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Lot 359
[Apollo 15] THE 'BLACK MARBLE': rare UV photograph of Planet Earth during translunar coast Alfred Worden, David Scott or James Irwin, 26 July – 7 August 1971
14 – 28 April 2025, 12:00 CEST
Paris, Avenue HocheSold for €460.80 inc. premium
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[Apollo 15] THE 'BLACK MARBLE': rare UV photograph of Planet Earth during translunar coast
Alfred Worden, David Scott or James Irwin, 26 July – 7 August 1971
Printed 1971.
Vintage gelatin silver print on fibre-based paper [NASA image AS15-99-13413].
Numbered "NASA AS15-99-13413" in black in the top margin (issued by NASA Manned Spacecraft Centre, Houston, Texas).
25.4 x 20.3 cm. (10 x 8 in.)
An exceptionally rare ultraviolet portrait of Earth from deep space.
James Irwin described this profound view of our home planet from Apollo 15: "As we got further and further away, the Earth diminished in size. Finally, it shrank to the size of a marble—the most beautiful you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger, it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man." (Kelley, Plate 38)
This unreleased ultraviolet photograph of our home planet was taken from a distance of 49,511 nautical miles (91,694 km) using a specialized 105mm lens and spectroscopic film.
This was a meticulously planned shot, executed to expand our understanding of Earth's atmospheric properties from deep space. To capture this unique ultraviolet image, the Apollo 15 crew had to carefully manoeuvre the Command Module Endeavour, ensuring that window 5, the only UV-transmitting window, was precisely aligned with Earth. The Hasselblad camera, equipped with a special 105mm UV-transmitting lens and magazine 99/N, was mounted in a bracket at the window to achieve the required exposure. (From the AFJ mission transcript at 010:10:07 GET.)
Printed 1971.
Vintage gelatin silver print on fibre-based paper [NASA image AS15-99-13413].
Numbered "NASA AS15-99-13413" in black in the top margin (issued by NASA Manned Spacecraft Centre, Houston, Texas).
25.4 x 20.3 cm. (10 x 8 in.)
An exceptionally rare ultraviolet portrait of Earth from deep space.
James Irwin described this profound view of our home planet from Apollo 15: "As we got further and further away, the Earth diminished in size. Finally, it shrank to the size of a marble—the most beautiful you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger, it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man." (Kelley, Plate 38)
This unreleased ultraviolet photograph of our home planet was taken from a distance of 49,511 nautical miles (91,694 km) using a specialized 105mm lens and spectroscopic film.
This was a meticulously planned shot, executed to expand our understanding of Earth's atmospheric properties from deep space. To capture this unique ultraviolet image, the Apollo 15 crew had to carefully manoeuvre the Command Module Endeavour, ensuring that window 5, the only UV-transmitting window, was precisely aligned with Earth. The Hasselblad camera, equipped with a special 105mm UV-transmitting lens and magazine 99/N, was mounted in a bracket at the window to achieve the required exposure. (From the AFJ mission transcript at 010:10:07 GET.)
Footnotes
"You can see the whole Earth at about ten thousand miles. And you start taking pictures. You take one at ten, and one at fifteen, and one at twenty, etc., etc. And of course, they're all the same; it's just that the Earth takes less of the field of view of the camera as you get further away. But you don't think that. You think, oh, I wanna take another picture now. I wanna take another picture now. It's spectacular. Oh, it's spectacular."
David Scott (Chaikin, Voices, p. 29)