Editing 2906: Earth
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==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
+ | {{incomplete|Created by a BLUE MARBLE THAT HAS BEEN CROPPED AND ROTATED - Can someone comment on the color of the dot (which color has been used?) It is hard to see but clearly it is not white. This has been mentioned but can someone find out which color has been used? Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} | ||
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[[File:Pale Blue Dot.png|200px|right|thumb|The ''Pale Blue Dot'' image from Voyager 1. Earth is the "pale blue dot" halfway up the rightmost color band.]] | [[File:Pale Blue Dot.png|200px|right|thumb|The ''Pale Blue Dot'' image from Voyager 1. Earth is the "pale blue dot" halfway up the rightmost color band.]] | ||
− | At first sight, this appears to be the famous {{w|Carl Sagan}} commentary, upon the ''{{w|Pale Blue Dot}}'' image of Earth, a picture taken by the {{w|Voyager 1 probe}} in 1990 (at that time 6 billion kilometers away) but having been transmitted back to Earth to be appreciated as one of the most iconic 'photos of Earth from space', along with ''{{w|Earthrise}}'' and ''{{w|The Blue Marble}}''. Sagan's written, and later spoken, words evoke how the lives of all of us are somehow confined to barely more than a single pixel's-worth of existence upon an already zoomed-in view of space. | + | At first sight, this appears to be the famous {{w|Carl Sagan}} commentary, upon the ''{{w|Pale Blue Dot}}'' image of Earth, a picture taken by the {{w|Voyager 1 probe}} in 1990 (at that time 6 billion kilometers away) but having been transmitted back to Earth to be appreciated as one of the most iconic 'photos of Earth from space', along with ''{{w|Earthrise}}'' and ''{{w|The Blue Marble}}''. Sagan's written, and later spoken, words evoke how the lives of all of us are somehow confined to barely more than a single pixel's-worth of existence upon an already zoomed-in view of space. Although it might look like a white dot, the comic actually has used pale blue color for the dot representing Earth, with the color used in the "2x" version of the image being 0xBDCFF4. |
− | From the | + | From the comment, however, it appears that 'Carl' is not looking at an image. Instead it is a spacecraft window. The minute nature of the Earth is as a result of some unintended consequences of an attempt to deorbit from {{w|low Earth orbit}} (i.e. not more than 2000 kilometers from the Earth's surface, from which the Earth should still mostly fill any view that points towards it). Rather than transitioning from LEO into a re-entry trajectory, somehow the vessel and crew have been sent into a ''much'' higher-reaching orbit, if not into a solar or extra-solar trajectory. And it is apparently Carl's fault. The speech is thus not an inward view of where we all are, but an outward look at somewhere that all the crew (unwillingly, and against all recent expectations) are ''not''. |
<!-- NOT SURE IF THIS NEW PARAGRAPH IS NEEDED. "BLUE MARBLE" ALREADY MENTIONED (AS SEPARATE), AND WE ALREADY HAVE REFERENCED CORE INFLUENCES AND MORE. THOUGH MAYBE SOMEONE CAN RE-USE/RE-EDIT SOME OF IT? -- This comic is not (although it appears as to the uneducated pre-astronomer who watches [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Foreman_(comedian) map men]) a reference to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Marble Blue Marble] image taken on the moon. The most common distribution of this image has been cropped to remove most of the empty space, and rotated so [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B14Gtm2Z_70 north was up]. --> | <!-- NOT SURE IF THIS NEW PARAGRAPH IS NEEDED. "BLUE MARBLE" ALREADY MENTIONED (AS SEPARATE), AND WE ALREADY HAVE REFERENCED CORE INFLUENCES AND MORE. THOUGH MAYBE SOMEONE CAN RE-USE/RE-EDIT SOME OF IT? -- This comic is not (although it appears as to the uneducated pre-astronomer who watches [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Foreman_(comedian) map men]) a reference to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Marble Blue Marble] image taken on the moon. The most common distribution of this image has been cropped to remove most of the empty space, and rotated so [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B14Gtm2Z_70 north was up]. --> | ||
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The title text continues with the traditional tone of the speech, only to become an implicit attempt to claim that it wasn't quite as drastic an error as it actually seems to have been. | The title text continues with the traditional tone of the speech, only to become an implicit attempt to claim that it wasn't quite as drastic an error as it actually seems to have been. | ||
