4.1.3 - Day 3: December 23, 1968

The next image of Earth is AS08-16-2606, shown below in figure 4.1.3.1 and analysed in figure 4.1.3.2, and as will see was taken not long after the preceding one.

Figure 4.1.3.1: AS08-16-2606. High quality source:  AFJ

Figure 4.1.3.2: ESSA-7 (left) and ATS-1 (below) compared with AS08-16-2606 and SkySafari time estimate (bottom right). Bottom centre is a digital 3D reconstruction using recovered ESSA data from the NSIDC superimposed on a colour Earth map in Blender3D.

The Earth has rotated sufficiently to lose the ATS-3 satellite, and the ATS-1 dated the 23rd is now nearer in time than the 22nd. ESSA's image date is still the 22nd.

The ATS image was actually taken at 22:43 on the 23rd, over 20 hours after the SkySafari estimate of the image time, and understandably there is a much bigger difference between the Apollo image and ATS-1. However there are, as can be seen from the arrows used, still identifiable weather systems that can be seen on both those images.

Of those systems, the most striking ones are at the northern and southern ends of the planet. In the north there are the two frontal bands (green and red arrows) marking the boundaries of lighter swirls of cloud between them. To the south there are the storms heading north from the Antarctic, including the striking tight curl of cloud marked by the yellow arrow, and the long band of cloud making its way to Australia's east coast.

ESSA is a much better match for the Apollo image, and this is explained by the images being taken much closer in time to it. Orbit number 1609 (track 5) is the closest to the terminator, and commenced at 23:00 on the 22nd.

The next image of Earth we have is extremely significant because it comes not from images presented after the fact but from a live TV broadcast.

As part of their journey, the Apollo 8 crew made a number of short live TV broadcasts to Earth. The first broadcast on the 22nd did show Earth but was overexposed, though photographs from it did appear in the following day’s newspapers. The most famous of the broadcasts is the Christmas Day broadcast made while rounding the moon, in which the crew took turns to read out a number of verses from Genesis. Clips from these broadcasts are viewable at the Honeysuckle Creek website.

Two clips from the Honeysuckle Creek website are of interest, as they show images of Earth. The 2nd TV transmission shown was carried out at 19:53 on December 23rd, and it is possible to capture a screenshot of the Earth from that and compare it with the ESSA 7 and ATS-3 data. The ATS-3 image was taken at 18:16 GMT – just over 90 minutes before the TV broadcast. Honeysuckle Creek have done their own image (possibly with the same software) showing the orientation of the Earth at that time as well as the screenshot and associated ESSA images (figure 4.1.3.3).

Figure 4.1.5: Top row: Honeysuckle Creek interpretation of terminator position during live TV broadcast, compared with my own SkySafari estimate,

Bottom row: Live TV screen capture compared with ESSA 7 image from 23/12/68

The TV image is overexposed, but weather systems in both Hemispheres are easily identifiable. The broadcast of Earth from space made headline news around the world, but two interesting front pages are from the Long Beach Independent and Minneapolis Tribune of 24/12/68. Figure 4.1.3.6 shows these front pages, with the same weather systems in 4.1.3.6 identified (only one image has been arrowed for the sake of simplicity).

The newspapers were published on the 24th, and therefore can only have been taken from the TV broadcast on the 23rd. It could not have been produced from ESSA satellites imagery as the image for the 23rd would not have been completed until the 24th, by which time the newspapers would have been in production. The TV image can only have been broadcast from space on the 23rd. The ATS-3 image could, in theory, have been available, but the polar areas are missing and the angle of view, location of the terminator line, and weather systems visible on the western limb are different. Of particular interest is the UK’s Daily Telegraph, Yorkshire Post and Daily Mirror. The UK is 5 hours ahead of east coast USA, giving them even less time before their front pages hit the news stands. The Chicago Tribune is relying on people reading it after an event has occurred.

Another image is also available of the TV broadcast in the form of the image shown below (figure 4.1.3.8), available from the Facebook site Retro Space Images.

Figure 4.1.3.8: Mission Control during the TV broadcast of 23/12/68, with Zoomed & cropped image from the mission control screen using the same colours as in figure 4.1.3.7.

