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Apollo 15 Zodiacal light views
The four views of zodiacal light were photographed while the Apollo 15 command module was approaching sunrise while orbiting the moon. Although the sun is still behind the edge of the moon at lower right of each frame, its light is scattered by reflections from countless interplanetary dust grains which lie in or near to the orbital plane of the planets in our system. The view at upper left in this group is a 20 second exposure approximately centered on the ecliptic at 25 degrees elongation from the Sun. The view at upper right is in the same region but exposed for 60 seconds. The lower two views are at 15 degrees elongation with exposure times of ten seconds on the left and 30 seconds on the right. The streaking of the star fields occurs because the camera was rigidly mounted in the righ-hand rendezvous window while the spacecraft was making attitude changes to hold the line-of-sight approximately horizontal to the lunar surface and to the plane of orbit.
Catalog Date: 01 August 1971
Film Type: 8x10 BW
NASA image: S71-58221