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)
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
Ric Werme
I assure you and everyone else here that the Earth turns once a day, 100 times in 100 days and a thousand times in a thousand days.This system is known as the 24 hour AM/PM which is tied to the Lat/Long system using observations with their roots in antiquity.
As the Earth orbits the central Sun,certain stars become lost behind the glare of the Sun for a number of months –
The Egyptians,even though they were unaware of the dynamics behind it,noticed that the star Sirius would miss an appearance by a day after 4 years of 365 days bit show up the next day –
http://danmary.org/tiki/show_image.php?id=30
They even wrote about this important observation which eventually supports the conclusion that 1461 rotations with all its effects fit into 4 orbital circumferences of the Earth which reduce to 365 1/4 rotations for each orbital circuit –
” on account of the precession of the rising of Sirius by one day in the course of 4 years, therefore it shall be, that the year of 360 days and the 5 days added to their end, so one day shall be from this day after every 4 years added to the 5 epagomenae before the New Year, whereby all men shall learn, that what was a little defective in the order as regards the seasons and the year, as also the opinions which are contained in the rules of the learned on the heavenly orbits, are now corrected and improved” Canopus Decree ,Egypt 236 BC
If people get this far they can then appreciate how natural noon cycles vary for each of these 1461 days and how the average 24 hour day goes into substituting for constant rotation insofar as ‘average’ and ‘constant’ are more or less the same terms.It ain’t going to be understood by the mindnumbing 366 rotations in 365 day crowd.
In conclusion,the Earth’s orbital behavior around the Sun is altogether different than the moon orbital behavior around the Earth and the orbital component of the Earth changes how we look at topics such as planetary climate and especially the explanation for seasonal fluctuations in temperature.
Aside from and in addition to daily rotation,all locations on our planet turn to the Sun each year as opposed to the moon which constantly keeps the same face to the central Earth. This is why the images of Uranus are important as its distance is so great from the Earth and its unique rotational inclination allows observers to isolate the orbital behavior of that planet where all locations turn once to the Sun by way of its orbital behavior and take over 8 decades to complete a 360 degree polar day/night cycle –
http://www.daviddarling.info/images/Uranus_rings_changes.jpg
Many people will naturally feel uncomfortable with the notion that the moon has a separate spinning motion as it makes its usual monthly orbit around the Earth and this is a good thing as the idea is to make lunar/planetary comparisons rather that throw good information after exceptionally poor reasoning.It draws attention to the polar day/night cycle of the Earth and that an observer at the South pole experiences a single day/night cycle over the course of a year that has nothing whatsoever to do with the separate motion of daily rotation to the central Sun.
Gerald Kelleher says: December 26, 2013 at 12:29 am
If your minds won’t accept that the moon doesn’t spin as it orbits the Earth by virtue of what your eyes are telling you……
______________________________
But it does Gerald, we can agree on that….however my mind is free to ‘see’ from other perspectives than my physical location in time and space, and from these other perspectives, the moon is ;seen’ to rotate. If your mind is ‘hard wired’ to the one perspective, so be it, I will understand.
@ATheoK
I sincerely hope that the irony of your appeal to authority is not lost on you, especially considering the main focus of this website and the known facts surrounding it. Besides, I certainly don’t need to sift through all data to call parts of it into question. Lastly, weren’t you the one accusing moon doubters of misbehaving earlier in this thread?
@Ric Werme
“What’s 4.7t? ton? tonne? Either way, close to 4700 kg. From F = ma, a = 16,000 / 4700 = 3.4 m/s^2. Please display your work and a sketch with a scale.”
“t” was meant to refer to metric tons. Substract the moon’s gravity of 1.62 m/s^2 and you get 1.78 m/s^2 of effective acceleration. Here is the one second interval directly after launch with an accompanying, rough scale: http://i39.tinypic.com/4trpqd.jpg
@Ed
“I wasn’t aware that during those 44 years there was a need for such lift capability ”
The ISS doesn’t consist of modules no heavier than 20t by choice. The S5 supposedly delivered 80t into LEO. And if you had actually read your braeunig.us link, you would have noticed that none of the math addressed the question.
_________________________________
I truly wonder how people here are perfectly capable of identifying a conspiracy of interest (that even includes elements of NASA) when it comes to cAGW, yet consider Apollo totally beyond reproach on the basis of the very same fallacious arguments usually employed to defend cAGW.
