4.7.6 - Apollo 15 Day 6 - Command Module in orbit

The next image under the microscope involves a little more reliance on hard evidence rather than deductive logic, and sees a return to magazine 91. It is clear form looking at this magazine's images that it stayed in orbit with the CSM. AS15-91-12404 is the penultimate image in this magazine and one of two identical Earth photographs. It’s shown in figure 4.7.6.1 and analysed in figure 4.7.6.2.

Figure 4.7.6.1: AS15-91-12404

Figure 4.7.6.2: AS15-91-12404 compared with ESSA satellite image and SkySafari depiction. Right is 3D reconstruction using digitally restored ESSA data.

The dominant land mass shown is Africa, with the Saharan region showing towards the top of the globe. Brazil is visible in the south-western limb as a much darker landmass.

The main areas specifically picking out this Apollo image as being from the 31st are the bands of cloud pointed out by the blue and green arrows. The angle of the Earth photograph makes them less obvious that on the ESSA image, but they are there. The underexposure of the ESSA image also makes the thin band of cloud passing south through Spain into north Africa less obvious, but it is there. The ESSA mosaic again has data reliability issues, this time off the east coast of Argentina. The mosaic manages to capture the break in cloud on the yellow arrowed system, but where that cloud continues into the south Atlantic and South Africa in the Apollo photograph, it is truncated and mis-shapen in the ESSA version. The images over South Africa also show suggestions of duplication and misplaced mosaic components. ESSA's data suggest that the satellite was taking photographs of this area at 17:04 (track 2, orbit 1059).

The SkySafari estimate has been set at 17:40, with the CSM apparently emerging from behind the moon. The reason for that is another series of corroborating UV images. An example is given in figure 4.7.6.3.

Figure 4.7.6.3: AS15-99-13447, with enhanced crop.

It’s not as easy to see, but the same cloud patterns are definitely there in the UV image compared with the colour one. While the colour photograph has no moonscape to use as a reference, the UV ones do, and those place them at AOS, making all these images an Earthrise sequence, colour or otherwise. The obvious inference is that the UV ones were taken first, then the colour one at the end when Earth was nowhere near the horizon (as were the final UV images in the sequence).

July 31st, short and sweet. On to August now.

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