The "Man On The Moon" Photo 5903  Probably the most famous and most widely recognized photograph ever taken. Photo 5903 (original ISD scan, cropped)  This scan is the original ISD scan made from the actual Ektachrome transparency shot by Armstrong on the moon. Photo 5903 (cropped, noise removed, color balanced, lens vignetting removed)  The famous "Man On The Moon" photo of Aldrin. This is one photo where I removed the Biogon 60mm F/5.6 lens's inherent vignetting in order to show that the lunar surface was evenly illuminated by the sun. This photo is as close to a true view of what Armstrong saw, in terms of color, brightness and contrast, when he photographed Aldrin. Be sure to look closely at Aldrin's watch in the full resolution photo version and note that the watch shows 11:14 PM CDT. Aldrin had his watch set to Houston Texas CDT since this was the time used by mission control. Thus photo 5903 was taken at 11:14 PM CDT on July 20, 1969, or 04:14 AM UT on July 21, 1969. NASA's Apollo Lunar Surface Journal says that the photo was taken within 5 minutes of the time shown on Aldrin's watch. The brighter patch behind Aldrin definitely was caused by the LM's descent engine. See enhanced versions of photos 5902 above, 5963 and 5964 further below, which show the same bright descent engine blast pattern. In any event, technically this photo is perfectly exposed since the brightest portions of Aldrin's suit just come close to reaching fully saturation and since there still are extremely faint details present in the deep shadow areas. I am still working on calculating the perspective distortion for photo 5903 since Armstrong tilted the Hasselblad camera with its 60mm Biogon lens approximately 20 degrees down relative to the horizon in order to take photo 5903. A lot of that tilt was due to the natural "lean forward" stance position needed to counter the weight of the personal life support system (PLSS) backpack. Armstrong also had the presence of mind to rotate the camera clockwise since he figured that if he didn't, then the sun's glare would be in the upper right of the frame and would completely wash out the photo. He probably also figured on getting a fair amount of the extremely bright gold colored Mylar covered landing pad and strut out of the photo as well. Or perhaps Armstrong just got lucky when he took this photo! Aldrin admits that Armstrong was a far better photographer than he was. This likely is why the majority of the Apollo 11 EVA photos were taken by Armstrong. Armstrong also had an uncanny knack for getting the exposures right. In all of his photos the brightest whites in the scenes come really close yet don't oversaturate the film. Apparently Armstrong took his assignment really seriously when NASA told the astronauts to take the camera equipment home with them and shoot tons of photos in order to gain experience using the camera gear. How high was the sun above the horizon when photo 5903 was taken?  At the Apollo 11 landing site on July 21, 1969 at 04:14UT when this photo was taken, the sun was at an altitude of approximately 14.75 degrees above the horizon. The screen shot at left is from a program called Celestia. It is a view from the Apollo 11 landing site on the lunar surface on July 21, 1969 at 04:14UT. Photo 5903 with lognormal curves applied This version of the above famous 5903 photo should dispel all Apollo hoax conspiracy claims that a second light source was present in the photo. As you can clearly see, the only illumination of Aldrin is the sun itself, the gold and bronze colored Mylar covering the LM struts and descent stage, the moon surface itself, and reflections off of Armstrong's white space suit. Not convinced? Examine the close-up views of Aldrin's visor reflection, further below, to see all of the bright objects which illuminated the shadow side of Aldrin's spacesuit. Portrait of Buzz Aldrin or an annotated version  A close-up of Aldrin taken from the above photo. The background was slightly darkened to remove glare caused by the sun and make the sky black. Visor close-up from photo 5903  Here I have removed the visor's gold tint and rotated the view to make the horizon horizontal. Note that the apparent visible phase of the Earth is misleading since the Earth's reflection from near the edge of the visor is greatly distorted by the spherically shaped visor. If you look closely at the image, it appears that the Biogon lens has some slight inherent on-axis astigmatism. This instead may have been caused by Armstrong not holding the camera quite steady enough for the given the exposure