Ben B
There is nowhere in space you can see a spinning moon,you can see it orbit the Earth and therefore account for its monthly long day/night cycle on the surface however intrinsic rotation with its characteristic maximum equatorial speed and zero polar rotation like the Earth and the planets you cannot.
As an astronomer my reasoning is dictated by physical considerations hence the conclusions are not sought after as the ‘spinning mooners’ or their equivalent in the climate quarter would have it,conclusions do surface but in a non aggressive way ,for instance,it is easy to compare the completely different behavior of the moon around the Earth as opposed to the Earth around the Sun thereby modifying the old ’tilting Earth’ explanations for the seasons.It is not something exclusive to me but to all astronomers and people of genuine scientific standing –
“And though some disparate astronomical hypotheses may provide exactly the same results in astronomy, as Rothmann claimed in his letters to Lord Tycho of his own mutation of the Copernican system,nevertheless there is often a difference between the conclusions because of some physical consideration ….But practitioners are not always in the habit of taking account of
that diversity in physical matters , . . ” Kepler
In other words,you do not have a choice – no matter where you view the moon from,above it or below it,from the planets or deep in space,you will always see the moon orbit the Earth without a separate spinning motion whereas you will not only see the Earth rotate daily from any point in space but see the planet turn once to the central Sun each year by watching the polar coordinates turn in a circle to the central Sun.
Earthrise is possible for a static observer on the moon. It just takes a long time, the effect being due to liberation of the moon’s orbit around the earth as compared to it’s rotation. Overall Earthrise would be visible from about 9% of the moon’s surface.
John Edmondson
You are assigning cause to a rocking moon which is equivalent to planetary epicycles by ignoring the consideration that the moon spends half it orbit going in the direction of our planet’s orbital motion around the Sun and the other half traveling in the opposite direction to the Earth’s orbit.
The so-called ‘Earthrise’ from libration would mean the Earth rises and sets on the same horizon and that is hideous.Of course you put a rover on the moon at the lunar points in areas that temporarily are not seen from Earth and then appreciate apparent libration is a change in orbital perspective.It is that simple.
Fair enough Gerald, I can follow your reasoning based on your definition of rotation wrt equatorial speeds, etc., so I will leave it at that….rotating asteroids?,,no I won;t go there.
After reading through all of these posts, I’m convinced that Gerald is a plant, or playing some kind of trolling game that has no apparent purpose. It seems impossible to me that someone can possibly be so obtuse.
ALL bodies in the universe have some rotation, or “spin”.
The claim of being an astronomer has to be the crowning touch.
So Gerald, did you win your bet?
Not good enough Ben D
The speculative/predictive system which is wrecking havoc with terrestrial sciences and especially these toxic future climate predictions using a minor atmospheric gas has it roots in astronomy where false conclusions were drawn and observations,causes and effects were manipulated to support the wayward conclusions.
One hundred and fifty years ago there were confident men trashing this notion of a ‘spinning moon’ with an air of superiority yet one hundred and fifty years later it is still mainstream policy despite all the technological innovations and that should tell you all something about the issue of human control over planetary temperatures and where the issue is going to go,at least if things continue the way they are.
On the positive side,climate studies and most of terrestrial sciences are only really beginning to open up and once humanity drops its obsession with a minor atmospheric gas,it may discover how little is actually known about things such as what causes the seasons or even the daily temperature fluctuations (given that current scientists imagine 366 rotations in 365 days). It is all to play for.
Gerald Kelleher says:
December 25, 2013 at 2:09 pm
Only for you Gerald, only for you. The Earth rotates 360° in 23hrs 56mins. That is an indisputable fact. Only a flat-Earther such as yourself would deny the additional ~1.0028° of rotation required to make a solar day. But you seem to think that your argumentum ad antiquitus gives you the right to call us cretins.
CodeTech
The people making a wonderful lifestyle and reputation out of ‘global warming’ or any of its variants don’t really get upset with their opponents for indeed they are as necessary as the belief in human control over global temperature itself and this I learned from the ‘spinning moon ‘ saga.It only matters that the issue is kept front and center so if it needs a few complaining shills known as ‘science deniers’ then so be it. The peer review process is there to maintain the position of those doing the reviewing and not any original article which may disturb their salaries and pensions leaving common folk to do the dirty work out of misguided convictions like you yourself have shown so if you wish to know how those promoting human control over planetary temperatures feel then this is as good an exercise as any.
