Taking images of the moon through the centuries

[the lemming]

Having a stab at photographing the moon this week got me wondering about how much technology has advanced, and so quickly in a very short space of time.  If you could step back ten years, what sort of technology would have been needed for someone to take an image of the moon of at least the same quality and how much would it have cost?

The image could either be in a printed format or on a TV screen or monitor.

 

And if you were to jump back a decade at a time to the 90's, 80's, 70's and so on, what technology was available then and how much would it have cost to produce an image as good a,s or as close to the image I took this week?

 

 

[Cornelius Varley]

Ten years ago the equipment would have been more or less the same. Similar telescopes and modified webcams or expensive imaging devices. Pre digital 20th century, 35mm film and telescopes you would still recognise example. Go back to the 19th century James Nasmyth and John Carpenter created models of the moon from their observations and then photographed them.

[Stub Mandrel]

I have a copy of 'exploring the moon through binoculars', 1969.

Images here (that are better than mine) taht show comparable detail to ones in the book that state 'taken through 120" reflector".

[LukeSkywatcher]

Here seems to be as good a place as any to post the following:

Today i was food shopping in my local Tesco (not many lettuce on the shelves), and to my absolute amazement in the computer/electronics section i happened to spot a 5 pack of cassette tapes (well several of the 5 packs). Thinking back to the days of cassette tapes, the ones i saw TODAY were the best of the best BACK THEN (TDK). Essentially 90 min of recording time on each.

It really took me back. I have not seen a cassette tape for over 20 yrs (let alone for sale). I'll stick to CD or digital downloads though.

Incidentally, my 1st digital camera was also about 20 yrs ago.It was a Kodak (something or other) USB webcam which could be taken anywhere (without USB cable of computer) once the internal battery was fully charged and could take up to about 400 images. There was no SD card slot or anything (you were limited to internal memory)

I took it with me to Tunisia and very quickly filled the memory. Dont ask me what MP it was............probably about 2Mp. Thinking back, the images were a bit blurry (nothing to do with my ability to take images).....but back then, it was what we had. Absolutely no manual settings what-so-ever. 

I still remember the days when my dad had a Kodak camera (using the 35mm film) and the flash on it looked like 4 ice cubes stacked on top of each other and stuck into the top of the camera.

Back then (late 70's-early 80's)............that camera was top of the range.

WOW!!!!!!!!!. A quick search online and here is the camera my dad had back then and the "ice cube" flash:

 

 

 

 

[barkis]

I never tire of lunar  of looking at Lunar  Images, an I hope  AP'ers
never tire of taking them.  There has been some wonderful examples  throughout the 
years shown on the Forum, and a number of them really were nailed on superb.
Won't name the authors, I think most of them are well known to many of us.
They raised the bar to a level we could all strive for, and hope to reach.
Of course the same goes for Planetary work too. Deeps Sky is another animal altogether.

[the lemming]

2 hours ago, Cornelius Varley said:

Ten years ago the equipment would have been more or less the same. Similar telescopes and modified webcams or expensive imaging devices.

Ten years ago I would not have been able to afford any equipment that would produce an image of the quality I took with a single camera mounted on a tripod.  Just 10 years ago a top of the range Nikon D3 dSLR would have set me back £4,000 and that was before I added a lens of 800mm which only became available in 2013 for an eye watering price of around £13,000 extra.

 

I have no idea about telescopes, mounts and such like but I'm guessing that the kit needed would have cost quite a bit too.  Go back another decade and I'm guessing that my pockets would have needed to be even deeper to get an image of comparable size and resolution.  Would it be too much a stretch of the imagination that organisations like NASA or universities would have been able to produce such images?

 

Yet today, weather permitting, if I tried a bit harder I could produce this image hand-held from a camera that has never seen or been near a telescope.  I wonder how much it would have cost to create the same image in size and resolution?

Obviously there is technology out there that can blow my image out of the water in every respect, but in the 60's and 70's would the same image have been classed as cutting edge?

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Going back a few more decades, this is one of Henry Draper's images of the Moon from 1863.

(Taken from here.) They would have been expensive images in terms of equipment, much of which he had to make himself, and especially in terms of time. With no helpful internet forums to consult he had to experiment with photographic emulsions, exposure times and techniques.

[barkis]

2 hours ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

Going back a few more decades, this is one of Henry Draper's images of the Moon from 1863.

(Taken from here.) They would have been expensive images in terms of equipment, much of which he had to make himself, and especially in terms of time. With no helpful internet forums to consult he had to experiment with photographic emulsions, exposure times and techniques.

As It has been said many times, "We stand on the Shoulders of Giants"

[Stub Mandrel]

4 hours ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

Going back a few more decades, this is one of Henry Draper's images of the Moon from 1863.

That is great to see, thanks!

[bejay1957]

16 hours ago, LukeSkywatcher said:

Here seems to be as good a place as any to post the following:

Today i was food shopping in my local Tesco (not many lettuce on the shelves), and to my absolute amazement in the computer/electronics section i happened to spot a 5 pack of cassette tapes (well several of the 5 packs). Thinking back to the days of cassette tapes, the ones i saw TODAY were the best of the best BACK THEN (TDK). Essentially 90 min of recording time on each.

It really took me back. I have not seen a cassette tape for over 20 yrs (let alone for sale). I'll stick to CD or digital downloads though.

Incidentally, my 1st digital camera was also about 20 yrs ago.It was a Kodak (something or other) USB webcam which could be taken anywhere (without USB cable of computer) once the internal battery was fully charged and could take up to about 400 images. There was no SD card slot or anything (you were limited to internal memory)

I took it with me to Tunisia and very quickly filled the memory. Dont ask me what MP it was............probably about 2Mp. Thinking back, the images were a bit blurry (nothing to do with my ability to take images).....but back then, it was what we had. Absolutely no manual settings what-so-ever. 

I still remember the days when my dad had a Kodak camera (using the 35mm film) and the flash on it looked like 4 ice cubes stacked on top of each other and stuck into the top of the camera.

Back then (late 70's-early 80's)............that camera was top of the range.

WOW!!!!!!!!!. A quick search online and here is the camera my dad had back then and the "ice cube" flash:

 

 

 

 

Actually Paul that Kodak is 110 film format - a relatively short-lived attempt to offer 'compactness' over the 126 film format while offering a telephoto magnifier; I had a Boots offering that had a built-in flashgun, but image quality wasn't great with the small frame size.  35mm 'compacts' back then were like bricks - I had (still have) Panasonic and Samsung 35mm compacts, huge compared to a Zenit Lomo LC-A I later bought.

While I am not so up on scope optics, is there a development parallel with camera optics?  With those 35mm compacts I mentioned, the Panasonic had a 2x zoom and the Samsung a 3x zoom - with a huge telescoping zoom extension lens; back then 3x zoom was considered a superzoom, partly due to the 35mm frame size and cost of zoom lenses for such (still have a 1980s Which Camera somewhere, with a megazoom comparison test - one of the cameras was pushing 4x zoom!).  My first digicam in 1997 was a Kodak DC235, 1.3MP and 2x zoom; now amongst my camera collection I have a 16MP, 30x zoom Panasonic digicam that I can fit in my pocket - all too easy to forget just how much imaging and optics have progressed together in 20 years.