[X] My Assistant

[elakdawalla]

Phil, is there an html page with any caption or other information associated with the large image URL you posted? I wandered around a bit and couldn't find it.

I just have to add that I really hate that Flash image gallery that Kaguya uses.

--Emily

[Phil Stooke]

So far it's only here:

http://wms.selene.jaxa.jp/index_j.html

- the Japanese language version of the detestable site. Yes, I hate it too. I'm a big believer in keeping things simple. The Japanese site is updated before the English version. There's a false color version too.

Phil

[climber]

The actual Apollo 11 site is a brighter patch... interesting.

West carter. Is that the one where Armstrong walked without letting us know or another one?

[Juramike]

The image on the right is a ratio'd composite. I believe (I don't read kanji but used this site to check) the symbols in the legend below indicate:

Red = 750 nm / 415 nm
Green = 750 nm /950 nm
Blue = 415 nm / 750 nm

The Apollo 11 site is in a small little blue splot. There are other little random blue splots around the surrounding area.

-Mike

[Phil Stooke]

West crater is not the one Armstrong ran across to, that's much closer in and not resolved in the Kaguya image.

Phil

[dvandorn]

I'm a little surprised that East Crater (var. Little West Crater) isn't resolved. Compare the Kaguya view to the following view:

Eagle Ground Track

Many other craters the size and depth of East Crater are resolved quite nicely in the Kaguya image.

I'm not disagreeing that this is the landing site -- the rest of the landmarks seem to match up pretty well to a cursory inspection. But I'm surprised that East isn't resolved.

-the other Doug

[Phil Stooke]

I always call it Little West. East crater, as far as I know, is only used on the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. Little West Crater is used on the Defense Mapping Agency map of the Apollo 11, 12 and 14 landing sites. Either would be fine, I suppose, but you get into a habit...

Phil

[dvandorn]

I always call it Little West. East crater, as far as I know, is only used on the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. Little West Crater is used on the Defense Mapping Agency map of the Apollo 11, 12 and 14 landing sites. Either would be fine, I suppose, but you get into a habit...

You can tell I spend a lot of time perusing the ALSJ, can't you?

In point of fact, I tend to think of it as Little West, myself, since it actually lies farther west than West Crater. It was only given the name East because it lies immediately east of the landing site. But to have a crater named West and a crater named East, and to have West Crater to the east of East Crater -- that always struck me as a little too odd for my tastes.

-the other Doug

[kenny]

I think Eagle is at the eastern end of the bright patch, comparing the Selene image with this...

Eagle descent track

Yes, it's odd that Little West crater is not resolved, but it's fairly shallow (unlike West) as Armstrong's surface photos of it show. You can see how other large subdued craters in that image are in danger of disappearing at higher sun angles, so perhaps that's why Little West fades away. The widest part of the bright patch appears to me to be west of the LM, so might be ascent engine scouring at lift-off, and we know the blast was strong enough to knock over the flag, set up west of the LM.

[Ian R]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that the Apollo 11 flag was knocked over by the RCS hot-fire testing that was conducted prior to launch.

Ian.

[dvandorn]

I'm not sure about that, Ian. I seem to recall Aldrin noting that he saw the flag go over as Eagle lifted off and rose away from the landing site.

I know that the RCS hot fire tests knocked over the erectable S-band antennae on both Apollos 12 and 14, though. That may be what you're thinking of. (And at the 14 site, the flag, which never blew over, was flipped around on its pole both by the RCS hot fire and by a couple of cabin depress cycles...)

-the other Doug

[kenny]

The flag blew over at lift-off according to Aldrin in his book "Return to Earth". But when he describes the lunar lift-off in his other book, "Men From Earth", he doesn't mention this.

[edstrick]

In the data acquisition 16 mm cam footage from the LM window during ascent, the flag can be seen flapping violently and the pole swaying vigorously in the exhaust blast from the LM. I have NOT single-frame stepped through the available frames (till it goes out of window-framed view), but aware of the "flag fell down" controversy, I've watched the footage everytime I see an Apollo 11 program, and it continues to look to me like the flag had not fallen over at last camera sighting.

It may have fallen over 1/4 second later, but....

[kenny]

I just reviewed the Apollo 11 lift-off film. The camera was started late, at an altitude of a few 100 feet I'd estimate. There is no view of the flag in any post-ignition scene. The flapping flag images are taken from the Apollo 14 lift-off movie and spliced into several documentaries about Apollo 11.

[dvandorn]

In the data acquisition 16 mm cam footage from the LM window during ascent, the flag can be seen flapping violently and the pole swaying vigorously in the exhaust blast from the LM. I have NOT single-frame stepped through the available frames (till it goes out of window-framed view), but aware of the "flag fell down" controversy, I've watched the footage everytime I see an Apollo 11 program, and it continues to look to me like the flag had not fallen over at last camera sighting.

It may have fallen over 1/4 second later, but....

The footage to which you refer is from the Apollo 14 mission. Those guys really hammered the flagpole into the ground solidly, it didn't fall over. But it really blew like a hurricane when the LM lifted off.

If you have any doubts, you can also identify the wheeled tool cart, the Modular Equipment Transporter (MET), in the frame in that footage that shows the flag blowing so violently. The MET was only ever flown on Apollo 14.

As Kenny notes, the movie camera aboard Eagle failed to start running when Aldrin initially tried to start it prior to lift-off. He noticed it wasn't running about 10 seconds after pitchover. The Apollo 11 ascent film doesn't image the landing site at all; Eagle is already several km downrange by the time it begins.

Apollo 12's movie camera didn't run at all during its LM ascent, there is no photographic coverage of that event at all. I think we were extraordinarily lucky that the movie cameras *all* worked perfectly during the descent and landing phases. All six of the lunar landings are well documented from films taken through the LMP's window.

-the other Doug