While ISS astronauts do a spacewalk this Christmas eve, I thought that this would be the best tribute I could make for them, and for all of my readers, contributors, and moderators.
Audio and some stunning new video follow.
![480px-NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/480px-nasa-apollo8-dec24-earthrise1.jpg?quality=83)
They recited:
Bill Anders
“We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.
‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.'”
Jim Lovell
“And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.”
Frank Borman
And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.’
And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”
Here is the historic audio clip of the text above:
That happened 45 years ago today, when the Apollo 8 astronauts suddenly noticed the Earth “rising” over the lunar horizon. Despite all of the planning for the mission, this event was a complete surprise, and they scrambled to load color film and get cameras ready.
NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio has created a marvelous recreation of the event, using 3D modeling, original audio from the onboard recorder, and the actual photographs of the moment on December 24, 1968, when the astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission orbiting the moon were unexpectedly confronted with an “Earthrise” and worked together to snap some of the most viewed photography in history. This is an excerpt from the full public-domain video, narrated by the Apollo mission historian Andy Chaikin:
The full visualization is here.
In 2007, an HD camera aboard Japan’s Kaguya satellite videotaped earth ‘rising’ and ‘setting.’ Set to music by Peter Rundquist, the images bring home the lonely, extraordinary nature of this “pale blue dot.”
h/t to Andrew Revkin for that video
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Dorian: Here is the form of your logic from which your questions arise. There have been a number of times when I have walked outside at night that I saw no moon and could not therefore capture it on film. If those were the only times I was on this planet and thus returned to my heavenly home elsewhere (let’s say my home was the moon) without pictures of the moon rising in the heavens from where my feet stood on the Earth, my trip could be questioned and there would be those who insisted I was not actually on the surface of the Earth but was just a figment of the malevolent machinations of a secret society bent on some covert operation to thwart its perceived threatening enemy.
How many times have we been on the moon? At those times, could the astronauts see (and thus photograph) the Earthrise from their position on the lunar surface? And even if they could, would there have been any interest at all in photographing the Earth? Why would a scientist, who’s purpose in life was to set foot on the moon, bother with anything other than what was under his feet? My Kodak would have been filled with pictures of moonscapes and any footage at all of the Earth would have been a terrible frivolous and expensive waste.
I remember watching that on TV. Thanks for posting it.
God Bless and Merry Christmas!
(PS Did they find the $2?8-)
Further to photographing Earth:
All of the astronauts (and cosmonauts) who have journeyed to low-Earth orbit and beyond have photographed the Earth from space innumerable times. Yes, Dorian, there are many pictures of the Earth rotating, many with much higher resolution than the astronauts on the surface of the Moon could have taken. So what’s all the fuss about?
/Mr Lynn
Stop with the Moon hoax already. (1) The Soviets, and doubtless any number of allies tracked all or part of those missions. Had they been faked the Soviets would have been the first to exhibit their evidence of a fake. (2) Had they been faked a really large staff was involved; no one in the US keeps secrets; someone involved with such a hoax would have written a best seller by now. (3) Sending a man to the Moon was not that hard after the invention of the V-2 rocket. Figuring out how to bring the crew back alive was the hard part. That is the part that limits sending a crew to Mars, but the hard parts there are not the re-entry problems (as that has been done a number of times now), it is the food and water supply, radiation exposure and how to have enough fuel and equipment to do the lift off from Mars. Much cheaper to do that with robots.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.
A Merry Christmas and a Healthy, Prosperous, Happy New Year to all.
Dear Snowsnake,
Your post touched me deeply. My dear father fell gravely ill Christmas Eve a few years ago after a 3 year battle. I packed up and went to his bedside Christmas morning. One week later, New Year’s Eve, after finally getting morphine he so desperately needed, he passed away in my arms. I still miss him but smile every time I lose a fishing lure to some low hanging branch or submerged snag. His ashes are tucked away in a high mountain valley in NE Oregon. His lures are spread all over Oregon.
Yawwn! Oh Dear.
Meanwhile, back at the sharper edge of science, our Chinese friends are carrying on where we left off. And thank God there’s still somebody left to carry on where the Soviet Union left off: goading us onwards! (“Jade wabbit?” you think. ” Duh?” think again..)
I bought my two kids the best Christmas toys ever this year: radio controlled helicopters with flashing LEd lights and LED searchlight. $42 each from a lady with a table in the shopping mall. I’d have killed for such a toy at the age of 12, and they have spent the entire day, obsessively perfecting the art of smooth and elegant landings, and acrobatic flight, in between recharges from a desktop USB.
Then finally, when one of these rugged little machines looked like it had crashed for the last time, I got the box out of the bin and went on line to the manufacturer’s website. They’re made in Guanzou, China, and I can buy as many as I like, for $1.00 a pop! That, and any one of another 50 odd radio controlled air and ground vehicles, including quadricopters, outdoors rated helicopters with cameras, etc.
