morning on the moon for observers on earth when A1

[johnb2]

Two nights ago, going home from work, the sky here was clear enough to see a, thin, crescent moon.(waxing). I followed Apollo avidly then. But I don't remember actually seeing the moon then. It was when I was 10 and probably wouldn't have been allowed out at night anyway.
Seeing the moon I thought; what phase of the moon would I have seen that night?
Seeing the moon the other night I assumed I was seeing Lunar morning and maybe at the A11 landing site. Am I right?

[Nowhere Man]

All of the Apollo landings were in the lunar morning, for various reasons. The terminator would have been just a small way past each landing site, so by looking at a map of the sites you can get a rough idea of the phase at each landing.

Fred

[johnb2]

nowhereman.

Unfortunately, whilst I have followed Astronomy for many years, I have not updated my skills on the internet sources.
Hence my questioning stance.
I can identify some, major stars and constellations and, currently( I think) follow the moons phases.
But I do not have an astronomical program, that allows me to identify astronomical events!

[johnb2]

I use an ACER Aspire netbook, with a, Linux , inspired OS.
So I appear to be limited in what I can do.

Johnb2

edit- nrbook to netbook.
ediit2 - inspred to inspired.

[chew]

I recommend trying Stellarium. You can enter your location and a date and time of an Apollo landing then search for the Moon. If it is below the horizon you can turn off the ground and if it was during daytime you can turn off the atmosphere.

You can also select an Apollo landing site as your viewing location. Enter the date and time and you'll see the heavens as the astronauts did.

[Nowhere Man]

(Someone, check me on this, please.)

Based on this map and my possibly flawed understanding, the phases of the moon at the time of each landing were approximately

• Apollo 11: Fat crescent
  
• Apollo 12: Gibbous, about halfway between first quarter & full
  
• Apollo 14: Smaller gibbous than A12
  
• Apollo 15: Just past first quarter
  
• Apollo 16: Almost first quarter
  
• Apollo 17: Crescent, smaller than A11
  

Does that help?

Fred

[Kiwi]

You can see the moon as it appeared from Earth when the Apollo 11 astronauts where there on the DVD Woodstock — 3 Days of Peace and Music. Starting at 0:11:50, there is a 19-second shot of the moon on the right of a split-screen view.

It was filmed by Michael Wadleigh on the evening of 20 July 1969 when he was in Wyoming shooting a film about mountain-climbing. Wadleigh produced, directed and filmed the Woodstock movie in August 1969 and inserted his clip of the moon because of its historical interest.

When I saw the movie in 1970 or 1971, I knew in advance about the moon clip but cannot recall how I knew -- probably from either radio or printed media. Anyway, I was pleased that it appeared early in the movie so that I didn't miss it, and it was the first time I had seen such a view of the moon while the astronauts were there.

[Glom]

Yes, it was a gorgeous sky a few nights ago. Jupiter and Venus were also hanging round the Moon too.

[johnb2]

thanks all for your responses.

Sloop

[ka9q]

I guess I wasn't the only one to look up at the moon while humans were there and wonder why I was surprised that it didn't look any different.

[echnaton]

Jan 31, 2012 2:30:42 GMT -4 ka9q said:

I guess I wasn't the only one to look up at the moon while humans were there and wonder why I was surprised that it didn't look any different.

Ah. but it did. We saw it a way that was different from any other viewer throughout history, until that point in time.