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Lot 132

[Lunar Orbiter III] STARK LUNAR HORIZON NEAR THE TERMINATOR OVER CENTRAL BAY (Large Format)
NASA, February 1967

14 – 28 April 2025, 12:00 CEST
Paris, Avenue Hoche

Sold for €409.60 inc. premium

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[Lunar Orbiter III] STARK LUNAR HORIZON NEAR THE TERMINATOR OVER CENTRAL BAY (Large Format)

NASA, February 1967

Printed 1967.

Large-format vintage gelatin silver print on fibre-based paper [NASA image LRC III-85M].
Numbered and captioned in black in the lower margin (NASA Langley Research Centre, Hampton, Virginia).

46 x 58 cm. (18 x 23 in.)

Historical context
One of the rare and striking oblique views of the lunar horizon captured by the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft. This medium-resolution image (Lunar Orbiter frame III-123M) was taken with an 80mm lens from an altitude of 49 km over the forbidding terrain of Central Bay (centre of the Moon's nearside). Latitude: 4.94° N, Longitude: 0.34° W.
The spacecraft's low altitude, combined with the high oblique angle and the low Sun elevation near the terminator, enhances the relief's details, showing a spectacular
'3D-like' view of the moonscape.
In such images, "people could see the Moon not from overhead, as if through a telescope, but as a wide landscape with a horizon, as if they were flying above it. This was how a pilot would see the Moon."
(Reynolds, p. 57)

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