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The comic's distance from Earth is unlikely to be anywhere near that of Voyager 1, and would not be being seen portrayed by the same 1500mm high-resolution narrow-angle camera as took the alluded-to image. The apparent size of Earth, compared with Carl at his window, would depend a lot on the actual 'camera' geometry/position for the scene. For comparison, however, the Earth seen from the Moon is slightly under four times the diameter of the Moon as seen from the Earth, or perhaps nearly the size of a clenched fist, held at arm's length. This implies (unless the scene uses a particularly wide-angled lens, close to Carl and the window) that the vessel's position is now ''significantly'' beyond the orbit of the Moon. | The comic's distance from Earth is unlikely to be anywhere near that of Voyager 1, and would not be being seen portrayed by the same 1500mm high-resolution narrow-angle camera as took the alluded-to image. The apparent size of Earth, compared with Carl at his window, would depend a lot on the actual 'camera' geometry/position for the scene. For comparison, however, the Earth seen from the Moon is slightly under four times the diameter of the Moon as seen from the Earth, or perhaps nearly the size of a clenched fist, held at arm's length. This implies (unless the scene uses a particularly wide-angled lens, close to Carl and the window) that the vessel's position is now ''significantly'' beyond the orbit of the Moon. | ||
− | The ''absence'' of a clearly visible Moon, which would have a near-identical phase to the illuminated Earth and could easily be the second brightest object in the scene, is therefore best explained by it being no more than a sub-pixel object, indistinguishable from the surrounding darkness of space, somewhere within thirty Earth diameters (and thus [[2205: Types of Approximation|approximately]], in this image, pixels) of the visible Earth. This could include being sufficiently in conjunction/opposition to Earth to blend in, or be obscured by it.<!-- Note just for those who pass by this source: This excludes the 'out there' humorous possibility that the badly-done manouver did not effect the spacecraft, so much as it somehow sent the *Earth* out of its position, leaving the ship (and the Moon, and more than half of all other satellites?) still technically continuing more or less their prior Earth-orbits - which are now technically various solar ones... | + | The ''absence'' of a clearly visible Moon, which would have a near-identical phase to the illuminated Earth and could easily be the second brightest object in the scene, is therefore best explained by it being no more than a sub-pixel object, indistinguishable from the surrounding darkness of space, somewhere within thirty Earth diameters (and thus [[2205: Types of Approximation|approximately]], in this image, pixels) of the visible Earth. This could include being sufficiently in conjunction/opposition to Earth to blend in, or be obscured by it.<!-- Note just for those who pass by this source: This excludes the 'out there' humorous possibility that the badly-done manouver did not effect the spacecraft, so much as it somehow sent the *Earth* out of its position, leaving the ship (and the Moon, and more than half of all other satellites?) still technically continuing more or less their prior Earth-orbits - which are now technically various solar ones... --> |
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− | + | The general lack of other visible stars, etc, would be explained by the exposure being tuned to not wash out the illuminated internal view, and not being set up for useful astronomical shots, though may then set another range of useful limits on what magnitude of reflected sunlight must still arrive from Earth in order to remain visible.<!-- Additional bonus note: This would depend upon the effective Earth-phase, Earth-albedo (e.g. ocean/land/ice-cap as prime reflector), the actual levels of the running lights by the 'cupula' viewing window and possible lower-dynamic-range capabilities/adjustments to the resulting image by the hypothetical 'comic camera', perhaps other details. On top of it being more governed by Rule Of Funny than *strict* reality, I suggest that making the actual calculation would be more troublesome than it's worth. Right? --> | |
==Transcript== | ==Transcript== |