So I’ll be seeing the same lady, same mall, next Christmas. But it’ll be for a couple of lunar landers.. if she hasn’t already retired, a multi-millionaire ($1 each wholesale, $1.00 for shipping and use of chair and table, and the remaining $40 looks like profit. You have got to love it! )
Dorian Sabaz says:
December 25, 2013 at 7:19 am
You haven’t seen many photos because they don’t exist. I answered your
question three different ways, yet you sound as though you didn’t read it. It
must have gotten posted because other people mentioned it. You haven’t. Why?
BTW, keep reading, I might have an “appeal to authority” to pass on in a few days.
Just for the record: Here’s another one who doesn’t buy the manned moon landings anymore. While there’s a mountain of inconsistencies to discuss, this is probably neither the time nor place to do it. Just this one teaser: 44 years of technological progress, and modern heavy lift vehicles still don’t come anywhere close to the Saturn V’s capabilities. cAGW isn’t the only grand deception of the TV era…
Re: Earth rotation film.
What might be of some help would be a comment/link by Dennis Wingo who has posted on this site many times and is involved with recovering old NASA tapes.
Dennis, where are you?
Actually, I expect the helicopter lady will be financing her own space venture, the rate at which she was swiping people’s debit and credit cards last week and raking in those forty dollar licks..
My own feeling is that there is a new space race afoot, and this time it is for real and won’t grind to a halt. The US may be brilliantly on Mars, but China, India and Asia are hard upon its tail and will not stop until one or other of them is ahead. Their economic power and their technological pride will see to it. And this is a very good thing.
An eternally optimistic New Year to all. See you on Mars.
LK
As I remember it, the verses recited were on the final orbit of the Moon prior to their life-and-death necessary burn for TEI, Trans-Earth Injection.
“And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”
This was also a wish for their own Good Luck. Shortly after that expression of good wishes, Apollo 8 lost contact with the Earth as it passed behind the moon. 30 minutes later, they had to make the first burn in man-kinds history to return to the Earth.
I well remember this broadcast. As a line from a Billy Joel song goes “when I wore a younger man’s clothes”. The first humans to be out of sight of the Earth.
And yes, the moon does rotate, once per orbit of the Earth. If it didn’t, we could eventually see all around it. But we can only see a bit over 50%, the part facing us. On an absolute basis that is. Relative to Earth, no, That was the original thought that the Sun went around the Earth. We know a bit more now.
The Apollo folks probably could not see the Earth at all when on the surface. Spacesuits limited view to mostly forward, not much up or down. They would have had to point their cameras almost straight up. (A-17 may be an exception) No movies? They didn’t have those cameras, just some video (remember the early camera burnout on Apollo 12 when accidently pointed at the sun?)
So, to the crew of the ISS, Godspeed. They have a problem that needs fixing. And they will fix it. They are still made of the “Right Stuff.”
re: The Count says December 25, 2013 at 8:15 am
Completely agree with your post, Count.
Let me add an interesting factual account of ‘amateurs’ who monitored the moon mission comms (communications) from earth using surplus gear and home-made and modified commercial microwave ‘down converters’ and ‘dishes’. The ‘Soviets’ I’m sure had much more capable equipment!
The following excerpted form: “Tracking Apollo-17 from Florida”
http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/Apollo17/APOLLO17.htm
A very interesting and technically-detailed website; more than enough factual details to send a technically competent ‘moon-de nier’ on the road to the ‘trvth’ lest the Dunning-Kruger effect is operative at a high coefficient value.
Merry Christmas and thank you Anth*ny, m o d s and fellow WUWTers.
.
Merry Christmas everyone! Especially to you, Anthony.
@bruce1337 at 8:36 am
But apparently you believe in the Saturn V.
“From the day of our birth, we were meant for this time and place and today, we will land an American on the moon. What ever happens today, I will stand behind every decision you make.
We came into this room as a team, and we will leave as a team. From now on, no person will leave this room and no one will enter, until we have either landed, we’ve crashed, or we’ve aborted.” ~Gene Kranz, Apollo 11 White Team Director, July 20, 1969.
Then, there was this, “LUNAR EAVESDROPPING IN LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY”
Website: http://legacy.jefferson.kctcs.edu/observatory/apollo11/
Interesting observations at the time, plus, Larry made some tapes, too:
Interesting to read this part too (moon ‘de niers’, take note!):
.
personal to DORIAN:
I apologize for being more than a bit grouchy in my earlier response to you.
This is the perfect time of year for us to examine our thinking and see if we want to hold onto mistaken notions of life and the world or let it go, striving for the higher consciousness.
Merry Christmas to you and to all.
Tom in Florida says:
December 25, 2013 at 6:41 am
We didn’t have televisions in my grade school, but I remember foregoing recess one day to stay in and listen to one of the suborbital flights. A few years before Mom had given me the book “You Will Go to the Moon.” http://www.amazon.com/You-will-moon-Blacker-Freeman/dp/0394823400 . It appears that won’t be happening now.