Any confusion over orbital motion and rotation should have quickly evaporated leaving observers to enjoy the lunar monthly cycle around the Earth without any rotation so the unnecessary introduction of a a spinning moon would naturally become repulsive and at odds with the enjoyment of the lunar cycle and its phases.
I think you lost me Gerald…. but yeah..those damn astronomers…:)
Gerald, thank you for your useful posts which clarify that there is no such thing as a spinning moon. I usually explain this by having two people stand, facing each other. I ask one to stay still and the other to shuffle sideways around them in a circle always facing them. If the person orbiting the person in the centre spun, in any way, at some point they would have their back to the person in the centre. But they don’t. However, if there was a string on the orbiting person linking the top of their head to the ceiling we would see that after one orbit it would have been twisted , so we could assume against our observation that the orbiting person had spun on their axis. The reality is that the twist in the string results from an orbit , not from a spin. Paradoxically, to stop the string twisting the orbiting person would have to rotate around their vertical axis once every orbit, in effect having their back to the person in the centre for 25% of each orbit. To me it’s fairly obvious that the moon does not spin, only orbit, but I’m surprised at how many people who are otherwise well informed really do believe in a moon spinning. If the moon were suddenly removed from our system and plonked in interstellar space it would not be spinning, if you did this to the earth it would be spinning.
Slacko
You are trying to correlate daily rotation of the planet with stellar circumpolar motion –
The technical qualifiers do not support the conclusion for the expanded view shows the conclusion for what it is – a star in stellar circumpolar motion returns to any fixed point in 23 hours 56 minutes 04 seconds of an average 24 hour day within the 356/365/365/366 day calendar framework. Your abysmal ‘fact’ was a late 17th century invention when they started to model planetary dynamics using watches and therefore timekeeping averages in the same way they now try to model climate using computers.
The problem is not resolving this hugely complex issue but getting people on board who actually like the genuine fact that all the effects within a 24 hour period are due to one rotation of the planet and that tomorrow ,the next day and the day after that will be no different.The only difference is the additional 24 hour day with all its rotational effects on Feb 29th which closes out 4 orbits of the Earth as the 1461th rotation.
So far we have a ‘spinning moon’ conclusion and another conclusion that the Earth’s rotation doesn’t cause the temperatures to go up and down daily ,after all,insisting on 366 rotations in 365 days is an assertion of that tragic conclusion.
Gosh it must be hard to be Anthony! He puts up a beautiful article about an inspiring topic and gets beat on the head by moon landing conspiracy theorists and someone who doesn’t understand that the Moon rotates. The latter I have some sympathy with: if you can’t get your mind around a mental image of what’s happening, you just won’t see it. But the former is more educational. We were posed this challenge:
(2) and (3) don’t interest me. The answer to (3) is obvious, and re (2): What is more likely: that the footprints smudged the tracks (or alternatively the astronauts picked up the moon rover in the light gravity), versus a smart gang intent on committing a hoax picking it up (even with a crane) when it could as easily be rolled and they knew it had to be rolled? Nothing to wonder about there.
But (1) is instructive of how conspiracy theories work: How come, we are asked, when the max. acceleration is 1.78m/s^2 and the max distance travelled should be 0.89m, did it travel twice that? Well let’s not just believe what we are told, let’s use high school physics to calculate it. 4,700 Kilos (give or take – maybe they are tons, not tonnes) and 16,000 N max thrust gives, using F=ma, a=F/m, so a=16000/4700 = 3.4 m/s^2. Then using distance s travelled from a standing start is 0.5*a*t^2, t=1, so s=a/2, or 1.7m, which is (roughly, but this is just a rough-and-ready calculation) twice what the conspiracy theory said it should be. In other words, a figure (wrong) was thrown out and our local believer bought it without checking. Just as it is with climate “science” – all sorts of erroneous rubbish is thrown out there (acidification of an alkaline ocean, “unprecedented” warming that hasn’t even reached known historic levels, the planet explodes… you fill out the list) and all the sheople just buy the lot hook line and sinker.
Lessons: (1) check things – it often isn’t all that hard. (2) if you can’t check everything, check something; someone who discovers that the ocean is alkaline, for example, won’t believe it is eating the shells of sea creatures through acidity. And if you know they lie to you about that, why believe them at all?
Anthony, Best wishes for a Merry Christmas to you, your family, and your moderators, as well as to the larger community. It is interesting to see how the vast majority of posters see the great scientific and engineering achievement of the Apollo program for the historical reality it is.
