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Nearly 50 years have passed since the Apollo program first delivered astronauts to the surface of the Moon.
In that time, millions of words have been written about that mission, and the pictures of the world have become more iconic images.
But there is one problem for one person, one of them, one of them, one of them, one of them. As spectacular as they are, they can only do so much to make you feel like you're there.
There is a way, however, thanks to image software like Photoshop, to turn two-dimensional images into 3D ones. It takes a lot of painstaking work, just ask Queen's Brian May.
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He may be best known for his day job, playing guitar in one of the world's biggest rock bands, but May also holds a doctorate in astrophysics and is a lifelong fan of stereo photography, a photographic process that creates 3D images from prints or digital images .
May 1, 2011, 2:00 pm, 3:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 3:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 3:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 3:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 3:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 3:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 3:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 2:00 pm, 2:00 pm The largest number of people in the United States, with David Eicher.
BBC Future visited London at the London Stereoscopic Company (LSC), located on a leafy country lane about 30 minutes west of London. Here, the 71-year-old guitarist has accumulated a huge collection of stereo images stretching back to Victorian times. It's a personal museum to the 3D image, all sparked by a happy childhood accident which has a lifelong love of stereo photography.
When May was seven, he found a card inside a cereal packet, printed with two side-by-side images. For a few pennies, he could buy a stereo viewer that would transform them into three dimensions. May bought the viewer and the image of a hippo opening up his massive maw was revealed in a more realistic way than he had experienced before. It clearly had an effect; ever since May has been obsessed with stereography, or stereoscopy, as the Victorians knew it. He still has the card, the viewer, and even the envelope it came in. When he bought his first camera – a cheap model bought from Woolworths – he learned how to make stereo images with it. He shows the BBC Future team his first stereo image, of his father redecorating the kitchen in his childhood home, some 60 years ago.
No one had ever done a book on the whole Apollo history and we thought 'Can we do it, is there enough material? – Brian May
The LSC has already published many books about 3D photography.
"The Moon Mission book came about because we're all kind of nuts about the moon shot, and it all seems like yesterday to us old people. It's 50 years ago – incredible, "he says.
"No one had ever done a book on the whole Apollo history and we thought 'Can we do it, is there enough material?'. So my good friend Claudia Manzoni, who spends her whole life trawling through NASA archives, gradually sifted through and found images which looked promising. "
Back in the heyday of movie, there were special 3D cameras made by a number of companies. They're a distinctive design, usually having a lens at the front; one for the viewfinder, and two that take the images, one after the other. It's a process that has fallen out of favor since computer graphics, but May have used them so long in the future.
Brian May tells BBC Future how the stereo images are created
"3D is all about getting two views … we have two eyes, and the reason we see things in wonderful glorious 3D around us every second of the day is our brain map in our brains. It is something really mysterious and incredible, you can not really get your hands on it.
"What you're trying to do in 3D photography is to recreate that effect, so you take a picture of it, and you make sure that it goes to that eye, and this picture goes to that eye.
The astronauts did not take stereo cameras up with them, but they were trained in a stereo photography method that would allow them to use their 3D images.
While his mates are the first men on the Moon, he's circling and taking pictures of the craters on the far side of the Moon – he had great presence of mind – Brian May
"Very often they were too busy to remember it and practice it," May says. "But they were taught to do the 'cha-cha' thing – take a picture here and a picture there and eventually became a 3D picture. Occasionally you're lucky enough to find one of those.
"You also get someone like Michael Collins, [Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s crewmate on the Apollo 11 mission] While he was in the moon, he was circling and taking pictures of the moon on the side of the Moon – he had great presence of mind.
"Recently we spoke to him and asked him if he did it on purpose and he said, 'Actually no'. He's deliberately taken photographs, but he's not aware of their stereoscopic visibilities. "
Finding the images was one thing – then May and his team had to process the images so that they would work in 3D.
"For me it's a passion, I'm completely geeky where this is so so we're going to be with you." they work as a 3D. That's what you see in the book.
"I'm not the first person to make 3D pictures in this way.
May can add inventor to his long list of achievements, as well. At the back of each copy of the book is his patented Owl stereoscopic viewer, a pair of plastic lenses that help create the 3D effect. The Owl is the result of Queen's collection, and combining the best bits of various designs.
"If you look at any one of 3D images in here … you just take a moment to allow it to focus and your eyes to relax and … wow! You see this thing in 3D. We were able, in some cases, to go into movie movies. For instance, we've got a movie of Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space, and he's not got a stereo camera for himself, but he does have a video camera, and he's rotating. "The image, from Leonov's haunting short film of him floating outside the Soviet Voskhod 2 spacecraft in 1965, the letters (USSR in Cyrillic) emblazoned on his helmet.
"For me, it's a nice coming together," says May. "It is stereoscopic work, and it's also astrophysics and it's astronautics, and to bring them together is great. It was not on my own, we have a great team. David Eicher wrote the text, he's a wonderful writer and editor-in-chief of Astronomy magazine, and we have a team we put this together.
"I'm very proud of this book, I think it's one of the most beautiful we've managed to make, we're going down the line with making stereo books, I think this is the sixth we've done. A lot of them have been classic 3D, Victorian 3D, which I love but it's the same principle. And this, if anything, brings Victorian 3D technique into the 21st Century.
"The guy who wrote our afterword – Jim Lovell [Apollo 13 crew member] – said this is the closest you can feel like you're there. "
No story about the race to the Moon. Unsurprisingly, May can remember exactly where he was when he happened.
"I will never forget it. I think we're all here, we're remembering where we are. And I remember exactly where we were, I was down in Cornwall with Rog, our drummer, in the early days of Queen … And we were at his house, clustered around this tiny little TV screen, and we all watched it. It seemed like the most incredible thing ever. And to me it still seems fresh and new and exciting. But I'm 50 years older. "
I was lucky enough to spend time with Neil Armstrong, and I wish I was enjoying it at the time – Brian May
Most of us will only know Armstrong, who died in 2012, from what he said on the Moon's surface, and the photographs, but May have a more personal connection to him.
"I was lucky enough to spend time with Neil Armstrong, and I wish I was enjoying it at the time," he says. "I had some time on my face with La Palma, and we talked about the world and its problems. We did not talk too much about what he'd done on the Moon. But I figured at the time. But I wish I had known then, I'd have asked him better questions. "
Mission Moon 3D by David J. Eicher and Brian May is published by the London Stereoscopic Company on 23 October. You can also visit the book's site, www.missionmoon3-d.com
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