Heck, the US can’t even launch a chimp into Low Earth Orbit any more. Pity.
@Retired Engineer at 8:58 am
remember the early camera burnout on Apollo 12 when accidently pointed at the sun?
Indeed I do.
I remember as well John Young (on camera) tripping on the ribbon cable, ripping out the connection to the Science Package. My “missle man” father was fit to be tied on both occasions.
I also remember Apollo 15 Lunar Liftoff from the pan-and-tilt camera on the rover. It was much more sudden and quicker than I expected. As was the first free-flight of Enterprise as it popped of the back of the 747 on live TV. The night launch of Apollo 17 is hanging on our wall.
Retired Engineer says:
December 25, 2013 at 8:58 am
And yes, the moon does rotate, once per orbit of the Earth. If it didn’t, we could eventually see all around it. But we can only see a bit over 50%, the part facing us. On an absolute basis that is. Relative to Earth, no, That was the original thought that the Sun went around the Earth. We know a bit more now.
I think it is important to define two words. We tend to mix up orbit and rotate or spin. The moon orbits the earth, to keep it’s face toward us it must turn on an axis relative to the earth, my son has just pointed out that if there were thread running through the moon from pole to pole it would move on that thread, so in theory you can say yes, it rotates, but if you consider a table tennis ball on the outer edge of an LP on a record deck, one side painted to face the centre, when the record turns, that same side will always face the centre as does the moon to the earth. But does the ball rotate relative to itself in the same way as does the earth? It depends on your stance!
“Not one astronaunt EVER commented how incredible it is to see the continents from the Moon. No commentary on how the Earth rotates and you see Europe, then Asia, then the Americas. Ah but these comments you hear every single time when astronaunts go up into space and orbit the Earth, or they stay in the space stations. This kind of commentary never ends. And yet on the Moon…. NOTHING”
Dorian,
You just provided evidence that suggests this wasn’t the most elaborate hoax ever. With all the incredible(not yet in existence) technology to create video that simulated this event. The amount of planning and scripting and using unique setting’s that look exactly like the moon…………..they somehow forgot about faking a bunch of pictures of the earth(which would have been the easiest part) and telling the astronauts to be excited and descriptive.
You see, the faked versions of things, will sometimes overlook little details that bust them.
However, if this was faked by hundreds of brilliant people who have remained silent its impossible to fathom that they all forgot the most blatant and obviously appealing element that would appeal most and convince those watching in the most powerful way.
Your evidence of it being faked is part of my evidence that it was not faked. Since what you are asking for does not exist, then, you choose to focus on this one, non existing element as your entire proof and ignore everything else. In essence, you can NEVER be wrong.
I hope you watched the video from upcountrywater. There are no pictures(that don’t exist) to match up with what you insist you need………………………but anybody with a mind opened just a crack on this event, would consider it extremely compelling.
BTW, when you first posted, I thought to myself that you were making a good point and was interested in finding out why there were no pictures like you insist should be there.
After seeing and reading all the evidence here today, I am satisfied that they explain why.
” At those times, could the astronauts see (and thus photograph) the Earthrise from their position on the lunar surface? ”
To Pamela and all the others (intentionally?) missing the point here: Dorian asked for pictures of the Earth from the moon, NOT Earthrise from the moon. While the first moon landing mission had the Hasselblad still camera shown into the space suit. The does not apply to later missions.
The Apollo 17 photo suggested by ihaveareallysiilylongname is, to judge from the curvature of the moon, taken from space , not the lunar surface.
However, this shot is also interesting if we study the shadows, especially those on the suit and the helmet reflection. They do not match the angle of the limb seen on the Earth. Curious.
The Apollo 8 photo, if you up the contrast does not have the slightest sign of a star or even film grain or digital noise in the background. It is all exactly one colour value. Of the 8046 unique hues in the photo the background is just ONE. It has been Photoshopped to one flat colour. Curious.
So there has been some post-production work and the shots are not what the appear to be at face value. One could spend countless hours discussing why but that’s just the observation on the evidence.
Another notable omission that has been noted by many is the total absence of ANY high-res photos of the moon. We have images that plunge billions of light years at abolutely fantastic resolution but we don’t have a decent shot of the lunar surface! The best we have is some (again obviously photoshopped) images from early probes. NASA has a long history of obfuscation and non-disclosure.
Now I would like to state quite clearly that I do not think the whole Apollo program was a scam that was filmed in a Hollywood studio or out in the Arizona desert. But clearly there is an awful lot of information and images that are being withheld.
As with all such situations, once it is noticed that we are not being given the whole picture, certain imaginations run wild.
It seems Dorian is still missing his pic of Earth from moon.
Mike : “Your evidence of it being faked is part of …”
I did not see Dorian suggest anything was faked. He said the lack of images was curious. Why are you jumping in to refute something that no one has said?