Astronaut Scientific Debriefings, 1962-1963

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but you see a whole thunderhead light up and another one would light up over here and there would be some light go back and forth from here like this very horizontally. And then you would see another one light up and there was a lot of thunderstorm activity particularly in the storm that was to the north, of course. A little less to the one south but the lightening was very visible.

Pretty much the same thing you see from a high flying jet, isn't it?

Yes. You're a little farther away, of course. It's similar to that. If you've been up above the--40 or 50,000 feet at night and there is some little low thunderheads where you have the--maybe some of the flashing a little bit down at low altitudes, it would be a similar type thing. You're just farther away from it but there's a problem at all seeing flashes. It was on that area to the North, of course, in particular that I tried to use this airglow filter for a period of time but I didn't get any pattern out of it at all. This may have been my lack of night adaptation.

At twilight did you see the shadow of the earth on the atmosphere?

No.

Last of these. Can you describe how the atmosphere changed during the twilight process? You've already gone over this, if there's nothing you can add--

Well, I think that about describes it. One thing I was surprised at were the during the twilight period that might be of some interest with little they were discontinuities in it but I think just weather build-ups and high clouds off on the horizon. Though the horizon would be extremely even and