera would respond to a low-pressure environment. I think that all the motion picture cameras on the moon were for TV transmission, not film recording.

This article tantalisingly suggests that there may be better footage available - the generally-available footage is from the Apollo camera, projected onto a screen, then filmed with a TV camera. Apparently there was once recorded footage taken straight from the original signal, before the conversion to TV format; but it has been lost. It wouldn't necessarily be a *lot* better, though. TSP (talk) 17:26, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

But, even the original TV signal at full or closer to full resolution would be MUCH better, right? I didn't expect DVD quality but slightly higher than 320×240. gren グレン 00:34, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Photo of high-quality screen of transmission from Apollo_TV_camera, before scan conversion.

The original resolution of the video is approx. 220 x 220 pixels! Yes, there is also film footage from the Apollo missions, shot with Maurer 16 mm cameras, but only at 4 fps, IIRC. That footage was for other purposes, and due to the low filming speed, there is really no continuous movement - it's like a very fast slide show. Remember that this video was transmitted from the moon - with a rather low bandwidth due to the slow scan camera (see image at right) - and then recorded on earth. That partly explains the low quality. --Janke | Talk 19:23, 16 March 2008 (UTC)