US gallery to display rare lunar images from 1850s, details here

The photo-show "By the Light of the Silvery Moon: A Century of Lunar Photographs" opens at the National Gallery of Art on July 14 presents 50 works from the 19th century to the 'space-age' 1960s. The upcoming exhibition traces how the lunar surface was captured starting as early as the 1850s.

This exhibition is curated by Diane Waggoner, curator of 19th-century photographs at the American gallery.

"As NASA planned where to land Apollo 11, the unmanned American Ranger, Surveyor, and Lunar Orbiter spacecraft journeyed to the Moon and transmitted images, creating otherworldly photographs not only of the lunar areas visible from the Earth, but also of the Moon's far side," the gallery said in a statement.

From more recent times, displayed will be a selection of photographs from these missions. From Apollo 11, glass stereographs taken by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin show close-up views of three-inch-square areas of the lunar surface.