JSC (AV) - Skylab 4 - Earth Surface Features - TV 78 / General Purpose IVA Telecast - TV 77 Part 1

Description

FR A216 SKYLAB 4 KINESCOPE TAPE 7, PART 1 of 3 the southern coast of South America, the west coast of Chile, and we have the television cookin' here, we're looking down at the Pacific Ocean, we're hoping we're not going to have too much cloud cover and miss our opportunity to see the humble Peru current through the Fjord area, and there we go...now we're looking on down toward the south, and you can see some light greenish looking lights down there and as I move up toward the north, you can begin to see some long, narrow wakes, but I'm afraid that my fears were not unfounded, we've we're going to miss our pictures of the humble Peru current as it passes through the Fjord-like inland er the islands coastal islands of Chile. Cloud cover is right up to the land and about all we can see is the southern- most parts of the Andes mountains, uh, and some of the long, slender lakes that we see. The way we're going in orbital path, the way you're looking in the TV right now, is we're going feet first along the orbital path, and what I'm doing now is panning to the north, see if I can get our temperature sensor out of the field of view there, but unfortunately, we've missed our opportunity to see the fjords in the humble Peru currents because of cloud cover. We're now crossing over the Andes Mountains and we're going to be coming down into the (garble) of Argentina and come out over the ocean over the city of Bajia Blanca and we'll be all right, here we go let me move up here and let you see the coast of Argentina, right there. Now, let's start looking for the Faulkland current. We're now beginning to look down toward the South, I think right there amongst those clouds, just off the inlet area there (garble) lighter green which is part of the Faulkland currents - it doesn't show quite as clearly, and again, it looks like we've been had by the clouds. Now as I look out further down toward the south, you can see the part of the Faulkland currents that I was looking at before, right out there in that hole in the clouds, you see that light green stain, which is the chlorophyll bloomin, the plankton coming up. That's what we were looking at earlier when we were down at the south looking north. Unfortunately, the cloud cover looks like it may get to us here, and let me show you a little bit of the Argentine area here. This landfog you see right here is a very active wheat producing area, it looks like. I don't know if you can have the resolution on TV to see it, but there is a good deal of checkerboarding down there, which indicates cultivated fields. The large A216 Page 2 bay that we were looking at the Faulkland current through there earlier was Bajia San Mateos. Okay, now we're coming up over the pampa area and down through the clouds, you guys, I'm sure you won't be able to see it, but down through the clouds is a lot of checkerboarding and we are just south of Buenos Aires. Now you should be able to possibly see the checkerboarding. Okay, now as we move up and look a little further ahead, we come to Monte Vidao and Buenos Aires and the mouth of the Rio de la Plata River. All right, as we move out from this mouth of the Rio de la Plate River, is where we should find the confluence of the Faulkland and the south equatorial current, and I think if you look very carefully you might be able to see just a little bit of color change right down in this area right in here, where my pencil is pointing, and that is the area in which you get the confluence of these two currents. I can see if fairly plainly - it's not as bright today as it has been in the past, but it's very definitely there. Now we're coming up on a beautiful example of it, as we move right over into here - let me get my pencil in the way again okay, right in there we have a mixture of the two currents. We can see the lighter green coming up from the Faulkland current, which is in our particular case today, up here, which is south. Down here is north, and you can see the darker blue, rather irridescent blue, coming down from the south equatorial current. Those two are mixing and proceeding on out to the east, which is to the left on your screen. Now there has been better days for seeing it, but we can definitely see that now, and uh, that just about covers it. We're now well north of Monte Vidao and Buenos Aires and I don't see any further indications of the current. Uh, let me show you a little bit of what sun glint looks like. I'm going to have to stop down a little bit on my shutter to keep from faking out things, but now as we're coming up to the north here, we're in a sun glint area here. That's where the roughness of the water and the sun angle from the sun reflects the sun back up to it and (sirens in background) shows it very bright and very tight, and this sun glint is a beautiful way for us to see such things as patterns and (loud sirens coming across in background in this section of tape) okay, I'm gonna' have to check something here what's the rate of climb? (Sirens...) I'd like to show you a little bit about how we are observing Kohoutek. The panel that we have right in front of me is the Apollo Telescope Mount control display panel, and we're using the instruments which are used for observing A217 Page 3 the comet. These instruments were originally designed for study of the sun, and we still do use them extensively for that purpose, but we also found that some of these instruments are quite capable of learning quite a bit about the comet, and I'll try to discuss a little of that for you now today. I think we've been rather fortunate that comet Kohutek was picked up and discovered quite early