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Selfies weren’t a common practice when humanity first landed on the moon.
Neil Armstrong was the first man and the first photographer to set foot on the lunar surface. All of the photos he took, including the iconic boot print, were of fellow NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin.
But Armstrong’s face and other details of the mission were finally revealed in 2019, when photographer Andy Saunders used an enhancement technique called stacking to produce the clearest composite image of Armstrong’s iconic excursion.
Since then, Saunders has applied his technique to 400 images from the Apollo program. His picture book, “Apollo Remastered,” was published in September.
“I want people to feel like this is the closest they can get to walking on the moon,” Saunders told CNN.
During his 10,000 hours of work on Apollo images, Saunders set himself another task: solving the case of the missing lunar golf ball.
In 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American to travel to space, and 10 years later, he was the first person to play golf on the moon.
The late NASA astronaut, known for his zest for life, smuggled a custom 6 iron club head and some golf balls to the moon during Apollo 14.
At the end of a nine-hour walk on the lunar surface, Shepard placed his head on the end of a sampling tool and literally spun toward the moon, one-handed, of course.
Proud of his second shot after an initial cut into a crater, Shepard said the golf ball sailed for “miles and miles and miles.”
Now, Saunders has determined how far Shepard’s shot traveled and where the golf ball landed. probably still sits on the moon, and it’s not as far away as anyone thought.
Meanwhile, the Artemis I mission is set to make one final lap around the moon before setting a course back to Earth next week, and the Orion spacecraft is providing plenty of glimpses of its historic journey along the way.
In the oldest park in Kenya, rare prehistoric-looking elephants with huge tusks stand out among the “theater of nature”.
Conservationist Joseph Kyalo grew up watching the wandering giants, known as Super Tuskers, throughout the protected area of Tsavo East National Park.
These pachyderms have tusks that weigh more than 100 pounds (45 kilograms) and are so long that they normally graze on the ground. But these striking features also make elephants the primary target for ivory poachers.
Kyalo and other members of the nonprofit Tsavo Trust aim to protect the Super Tuskers and grow their dwindling population.
For more than a century, thousands of shaped and engraved pieces of slate resembling owls have been found in tombs and graves in Portugal and Spain.
After puzzling them for decades, the researchers finally determined that the artifacts served a playful purpose: as toys
Children made and used the adorable owls, which included a perfect spot for a tuft of feathers on top of their heads, around 5,000 years ago.
The slate pieces are in good company with a number of ancient finds that may have once delighted children over the centuries.
The James Webb Space Telescope, that can detect incredibly distant galaxies, has been observing cosmic objects a little closer to home.
The space observatory directed its infrared gaze to Saturn’s largest moon Titan to peer through the thick haze of its atmosphere and spy on dreamy clouds.
The intriguing world is the only moon to harbor a thick atmosphere and have Earth-like rivers and lakes on its surface.
Meanwhile, during a visit to NASA headquarters In Washington, Vice President Kamala Harris and French President Emmanuel Macron were among the first to see a new Webb image depicting the beautiful chaos of entwined and merging galaxies.
Photos of a rare snow leopard, snuggling golden snub-nosed monkeys and a playful polar bear cub are just a few of the images shortlisted for the 2022 People’s Choice Award for Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
The 25 powerful images act as a tour of the hidden corners of nature around the world. Endangered species and animals threatened by the climate crisis take center stage, highlighting their need for help.
A picture shows a fish trapped inside a rubber glove, revealing how discarded items it can infiltrate places that should be havens for wildlife.
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These stories may make you think twice:
— Bats are not that different from heavy metal singers. Both use the same low-frequency “grunt” technique when vocalizing, according to new research.
— A wayward star became snack food for a supermassive black hole, creating a rare cosmic event that splashed a bright flash across our night sky billions of years later.
— The remains of a previously unknown dinosaur with an unusually flat head have been found on an island home to dwarf prehistoric creatures.