A zoomed and cropped image of the large monitor screen shows that the view on the screen (and on every monitor visible) is the same as the one on the newspaper front page, which, in turn, is an exact match of the satellite photos from the same date.

We also have TV footage of mission control during this TV broadcast (Moon Machines), and if we look carefully we can see the same TV broadcast can be seen on a monitor, with the same clouds (see figure 4.1.3.9), and we can also include a newspaper page or two showing the scene to prove when it was done.

Figure 4.1.3.9: Mission control during Apollo 8's TV broadcast and newspaper pages from the next day.

While broadcasting the view, Lovell describes the view to Capcom Michael Collins:

055:10:28 Lovell: What you're seeing, Mike, is a - Houston, what you are seeing is the Western Hemisphere. Looking at the top [left in this image] 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's 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 spot of the subsolar point on the light side of the Earth.

and

055:12:17 Lovell: Okay. For colors, the 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, and 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. [The] 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.

and

055:19:25 Lovell: …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'm using a monocular which we have aboard.

Unsurprisingly, this is an entirely accurate description of what is evident from the satellite photographs.

One added bonus of a view of Earth taken over a time period is that we should be able to see the Earth rotate. Can we?

The first and last views of Earth are over-exposed, but if we take ones that show the same degree of clarity we can compare views at 20:04 and 20:16 - see figure 4.1.3.10.

Figure 4.1.3.12: ESSA-7 (top left and left) and ATS-3 (centre left) compared with AS08-16-2608 and SkySafari time estimate. Above centre is a digital 3D reconstruction using recovered ESSA data from the NSIDC superimposed on a colour Earth map in Blender3D.

Figure 4.1.3.11: AS08-16-2608. High quality source:  Flickr

While Christmas day 1968 is the very latest that the picture could have been taken, the satellite record places the photograph very definitely on the 23rd, with SkySafari placing the time at around 21:00 on that date.. ATS-3's image was taken at 18:16 on the 23rd, while the area around the terminator line was imaged by ESSA on orbit 1618 (track 2), which commenced at 17:05.

It’s also very obviously the same view that can be seen on the TV broadcast images, the only difference being that a chunk of South America has slipped into darkness.

Looking at the Apollo photograph, they are describing accurately what they can see, and have not (as in all cases when discussing the view of Earth on any mission) been prompted in any way. The long cloud heading north-east from the Gulf is indicated by the blue arrow, and the thin cirrus clouds described from the Gulf into the Atlantic are likely to be the ones pointed out by the red arrow (although they actually extend from north to south only if coming from the Atlantic). The maroon arrow points to the same weather system off the coast of Chile identified in previous images, and the purple and yellow ones over south America itself also point to weather systems identified on the previous day by the same colours in figure 4.1.17. It’s also worth pointing out, again, the incredible accuracy of the 3D model using digitally reconstructed data.

Magazine A gets removed from the camera (after taking some surface images) after they enter lunar orbit:

070:07:04 Anders (onboard): Now we're going to change - take off magazine A.

and the isn’t used again until the journey home. The next images of Earth get taken on the 24th, so click the link below to see those.

Figure 4.1.3.7: Newspaper front and inside pages featuring an image taken from a live TV broadcast. Sources:  newspaperarchive.com, blogspot, rarenewspapers.com, delpher, Facebook Apollo groups, eBay, Airplanes and rockets, Etsy.

The LA Times shown right is from a later edition of the paper, which relegated it to the inside.

The broadcast quality makes the comparison far from perfect, but the rotation is definitely there and it’s entirely consistent with the predicted rotation seen in SkySafari. A live TV broadcast, accurately describing the view, with visible rotation - something not possible even if they were able to use some sort of projection of a satellite image.

For the next still view of Earth we return to magazine 16. AS08-16-2607 has rotated slightly from the previous Hasselblad, but is zoomed out by quite a distance. Therefore the next photograph from magazine 16 to be analysed is one of the final pair from it before images of the lunar surface are found, which at the very latest puts it at before the 25th of December, and once again south America is the dominant view in the photograph. AS08-16-2608 is shown below in figure 4.1.3.11, and analysed in figure 4.1.3.12.

Figure 4.1.3.10: Comparison of Earth views at the start and end of the TV transmission.