so that we could get a good observing program put together to study it. Another exceptional thing about the comet is that it's coming relatively close to the sun, where it has been all ready, and therefore is heated, becomes quite bright, and we hope in that way show us quite a bit of how comets are made and how they change. It's just gone through a relatively dynamic period and on December 28, went within a quarter of a million miles of the sun, which is really quite close, and it was traveling at a speed about a quarter of a million miles per hour. Now it will tend to slow down as it pulls away from the sun, it also could decrease in brightness. However, as it does get a little further away from the sun, you folks down there will be able to see it and be able to enjoy the same spectacular sight that we have been up here. We've been quite lucky, we have 15 nights, transitions into nights and days, up here for every 24 hours so we've been able to see it more frequently. An advantage for us being up here is that we're above the earth's atmosphere that allows us to see it without any of the intense light scattering that exists within the earth's atmosphere, and as soon as it comes above the horizon, we can see it and observe it - we use quite a few of these onboard instruments to look at it, and first let's talk about the ATM. In general, what we try to do is take a picture of the comet the same as you would take a picture of any camera you would have at home. We also at the same time try to learn a little about about what colors that the comet really emits - by colors now, we mean not just the ones you can see with your eye, but those all the way down into x-ray. We don't expect x-rays, but we do expect some ultraviolet emission. Surprisingly enough, there's very little real hard data on comets, even though they have been noted since almost 500 b.c. We hope we can make a significant step in thatdirection, along with some of the other observing programs which are being carried out at this time. We'd like to know whether it's made of ice, rock, whether there's methane in it, complicated molecules, whether it's hydrogen, numerous questions which will tell us a little bit about where it came from and where perhaps our solar system had its beginnings. We've been able to do a fairly extensive observing program despite the fact that we have only one have lost one control moment A216 Page 4 gyro for maneuvering. We started out with three and have lost one, which we felt with a significant impact, but fortunately, the people at Houston have gotten very smart and worked hard and figured out fairly good ways of getting the job done with the reduced capability. The first instrument an perhaps the primary one for the purpose of finding the comet and pointing to it, is the white light coronagraph. That's controlled through this section of the panel here, and we use these two TV monitors to find the comet by using the instrument in conjunction with the TV camera that it has mounted into it, which gives us the picture of what the instrument sees. Since the corona - that's the atmosphere around the sun is relatively faint, and the comet is also, the instruments are pretty well matched. However, as you go in toward the center of the sun, the corona gets very bright and the coronagraph here has taken that into account and filters out most of the light very close to the sun so that only the edges of the field of view so that only the edges of the field of view, if you will, the regions right around here, are capable of seeing the comet once we move it in close to the center we can no longer see it. That means that we have to resort to something a little less accurate than pointing directly at it by eye, and that is, we use an overlay, good pattern here, if you will, to find out where the comet is and then we figure out what its coordinates are, and then WE figure where we want to move it to and make the appropriate entries into the computer. Those entries are all calculated from the grid overlay which we've put on the display and have had to calibrate just for the purpose. As a matter of fact, right at this moment, the white light coronagraph is observing the comet...and at this moment, I do have to get three single exposures going and a series of what we call a fast cannon. scan. I'll cut off the television for a minute and I'll be right back with you. We're now looking at the displays for the white light coronagraph and down in the lower left is a very faint object which turns out to be the comet. The coronagraph was designed to look at the sun, which is fairly bright, and the comet being relatively faint, just barely shows, but still well enough to do the pointing. What I will do now is make a few entries into the computer which will move that point over to another position which will make our observations. 216 Page 5 Okay, the entries are now made and uh you can see it moving off to a new location. Now you see it disappear - the reason for it is it gets in closer to the center of the display - the filtering of the instrument can filter out the light much more greatly as you move in closer to the center. Okay, we're back with the whte light coronagraph and look at the mode of observation now. You can see by the light here that tells me that we are operating. We hope that the coronagraph will tell us a little bit about whether the tail behind the comet is made of gas or dust or what combination there is. We're able to make that same separation in observing th

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Records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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Moving Images Relating to Documentary Stock Footage