Apollo 11 TV images as
seen at Honeysuckle Creek
showing the
television picture from the Moon on monitors at the
Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, near Canberra, Australia
Monday 21st July 1969 (Australian time)
Adapted from
the Honeysuckle Creek
website. Used with permission.
For a further
discussion of Apollo 11 TV,
see the Apollo 11 TV section of the Honeysuckle Creek
website.
Scanned by John Saxon (Operations Supervisor at
Honeysuckle during the Apollo missions), August 2003.
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Some of these photos were taken of the Fairchild slow scan monitor (10 frames per second, 320 lines resolution – the photos with a white background), while most were taken of the scan-converted video on the adjacent NTSC monitor (30 frames per second, 525 lines resolution).
Irrespective of which monitor was used, the images below comprise the bulk of known images of the Apollo 11 EVA taken at the tracking stations in real time. As of December 2005, only two stills taken at Goldstone, and one taken at Sydney Video of the Parkes slow scan video, are known. |
Most, probably all, of the photographs were taken by
Honeysuckle’s video technician Ed von Renouard,
using his Konica single lens reflex 35mm camera.
Copies were made for various members of the Honeysuckle staff.
Others were taken on the day by Bernard Scrivener, Honeysuckle’s Admin
officer.
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Ed von Renouard at the Honeysuckle Creek video console during Apollo 12. The slow scan rack is at the left. Photos 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are of the top slow scan monitor (white background) – the others are of the scan-converted monitor directly in front of Ed (yellow background). The smaller monitor to the left, at Ed’s eye level, was used to check various station configurations. |
The descriptions (possibly penned by Honeysuckle Admin
officer Bernard Scrivener)
are those written on the back of the prints held by John Saxon, and are
included below in blue bold.
Timing notes by Colin Mackellar are in red,
as well as more accurate descriptions
(after careful review of the video of the EVA) in brackets.
Ground Elapsed Time, determined with reference to the
Apollo Lunar Surface Journal,
is also included below most of the images.
The images have been cleaned up to remove dust and
marks and were slightly enhanced. They were scanned at 300dpi.
Notes:
The first frame was taken while the international TV audience was still seeing poor quality pictures from Goldstone.
The second and third photos were taken during the period Sydney Video and the international audience were taking Honeysuckle –and the fourth and fifth were taken while the international audience was taking Goldstone.
The sixth photo was taken about a second after the switch to Parkes.
Note the lights inside the Operations Building at Honeysuckle reflected at the top of the screen in the scan converted monitor photos – and at the bottom in the slow scan photos (which are upside down).Click on each image for a larger version.
