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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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It is moving up toward 1 o'clock and in toward the center; keep it going in that direction.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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It's looking better. You're holding it about 1 or 2 o'clock. Looking better. Give us a little more in that same direction. You're down at 3 o'clock now. We see about half of what you see. Too much. It is disappearing at our 5 o'clock. Now it is coming back. It is half off—screen at our 2 o'clock.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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And it's disappeared off at our 3 o'clock. There, It is coming back in now. It is headed toward the center of our screen.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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It is right in the center of our screen. Just hold her—hold her steady. It is really looking good. Okay. We have —
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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What you're seeing, Mike, is a—Houston, what you are seeing is the Western Hemisphere. Looking—at the top is the North Pole; in the center—just lower to the center is South America—all the way down to Cape Horn. I can see Baja California and the southwestern part of the United States. There is a big long cloud bank going northeast, covers a lot of the Gulf of Mexico, going up to the eastern part of the United States, and it appears now that the east coast is cloudy, I can see clouds over parts of Mexico; the parts of Central America are clear. And we can also see the white, bright spots of the subsolar point on the light side of the earth.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Roger. Could you give me some ideas about the colors, and also, could you try a slight maneuver? It is disappearing. We're seeing about half of it. It is going off to our 12 o'clock. Now it is going off to our 3 o'clock. That is the wrong direction. Yes, that is a good direction.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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We need another small correction to bring it to our center screen. If you could maneuver toward the terminator, that is the part of it we are missing. We are getting the lighted portion. There you go; that's fine. Stop it right there.
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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Okay. For colors, waters are all sort of a royal blue; clouds, of course, are bright white; the reflection off the earth is—appears much greater than the moon. The land areas are generally a brownish—sort of dark brownish to light brown in texture. Many of the vortices of clouds can be seen of the various weather cells. A long band of—it appears cirrus clouds that extend from the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico going straight out across the Atlantic. The terminator, of course, cuts through the Atlantic Ocean right now, going from north to south. Southern Hemisphere is almost completely clouded over, and up near the North Pole there is quite a few clouds. Southwestern Texas and southwestern United States is clear. I'd say there are some clouds up in the northwest and over in the northeast portion.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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A little bit more. Stop her right there and hold it. It keeps slipping up a little bit; could you maneuver slightly more toward the terminator?
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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We are getting about half of the earth, Frank. The top half—our top half which includes the dark portion it—is obscured.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Yes, we are seeing it. We are missing the portion of the earth that is over toward the terminator. The dark portion of the earth is what we are not picking up. We are getting about three-quarters or four-fifths of the rest of it.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Stop right there. That is worse, Bill. Go back where you were. You made it disappear to our 3 o'clock. Now it's coming back. Okay. Stop right there. Now you are back where you were, and we need a motion that is about 90 degrees to that last one you gave us.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Stop right there. Okay. Now we have lost a different half of it. I need a motion 90 degrees to that last one.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, Houston. If you can stick your polarizing filter in front of the camera without disturbing anything else, it might improve the quality slightly.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Still looking good. That didn't make much of a change one way or another, but in general, considering how far away you are, it's looking excellent.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Well, I hope that everyone enjoys the picture that we are taking of themselves. How far away from earth now, Jim, about?
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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Frank, what I keep imagining is if I am some lonely traveler from another planet what I would think about the earth at this altitude, whether I think it would be inhabited or not.
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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I was just kind of curious if I would land on the blue or the brown part of the earth.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Roger. This picture is drifting off center again. If you could make another correction to bring it back. I couldn't tell you which direction, but you're going the right way, you're going the right way. A little bit more; a little bit more. Whoa, stop right there. That's the best centering we have had, Apollo 8. If you could just hold that, that's perfect,
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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To give you some idea, Mike, of what we can see: I can pick out the southwest coastline of the Gulf and where Houston should be, and also the mouth of the Mississippi; I can see Baja California and that particular area. I am using a monocular that we have aboard.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Right. Well, we are seeing the entire earth now including the terminator. Course we can't see anything past the terminator at all. Are you able with your binoculars to see the dark horizon? Anything past the terminator?
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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Negative, Mike. We can't see anything past the terminator with the binoculars or without them. This earth is just too bright, and it cuts down the night adaptation to see anything on the dark side.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Since this is winter—since this is winter time in the northern hemisphere, we can see all of the South Pole and the southern ice cap, and not too much of the North Pole.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Negative?
