W-I-D-E on Wednesday: A Treasure

I've taken the liberty of making a diptych of two wide photos for Bobsblips's Widwed challenge this week. As I'm just 2 days postop from my hernia repair on Monday I'm not walking very far from home for the next few days so I wanted to find a suitable "treasure" inside the house. (My Editor wasn't keen to be photographed, and she's not very wide anyway!)

I chose to blip a couple of double-page spreads from this fabulous book ("Apollo Remastered") which documents the whole Apollo program photographically. My Editor gave me the book as a present for a "big" birthday in late 2022 - and to me it's a real treasure. In that year a British guy called Andy Saunders got access to the original flight films from the Apollo space program back in the 1960s - the films are usually securely stored in a freezer, to help maintain their condition, in Building 8 at Johnson Space Center, Houston, but he was able to scan them and digitally remaster them so that they're much better than the originals. He then used them to create this book.


As a lad in the 1960s I followed the Apollo program avidly and have lots of newspaper cuttings from the time. I even sat up most of the night back in July 1969, glued to the TV when Apollo 11 landed at Tranquility Base in the early hours (British time), with a camera pointed at the TV screen to capture the moment for myself (see the extra - although it's not very clear!). Hence my love for this book. It also takes me back to a trip we made in May 2015 to the Houston Space Centre where we did a guided VIP tour of the premises.

Look large on a computer if you can - it's worth it!