Astronaut Scientific Debriefings, 1962-1963

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it visually or on instrument. And since we were having automatic control
trouble presentation on the attitude, I was trying to maintain control
looking back out the window and to check back and forth between the very
brilliant and bright light coming in at sunrise through the scope and
look back out into the dark again, I finally just put filter over the scope
and go back to looking out at the stars and what I could see on the clouds--
moonlight coming off of them idles and that seemed to be easier to hold the
position.

The moon look any different to you?

No. Not appreciably. It was brighter--a lot brighter. Just very clear.
Once again, clearer than it is around here, brighter than it is around here.
So Once again, out on the desert on a real clear night, it's very similar.

Let's push on to the earth questions on your next page, John. You said
you had never used the interference filter.

No.

Okay, haze and airglow band at night?

Yes, I did try the airglow band at night and I could see nothing. This
may have been the lack of night adaptation--I don't know. I wasn't too
concerned about the night adapting so perfectly to that. I tried the airglow
particularly on the storm areas over the Indian Ocean. There was a very
large storm there to the North, of course, and a smaller one to the South
of course, over about the first third of the Indian Ocean. We had wondered if
we could see lightening from above and lightening from above is very, very
visible. There's no problem at all on that. You can see the flashes--you don't
see individual flashes like you see a lightening bolt hit the ground here