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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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Roger. For information, we're passing over just to the side of the crater Langrenus at this time going into the Sea of Fertility.
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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Okay, Houston. The moon is essentially gray, no color; looks like plaster of Paris or sort of a grayish deep sand. We can see quite a bit of detail. The Sea of Fertility doesn't stand out as well here as it does back on earth. There's not as much contrast between that and the surrounding craters. The craters are all rounded off. There's quite a few of them; some of them are newer. Many of them look like—especially the round ones—look like hits by meteorites or projectiles of some sort. Langrenus is quite a huge crater; it's got a central cone to it. The walls of the crater are terraced, about six or seven different terraces on the way down.
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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And coming up now, the Sea of Fertility are the old friends Messier and Pickering that I looked about so much on earth.
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Jerry Carr (CAPCOM)
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Roger.
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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And I can see the rays coming out of blaze Pickering. We're coming up now near our P-1 initial site which I'm going to try and see. Be advised the round window, the hatch window, is completely iced over; we can't use it; Bill and I are sharing the rendezvous window.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Roger. The rays out of Pickering are quite faint from here; there are two different groups going to the left. They don't appear to have any depth to them at all, just rays coming out.
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Jerry Carr (CAPCOM)
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Bill, if you can tear yourself away from that window, we'd like you to turn off the secondary evaporator. Over.
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Jerry Carr (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, this is Houston. You can leave that secondary pump on for just a few minutes. Over.
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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Okay. Over to my right are the Pyrenees Mountains coming up, and we're just about over Messier and Pickering right now. Our first initial point is easily seen from our altitude. We're getting quite a bit of contrast as we appear—as we approach the terminator. The view appears to be good, no reflection of the sun back to our eyes; it appears that visibility at this particular spot is excellent. It's very easy to pick out our first initial point; and over this mountain chain, we can see the second initial point, the Triangular Mountain.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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And we're coming upon the craters Colombo and Gutenberg. Very good detail visible. We can see the long parallel faults or grabens, and they run through the Mare material right into the highland material.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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We're directly over our first initial point now for P-1. It's almost impossible to miss, very easy to pick out, and we can look right over into the second initial point.
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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I can see very clearly the five crater star formation which we had on our lunar chart —
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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It's very easy to spot. You can see the entire rims of the craters from here with, of course, the white crescent on the far side where the sun is shining on it. The shadows are quite lengthy now. Maskelyne B (Marsh of Sleep) has quite a few shadows off of it, but it can be recognized. Just west of the Maskelyne B, we start going to the terminator. The terminator is actually quite sharp over the Pyrenees, and it's—I can't see anything in earthshine at this present time. Bill says that he can see things out the side window when he's not looking down on the sunshine on the moon.
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Jerry Carr (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, this is Houston. All systems are GO. We're evaluating the strip charts on your SPS burn, and we'll give you a readout on that shortly. Over.
Spoken on Dec. 24, 1968, 10:43 a.m. UTC (55 years, 10 months ago). Link to this transcript range is: Tweet
