Christmas Message from the Moon

Untitled Part 2

3 days 13 hours 57 minutes mission time

Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

The Apollo 8 astronauts are now able to film the surface of the Moon through the two so-called rendezvous windows, one on each side of the spacecraft. However, the last pictures didn't make a lot of sense to me.

Unlike the high-quality still photos taken by Apollo 8 and developed later on Earth, the live black and white TV pictures of the lunar surface were grainy and lacked definition.

Capsule Communicator @CAPCOMApollo8

Apollo 8 is getting a lot of reflection off the window right now. Hard to make out any detail at all from the TV pictures down here.

Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

I'm going to switch windows to see if we can improve the pictures. I asked Jim not to pitch up but to roll. Roll right and yaw left.

Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

Hopefully, the TV pictures are better now. The large dark crater between the spacecraft and the Sea of Crises, we believe, is Condorcet Crater.

Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

The Sea of Crises is amazingly smooth as far as the horizon, past a rather rough mountainous region in front of the spacecraft.

Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews

The Apollo 8 astronauts are looking up towards the Sea of Crisis. That so-called 'sea' is a large dark flat area between the heavily bombarded surrounding areas.

Frank Borman @CDRApollo8

Okay, we can see the crater Picard now.

Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

We're getting a lot of static on the comms right now. Hope they can still hear us. We can see the dark crater Picard towards the middle of the Sea of Crises.

Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

We are now approaching the Moon sunrise (or spacecraft sunset).

Frank Borman @CDRApollo8

We need to yaw a little more to the left. We're over the Sea of Fertility now. It has a mottled look to it, but it is not heavily cratered, so it must be relatively new. It has a strange circular crack pattern around the middle of it.

Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

Looking at the crater Taruntius now. I'd guess it's about 30 or 40 miles across. We need to roll left.

Jim Lovell @JLCMPApollo8

Just to the west of the Sea of Crises, we see an area called the Marsh of Sleep. And to the west of that, the Sea of Tranquility - the proposed landing site for the Apollo 11 mission.

Bill Anders @LMPApollo8

We're yawing a bit too far left. We need to yaw right a little bit.