NASA's Apollo Lunar Surface Journal (ALSJ) records the details of each mission's period on the lunar surface as a timeline of the activities undertaken, the dialogue between the crew and Mission Control, and the relevant documentary records. Each photograph taken on the mission is catalogued there and each panoramic photograph sequence is also recorded. This page tabulates the Apollo 16 panoramas and, where appropriate, provides updated representations of the panoramas blended using more recent technologies than the originals.
Context Apollo 16 was the second of Apollo's "J Missions" using an enhanced Lunar Module that was capable of supporting a 3-day stay on the lunar surface *and* the delivery of the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV or "Rover") to the surface to allow the crew to extend the range of their exploration and to provide remote TV coverage. In terms of photography, Apollo 16's crew surpassed their predecessors on Apollo 15 in no short measure. 1800 frames were captured whilst on the lunar surface resulting in around 100 panoramic sequences. An interesting point that arises in the subsequent tables is the ratio of panoramas taken by the Commander (John Young) and the Lunar Module Pilot (Charlie Duke) - Duke takes around four times as many as his colleague and this 4:1 ratio is the highest across all the missions. The Lunar Module (LM), Orion, landed with its door and ladder leg (AKA "+Z strut") pointing approximately due west. The Sun's elevation was around 22°-25° for EVA 1, 34°-38° for EVA 2, and 46°-49° for EVA 3. The higher elevations of the Sun across the EVAs can be seen through the improvement in the quality of the panoramas; the Sun itself, and any resulting lens flair, is barely noticeable whereas it featured prominently in the earlier missions.
Rover Panoramas (LVR Pans) Charlie Duke is credited with inventing a new procedure during EVA 2; the "LRV Pan" or "Rover Pan" (also known as a "360"). The process of getting on and off of the rover was protracted due to the bulky suit and backpack that the astronauts wore, but Duke realised that by having Young drive the rover in a tight circle he could snap a panoramic sequence simply by pointing the camera straight ahead and continuously pressing the shutter button from his seated position ("click - click - click - click - click -click") Although efficient in terms of time and effort, the approach presented some issues:-
Panoramic sequences are best shot from a single position - in these cases the camera was moved (or was being moved) for each shot Every shot contains foreground items (the rover's TV camera and antenna) that impact on as much as 50% of each image The camera is subject to the movements and orientation of the rover Camera settings have to be changed "On the fly" The first noted LRV Pan was the sequence AS16-115-18503 to 18511 - see "Timestamp 148:41:11" below. Empirical analysis suggests that the sequence is limited to AS16-115-18107 to 18511 and the result is shown below:-
Non-EVA (LM-based) panoramas By this, the fifth landing, the need for contingency photos taken from the Lunar Module was greatly reduced, so low in fact, that only one panorama was taken through each of the windows (and subsequently combined). No panoramas were taken from the LM between the EVAs or after the final return.
EVA Panoramas - EVA 1
EVA Panoramas - EVA 2
EVA Panoramas - EVA 3 Somewhere between EVAs 2 and 3, the Reseau Plate on one of the cameras was smeared and all of the pictures on magazine 116 were impacted. Note the example shown below:-
Table Column Key Mission Flight Number Time (MET) Time since lift-off (MET - Mission Elapsed Time) EVA # Moonwalk number Title Title as extracted from source (i.e. ALSJ/LPI) Astronaut Who took the images Magazine NASA film canister number Type Either Colour or Monochrome Start Frame First frame of the panoramic sequence End Frame Last frame of the panoramic sequence Source Where the panorama was sourced from (Typically ALSJ or LPI) Reference Panorama Image referred to by ALSJ/LPI for the given Title Sourced Alternate Alternate image(s) referred to by ALSJ/LPI for the given Title Updated Panorama Unofficial panorama generated by a non-NASA organisation/individual Notes Additional detail
Post mission analysis The primary purpose of taking the panoramic images was to provide the context, or placement, of the activities undertaken during the EVAs. The initial analysis was presented in the Apollo 16 Preliminary Science Report. The images continue to be revisited periodically with new, cleaner, representations of the panoramas after being processed by increasingly sophisticated software packages. Examples of these include LPI's Apollo Surface Panorama page, NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) 'Anniversary' Panoramas,, Mike Constantine's Apollo: The Panoramas, and Andy Saunders' Apollo Remastered.
See also Apollo 11 Apollo 12 Apollo 14 Apollo 15
Footnotes These tables catalogue the panoramic photos captured during the Apollo 16 mission. Entries in the 'Updated Panorama' column have been created using panorama blending software working on the High Resolution scans of the original frames held as the "Project Apollo Archive" on Flickr. Where a Reference Panorama is pre-existing, that has been used in preference to creating a new variant, unless there is additional value to be gained by regenerating it. Apart from some source image masking, all such new variants have been created using the minimum of processing, relying on the software package's inherent blending and optimisation capabilities - typically, such panoramas have been created within 3–5 minutes as they are intended to be 'representations' rather than 'definitive' examples. Consequently, brightness and contrast levels, as well as the removal of some frame-edges, have not been adjusted. All 5-digit image references relate to the last 5 digits of the image names. The full image names follow the format AS16-MMM-NNNNN, where MMM relates to the Magazine number and NNNNN is the identifier. EVA images include the overlaying of Réseau plate "crosses" to assist in their post-mission evaluation. Almost all tabular data, such as time and image identifiers, has been extracted from the source location such as the ALSJ or LPI. The entries in the 'Title' column relate to the term used for the panorama as listed in the source's 'Assembled Panoramas' section.
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