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Thanks Frank,
Brilliant extra details.
Actually it was the Saturn lunar conjunction photo send in by Hewitt that 
reminded me about Earthrise. I remember my first sight of this (and the later 
Armstrong small step) as if it were yesterday.
Time America got going with Mars I think before I get any older! 
Also hoping for evidence of Life elsewhere out there. But we better look after 
this little blue globe. At the moment, it looks as if that is all we have 
got.
Best
Francis

-----Original Message-----
From: NavList@fer3.com [mailto:NavList@fer3.com] On Behalf Of Frank Reed
Sent: 30 April 2019 19:02
To: francisupchurch@gmail.com
Subject: [NavList] Re: Earthrise.

I didn't cheat! When you posted this, I knew the names of the more famous of 
the two immediately. The name of the third astronaut popped into my head late 
last night. The Apollo 8 earthrise photo was taken by Bill Anders on 
Christmas Eve, 1968. There are details and useful links here:  [LINK: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise] 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise. The astronauts who were alone in 
lunar orbit, as you note so well, Francis, completely isolated from the rest 
of the billions of the human population, were Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and 
Bill Anders. 
Borman, oddly enough, I remember best from television commercials in the late 
1970s. After he left NASA, he became CEO of Eastern Airlines (following in 
the steps of World War One ace Eddie Rickenbacher). His astronautical 
expertise could not save Eastern from the period of airline deregulation, and 
that airline was dissolved five years after Borman left (here's an image from 
an  [LINK: 
https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/eastern-airlines-concorde-sst-erik-simonsen.jpg] 
alternate timeline for Eastern). After NASA, Bill Anders was US ambassador to 
Norway for a few years. Neither Borman nor Anders flew in space again after 
Apollo 8. 
Jim Lovell, of course, was the only real deep-space navigator in history. He 
got great personal satisfaction from using the sextant and analyzing his 
sights with the computer. After Apollo 8, the sextant sights were mostly 
ignored apart from some initial practice on each flight. The sextant was, 
nevertheless, employed as an astrocompass on all the Apollo missions, and in 
that role sights were taken almost daily to ensure proper alignment of the 
inertial navigation system (INS). Lovell, of course, had the privilege of 
flying to the Moon again on Apollo 13. Alas, the team at NASA studied tea 
leaves and astrology only and paid far too little attention to numerology 
when planning the mission, so unlucky 13 did not include a moon landing.
Of all the Apollo lunar mission crews, this one has a last unique distinction: 
all three of them are still alive. Lovell and Borman are both 91 years old. 
Anders is 85. More than half, 14 of the 24 astronauts who flew to the Moon, 
have died. All three members of the crews of both Apollo 12 and Apollo 14 
have already passed away. 
There is one bit of celestial navigation data that we can apply to this photo. 
We can determine the angular diameter of the Earth as seen by the astronauts 
with relative ease. The SD of the Earth as seen from the Moon is essentially 
identical to the Moon's HP as seen from Earth. At 16:00 UT when the photo was 
taken, the  [LINK: 
http://www.reednavigation.com/lunars/lunars_v5.asp?BodySel=Sun+and+Lunars+Stars&todaycheck=2&GMTmonth=December&GMTday=24&GMTyear=1968&gmtsel=Gr.+Mean+Time&hristep=Every+Hour°format=dd+mm.m&OutType=L&LatDeg=&LatMin=&LatName=N&LonDeg=&LonMin=&LonName=W] 
Moon's HP was 58.0'. So the angular diameter of the Earth (twice HP) was 
1°56' as seen by the astronauts. That's about the same as a US quarter (coin) 
held at arm's length.
Frank Reed

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