It is puzzling that some characters straight out of a Lewandowsky faux science project are posting. If we don’t feed the trolls on their pathetic lack of understanding of orbital mechanics and basic history, do we appear to support them? If we all jump on them, and try to enlighten the apparently unenlightenable, does an otherwise excellent thread get hijacked by the trolls and kooks?
Gareth
The point is to demonstrate that the Earth’s polar day/night cycle and experienced at the North/South poles in isolation is indicative of the fact that aside from and in addition to daily rotation,our planet has a second surface rotation to the central Sun.
Up to now they have been trying to force through an explanation for the seasons without including the cause of the polar day/night cycle by squeezing everything into a ’tilting’ Earth towards and away from the Sun. It is much easier to look at the orbital motion of the Earth in isolation from daily rotation and if necessary make comparisons with the moon’s orbital behavior around the Earth,something quite different.
This is not about disproving a ‘spinning moon’ and it is unfair to ask anyone to do so but that being said,it is useful to bring the topic up so we could look at orbital characteristics and get people revisiting these topics once more.
The moon rotates once every orbit around the earth. Does it spin? Can rotate and spin be the same? It does wobble – this is known as libration. Interesting video:
PS: Merry Christmas & Happy New Year all WUWT posters, and moderators…
For the benefit of Dorian Sabaz @ur momisugly 4:21am here are some more jpeg images for you to search:-
Apollo 10
Apollo 11
Apollo 12
Apollo 14
Apollo 15
Apollo 16
Apollo 17
Mods
Please rescue my last post.
Thanks
I find it shocking, and truly dispiriting, that a debate still needs to be raging over the question of whether the moom is rotating on its axis or not. As has been said by others, one has to have a clear notion of what “rotation” means, and until that is agreed upon, the debate will drag on endlessly. The only meaningful and invariant way of defining rotation is relative to the “fixed stars.” We know that inertial frames (in which there are no Coriolis and centrifugal forces) are those which are non-rotating relative to the fixed stars. The moon is manifestly rotating relative to the fixed stars, with approximately a 28 (earth) day period. An observer on the surface of the moon will experience a “day” and “night,” with a period of about 28 days. That is to say, the sun will rise, and it will set, with about 28 days between sunrises. The observer will be able to measure Coriolis and centrifugal forces, consistent with a 28 day or so rotation period. The mere fact that the earth appears in approximately the same position in the sky always is totally irrelevant. The observer on the moon experiences a rotation.
The suggestions that the Apollo missions, and the moon landings, were faked is simply childish beyond belief. I suppose a psychologist might be able to comprehend the warped thinking of the people who subscribe to such conspiracy theories. As has been emphasised by others, there is nothing that the soviets would have liked more tham to have been able to demonstrate that they were faked. Talented amateurs with surplus equipment were able to monitor the progress of the missions; the soviets were certainl able to do at least as well; there is no way they would have been duped by the sort of infantile tricks that the conspiracy theorists fantasise about.
Finally, as a hard-nosed objectivist, scientist and atheist, I would like to add that I remember vividly, as a 15 year old, watching that live broadcast from Apollo 8 as they orbited the moon, and I found it very, very moving. The King James bible is a beautiful piece of literature, and the readings captured something of the wonder and the glory of what was happening. Thank you, Anthony, for bringing back some memories of that wonderful period in history, when it seemed that we really were about to “make the heavens a part of our world.” It is so sad that that dream never came true.
Chris
Please keep mythology away from WUWT. Those who think the earth is 6000 years old have plenty of other outlets for their views.
Gerald Kelleher says:
December 26, 2013 at 2:21 am
Bollocks! How can you pretend to conflate a 150 year old debate over orbital mechanics with the current climate wars which have their roots in the political desire to excercise absolute control over humanity? You’ve not demonstrated any logical reason to interconnect these two, yet you question the honesty of CAGW skeptics who are also “moon spinners.”
Gerald Kelleher says:
December 26, 2013 at 2:47 am
If you were an astronomer, which you clearly are not, you would not demonstrate a deliberate ignorance of sidereal time. Such a post makes fun of daily temperature changes being tied to 366 days, a ludicrous idea.
Gareth Phillips says:
December 26, 2013 at 2:43 am
Really? What if every object in our solar system was ..um.. disappeared (to use a WUWT phrase) and only the moon was left? Would it still know what to do? Or would its inertia disappear like magic? AHA! Magic, that’s all you fellas have got now, isn’t it? The magic that allows you to change the frame of reference on a whim.