A Most Extraordinary Eclipse - Early Stages
Images and Story Copyright
by Alan Bean.
All rights reserved.
Last revised 19 JUly 2003.
It was hard to see the dark Earth at first, but as our eyes adjusted, we could see we were over the Indian Ocean just off the eastern most tip of Africa moving very fast, almost 25,000 miles per hour. And right down in the center of the disk of the Earth was a bright round light. It seemed to move rapidly across the clouds and water. What it was we didn't know. Only later would astronaut Rusty Schweickart tell us that strange bright moving light was a reflection of the same full moon, which was directly behind us, we had walked on only four days ago.
But there were pulses and flashes of light. And they seemed to be aligned in a gently moving arc from about 8 o'clock to 2 o'clock. What were we seeing?
Dick Gordon said, "It looks sort of the same as lightning flashes down inside thunderstorms when we flew over them in our T-38 airplanes." Indeed, that is what we were seeing. As we studied the Earth carefully, we saw that the most active locations were along the equator. Violent thunderstorms that had built up during the daylight hours were now dissipating as this side of our planet Earth rotated into darkness. I told of our experience to Jacques Cousteau and he said, "It was as if the Earth was wearing a necklace of diamonds." No wonder he narrated his own television film productions.
| Alphabetical Guide | |
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(Previous) A Most Beautiful Moon 1995, Apollo 12 Portrait of the Moon |
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(Next) Mother Earth 1983, Apollo 8 One Of The First Earthrises Ever Seen By Humans |
| Chronological Guide | |
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(Previous) Deploying the DAC 2001, Apollo 15 Jim Irwin Installs the 16-mm Movie Camera |
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(Next) Rock 'N' Roll On The Ocean Of Storms 2002, Apollo 12 Pete and Al Play 'Lunar Crane' |
| Mission Guide | |
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(Previous) Apollo Moon 1995, Apollo 12 Full Moon |
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(Next) Remembrances Of A Moonwalk: Self-Portrait In The Dust 1984, Apollo 12 Memories |