"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" wrote...

Well, not really sure if they could see them, but given
that when Neil walked on the Moon, the signal was received
by the antenna at Honeysuckle Creek AU. That was about
2.5 hours after landing as I recall, so you can figure
from there....


And the Honeysuckle antenna was *just* at its acquisition angle of about
12deg. So eastern Australia was just rotating into view - the Pacific
would have been the major feature. Also it was July and the moon was about
side-on to the earth wrt the sun, and from memory it was about 10am in
Sydney so the Americas would have been in darkness. The (what do you call
the line between night and day?) would have been in the eastern pacific, or
maybe the western continental US. Although it was the northern summer,
there would have been little tilt visible to see the polar regions because
the earth was 'side-on'.

With this reasoning, the prominent feature would have been the Pacific with
Australia visible to the left. What was 'visible' of the americas (Alaska
and north east USA) was in darkness. Hawaii was in full view, but I'm sure
would be difficult to visualise from so far.)

- Peter