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Author
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Topic: Apollo 13 gas cloud: Visible from Earth?
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ivorwilliams
Member Posts: 69
From: Welwyn Garden City, UK
Registered: Jan 2005
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posted 07-28-2006 04:05 AM
  
After the explosion on Apollo 13, was the cloud of escaping gas observed from Earth? Furthermore, if it was, was it photographed? |
spaceuk
Member Posts: 2113
From: Staffs, UK
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 07-28-2006 05:51 AM
Yes - it was photographed.Sky & Telescope at the time carried images and I believe this NASA photo shows the cloud.  |
Scott
Member Posts: 3307
From: Houston, TX
Registered: May 2001
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posted 07-28-2006 07:40 AM
That is neat! |
ivorwilliams
Member Posts: 69
From: Welwyn Garden City, UK
Registered: Jan 2005
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posted 07-28-2006 10:05 AM
Wow that was fast and just what I was looking for! Thanks ever so much. |
413 is in
Member Posts: 632
From: Alexandria, VA USA
Registered: May 2006
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posted 07-28-2006 01:25 PM
It is also interesting to note that, amazingly there were also some individuals on the ground who visually witnessed the Apollo 13 explosion in real-time. Hamish Lindsay, in "Tracking Apollo to the Moon," writes: At Houston it was just after 9 p.m. on a pleasant clear evening. With three friends, Andy Saulietis had rigged up a telescope connected to a black and white television set on the roof of the Manned Spacecraft Center. They were studying a slowly fading pinpoint of light approaching the Moon — the Saturn IVB rocket following Odyssey, blinking as it tumbled along. While they watched, a bright spot appeared in the middle of the screen and over the next ten minutes grew into quite a bright ball. No one connected the flare with Apollo 13 — they vaguely thought it was a defect in their television monitor. They left the rooftop quite oblivious to what they had witnessed — the oxygen tank on Apollo 13 exploding, and in ten minutes spreading into a gaseous sphere over 48 kilometers wide, glowing in the sunlight. |
Paul78zephyr
Member Posts: 678
From: Hudson, MA
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted 07-28-2006 01:26 PM
In Henry S. F. Cooper's book "XIII: The Apollo Flight That Failed," the real time sighting of Apollo 13 and its cloud of oxygen gas by astonomer Andy Saulietis on the night of April 13, 1970 is the subject of the book's opening page. |
FFrench
Member Posts: 3165
From: San Diego
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 07-28-2006 02:49 PM
Here is what appears to be a different photo of the same event — this one was published in Spaceflight magazine. My apologies, someone wrote on my copy of it... |
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