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Okay.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Try putting it back in front of the camera one more time.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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And once again, we need a small attitude correction. Our earth is disappearing up and to the right. Our earth and your earth. The wrong way, wrong way. A little bit more. Okay. That is fine if you can hold it right there. Oops! Now it's slipping back off again. Okay. Keep coming a little bit more, a little bit more. Okay. Ninety degrees to that direction; that is the wrong 90, the other way. There we go. A little bit more. Nope, wrong way, wrong way; I am sorry. Keep coming in that direction. No, it is gone up at our 12 o'clock. There we go, it is coming back down. There we go, it's coming back down, it's coming back down. Bring it down a little bit more. Okay. Stop. Now we need 90 degrees to that direction again.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Well, that has disappeared, just practically. We were wondering if there was any chance of your looking out one of the other windows and seeing the moon? Hey, it is coming back in, Bill. Okay. Hold it right there. That is just fine for the earth right where you are. That is extremely good on the earth if you can just hold that.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Roger. Thank you, and it is centered very well. We get a very slight improvement with this, but in general, it is very good considering the distance. How about the moon, Frank? Is it visible through one of your other windows? Could you get it visible with a small maneuver?
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Roger. I understand. You are still very well centered with your picture. We noticed a couple of jumps in the apparent intensity. Did you make some filter changes?
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Roger. We tried to put that other red filter in front of it, but it didn't seem to fit.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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We would—On a final test when you get down to the end of your allotted time here, we would like you to remove all filters and let us see how it looks with all filters removed, and then we would like to get several spotmeter readings at the very end after the test.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Roger. We have it, and if you could maneuver it toward the terminator slightly, you would again center our picture.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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That is the right direction. Keep coming. Now that is the wrong direction, Frank. Did you —
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Well, negative. I need another maneuver toward the terminator. It is drifting off the screen to our 11 o'clock. We appear to need a maneuver toward the terminator, Frank.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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No, that is apparently the wrong way, Frank. We are starting to lose the picture. There you go. That is the correct way.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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That is just fine, Frank. That's great. We would like to, at the conclusion here, take three spotmeter readings. You can do that at any time at your convenience. We would just like to get some after-the-fact readings on the earth intensity.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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We have Haney down here following your trajectory, so all is well. He says you're 10 minutes from the moon's sphere of influence.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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You can tell Jim he is getting pretty ham-handed with that P21; he got a perilune altitude three-tenths of a mile off what we are predicting down here.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Are we going to leave it at that, or are we going to correct it to make it lower?
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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How does everything look, Mike, all our systems and everything? See any switches out of place?
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Negative. I'll take a check around here, but it is looking good. Just a second.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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We are all over the cabin, Mike, like monkeys, and I wanted to make sure we didn't hit anything.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, Houston. Everything is looking good down here. All switches and systems are GO.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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We are having a playback of your TV shows and are all enjoying it down here. It was better than yesterday because it didn't preempt the football game.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Thank you. Don't tell me they cut off a football game; didn't they learn from Heidi?
Expand selection down Contract selection up -
Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Well, you and Heidi are running neck and neck in the telephone call department.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Hey, Jerry, how much water does this—the water dispenser in the lower equipment bay, the one that puts out hot and cold water—how much comes out of that with each shot?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Stand by. I'll take a check on that. And, by the way, welcome to the moon's sphere.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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My handy LMP had his schematics out at the drop of a hat and informs me that it's 1 ounce per cycle.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, looks like the flying EECOM the ground EECOM came to a dead heat on that one.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay, 8. We want to run a little exercise on the ground here to make are that we're able to dump the tape and bring the voice portion back to Houston in a timely manner. So we plan to dump your tape, and we're going to exercise the procedure on the ground to get it back here and take a listen to it. We believe that we have something on the tape already unless you have recorded over it after the last dump. Just to make sure, we'd like to have you just say a few words, give us a short count or something on the tape and anything else that you might want to put on there. And we're going to do this in the next 5 minutes before we get away from Madrid. That's the site we want to exercise, so we'll go ahead and do that, and we'll tell you before we make the dump.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay. Ken, we put a few comments on the last of the tape after we heard from you, and it's being rewound now, and you can have it as soon as we get it back to the beginning.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. We'll have to wait. It looks like you are going out of the attitude to use high gain. We'll catch it next time around and then dump it.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay. I know this would be better in high bit rate, so it will probably take quite awhile.
Spoken on Dec. 23, 1968, 8:05 p.m. UTC (55 years, 9 months ago). Link to this transcript range is: Tweet
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