Apollo 11: Armstrong's Lunar Selfie
A photograph of Buzz Aldrin
standing on the Moon taken by
Neil Armstrong,
was digitally reversed to create this lunar selfie.
Captured in July 1969 following the Apollo 11 moon landing,
Armstrong's original photograph
recorded not only the
magnificent desolation
of an unfamiliar world,
but Armstrong himself reflected in Aldrin's curved visor.
In the
unwrapped image,
the
spherical distortion
of the reflection in Aldrin's helmet has been reversed.
The transformed view features Armstrong himself
from Aldrin's perspective.
Since Armstrong took the original picture,
today the image
represents a fifty-four year old lunar selfie.
Aldrin's visor reflection in the original image appears here on the left.
Bright (but distorted) planet
Earth hangs in the lunar sky
above Armstrong's figure, toward the upper right.
A foil-wrapped leg of the
Eagle lander
and Aldrin's long shadow stretching
across the lunar surface are prominently visible.
In 2024
NASA's Artemis II mission
will return humans to the Moon.