time, or by Aldrin slightly moving during the exposure. Mirrored, strongly enhanced and labeled visor close-up from photo 5903  This particular image is extremely important due to what image information is truly shown in the reflection off of Aldrin's visor. This photo is mirrored compared to the above photo in order to show what Aldrin saw through his visor. First, note that the Earth is offset to the right at a 13.9 degree angle relative to the camera and vertical. Second, this image allows us to determine exactly where Aldrin was standing relative to the LM, based on his position relative to the horizontally bent +Y pad landing probe, based on the reflected perspective for the upper support struts for the +Y main strut, and based on how much of the nearer upper -Z strut which is visible and not occluded by the side of the LM descent stage. I have drawn in burgundy colored lines from the bases of various objects in order to establish the vanishing point for all of the shadows. I also circled the flag's shadow in burgundy. It is obvious that the ground upon which the LM was sitting sloped up towards the western horizon since the vanishing point for the shadows is above the horizon. In particular, also note where the shadow of the top of the LM and Dish antenna hit the ground just to the right of Armstrong's elbow. The fact that the top of the LM's shadow is foreshortened also indicates that the ground further west from the LM progressively slopes up further away from the LM. Another indication that the ground slopes up towards the west horizon is provided by the length of Aldrin's shadow. Since the sun was at an altitude of 14.8 degrees when this photo was taken, we can calculate that Aldrin's shadow should have been nearly 25 feet long, assuming that the space suits were 6-1/2 feet tall. Thus the end of Aldrin's shadow, if the ground surrounding the LM and under the LM was level, should have fallen further back from the base of the solar wind particle collector pole if the ground was perfectly level. Photo 5903 (Aldrin's Visor View, distortion corrected)  My processed and distortion corrected view of the reflection in Aldrin's visor in the above 5903 photo. I have mirrored this image left-to-right in order to show what Aldrin saw from inside his visor when Armstrong shot the famous 5903 "Man On The Moon" photo. Yes, that is indeed the Earth above and somewhat to the right of Armstrong. You can also see that Armstrong had his gold colored visor pulled down when he shot the famous 5903 photo of Aldrin. So, just where was the Earth in the moon's sky above Aldrin's head?  Celestia gives us this answer. The Earth was at an altitude of almost exactly 59 degrees above the western lunar horizon on a bearing of 273 degrees along the western lunar horizon. The real kicker is when you compare a close-up of Celestia's representation of the Earth and its phase to the close-up of the Earth in photo 5924 further below. Armstrong-Aldrin position angle (bearing) at which 5903 was taken  This is only a preliminary result which assumes that the west lunar horizon, although elevated, is level. It probably was not. In order to figure out the bearing, you have to mentally draw a line from the camera on Armstrong's chest to its reflection off of Aldrin's spherically shaped visor. You also have to realize that the exact point on the surface of Aldrin's visor is the point on the visor which is closest to the camera. Eventually I will create a CAD model to visually show this concept. In any event, assuming that the west horizon was level and based on the above measured position angle of the Earth in the visor sky (an angle of 13.9 degrees), I zoomed out as far as I could in Celestia and through several iterations of tweaking the direction along the horizon at which I was looking, I found that a bearing of 248 degrees produces the correct 13.9 degree offset for the Earth relative to the zenith. Thus Aldrin was standing on a bearing, relative to Armstrong's position, of 68 degrees east relative to lunar north, and of course Armstrong was standing on a bearing of 248 degrees relative to Aldrin. Exact sun altitude and azimuth when 5903 was taken  As you can see, the sun was on a bearing of approximately 88.87 degrees relative to lunar north. The sun's altitude was approximately 14.78 degrees. Call the azimuth 89 degrees. 89 degrees minus 68 degrees is 21 degrees. Thus, assuming that the west lunar horizon was level, photo 5903 was taken at a bearing of 21 degrees northward from the sun's position in the sky above the eastern lunar horizon.