FACTS · Catching the Moon

Every fact on screen and in the voice, its source and the quoted wording. Fetched 2026-10-31.

Main source: John Sarkissian, "On Eagle's Wings: The Parkes Observatory's Support of the Apollo 11 Mission", Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia 18 (2001); web edition on the CSIRO Parkes Observatory site, https://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/apollo11/ (pages introduction.html, parkes_operations.html, parkes_telescope.html, one_giant_leap.html, tv_broadcasts.html). Times are Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST, UTC+10).

1. The clear days before (0–9 s)

Voice: "For three days, the dish at Parkes had tracked Apollo 11 to the Moon, under clear skies." On screen: 17–20 JUL 1969 · CRUISE TO THE MOON.

• parkes_operations.html ("Cruise to the Moon"): "On the day of the launch, 17 July, … the spacecraft was acquired … at 3:00 p.m. (AEST)." "For the next two days the telescope continued to track Apollo 11 flawlessly to the Moon."
• one_giant_leap.html: "During the flight to the Moon and the days in lunar orbit, the weather at Parkes had been perfect".
• The night sky in the opening is one evening of those days; the sources do not say which evening was tracked under which sky. The Moon was a young crescent setting a few hours after sunset, so tracking after dark is plausible; this is our inference.

2. The storm, the limit, the gusts (9–27 s)

Voice: "Then, on the day of the moonwalk, a storm came in." / "The dish lay tipped to its limit, waiting for the Moon to rise." / "Two gusts, over 110 km an hour, slammed it against its gears." On screen: 21 JUL 1969 · STORM, LIMIT 29°38′ · THE DISH'S OWN HORIZON, WAITING FOR THE MOON, the wind trace with a 110 km/h line, WIND ALARM, WIND FORCE ON THE DISH · CONSIDERED SAFE · THE GUSTS, 21 JULY · ×10.

• one_giant_leap.html: "It was a typical July winter's day - grey overcast skies with rain and high winds. … a violent squall hit the telescope". "The giant dish of the Parkes Radio Telescope was fully tipped over to its zenith axis limit, waiting for the Moon to rise". "Two sharp gusts of wind exceeding 110 kph (70 mph) struck the dish, slamming it back against the zenith angle drive pinions … The telescope was subjected to wind forces ten times stronger that it was considered safe to withstand. The control tower shuddered … with the wind alarm ringing".
• parkes_telescope.html: "The horizon of the Parkes telescope is some 29° 38' above the true horizon. … On 21 July 1969, the Moon was set to rise above the telescope's horizon at 1:02 p.m. (AEST)."
• parkes_operations.html, John Bolton before the mission: "Perhaps our biggest weakness is the weather. If we get a very severe storm with very high winds then we'll no longer be able to keep tracking."
• The ten times is a ratio of wind force; the sources give no number for the safe limit, so the comparison panel shows no value. The wind trace is illustrative: only the two crossings of 110 km/h come from the source, so the chart has no other scale.
• The dish is shown being lowered from its tracking pose to the limit and buffeted; the real elevation drive moved at no more than 10° a minute (parkes_telescope.html), so the move is compressed, and the size of the rattle after each gust is ours.
• Wikipedia's Parkes Observatory article gives the gusts as "greater than 100 km/h"; the film follows the primary account.

3. The camera on the Moon, the first step, the switch (27–45 s)

Voice: "At 12:54, the camera on the Moon switched on." / "The first step reached the world through Honeysuckle Creek, near Canberra." / "Minutes later, the Moon rose into the main beam, and Houston switched to Parkes." On screen: 12:54:00 AEST · TV ON, the source track GDS HSK GDS HSK GDS, 12:56:20 FIRST STEP · VIA HSK, PKS · PARKES · OFF-AXIS ONLY: MOON STILL LOW, SIGNAL STRENGTH, SOURCE HSK → PKS, 13:02:51 AEST, PARKES · MAIN BEAM.

• tv_broadcasts.html: "On 21 July 1969 at 12:54:00 (AEST) Aldrin pushed in the TV circuit breakers and activated the lunar television camera. Three stations were tracking the LM at that time: the 64 metre antennas at Parkes and Goldstone as well as the 26 metre antenna at Honeysuckle Creek." The timing table, from the broadcast tapes and the NASA NET 2 loop: TV on from Goldstone at 00:00; switched to Honeysuckle at 01:39; Armstrong steps onto the Moon at 02:20 ("The time is 12:56:20 (AEST)"); back to Goldstone 04:42; Honeysuckle 05:36; Goldstone 06:49; "Picture from Parkes Main Beam. Time is 13:02:51 (AEST)" at 08:51. "They stayed with the Parkes main-beam pictures for the remainder of the 2 ½ hour moonwalk." The author notes that the loop and the tapes differ by some seconds; the order of switches agrees.
• one_giant_leap.html: Parkes received the TV first on "the off-axis receiver" while the Moon was still below the main beam; "the Moon rose into the off-axis beam of the telescope just as Aldrin activated the TV at 12:54:00 p.m. (AEST)." "Armstrong gingerly stepped onto the Moon at 12:56:20 (AEST)."
• parkes_telescope.html: the off-axis receiver's exact offset "has not been recorded … one gave a field-of-view 1.2° from the main beam, and the other … 1.43°."
• Control room, one_giant_leap.html: "A signal strength indicator (a voltmeter), located on the top of the control panel"; "the 10-inch SSTV monitor, located at the far end of the control room, with the central support column blocking the view from the control desk." The room in the film is drawn from these sentences; its layout is ours.
• The international picture is shown as the world saw it: the first step on Honeysuckle Creek's picture. The Chinese name 金銀花溪站 is a literal translation (there is no established one).

4. The Earth–Moon view (31.7–37.4 s)

On screen: SCHEMATIC · NOT TO SCALE, MOON · ≈ 384 000 km · 1.3 s, the three stations.

• Mean Earth–Moon distance 384,400 km: NASA Moon Fact Sheet, https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.html; light travel time ≈ 1.28 s.
• Station positions (rounded): Goldstone 35.43°N 116.89°W, Honeysuckle Creek 35.58°S 148.98°E, Parkes 33.00°S 148.26°E (Wikipedia station pages).
• The sub-lunar point (≈ 3°S 154°W) and sub-solar point (≈ 20.5°N 136.5°E) at 02:54 UTC are estimates chosen so that the Moon stands about 28° above Parkes and about 38° above Goldstone; distances and sizes are not to scale; coastlines are coarse.
• On the Moon, Earth is placed lower in the sky than its true height over the Sea of Tranquillity (above 60°) so it shares the frame with the lander.

5. The end (45–52 s)

Voice: "For the rest of the walk, the dish held on, outside its safety limits." On screen: 2 h 31 min · THE MOONWALK, HATCH TO HATCH, 約 6 億人在看 · ≈ 600 MILLION PEOPLE WATCHING.

• one_giant_leap.html: "The weather remained bad at Parkes, with the telescope operating well outside safety limits for the entire duration of the moonwalk." "The EVA lasted a total of 2 hours 31 minutes and 40 seconds, hatch open to hatch closed."
• introduction.html: "Six hundred million people, or one fifth of mankind at the time, watched Neil Armstrong's first steps on the Moon." (The first step itself reached them on Honeysuckle Creek's picture; the film does not say the 600 million watched Parkes's picture.)

Place

• Location rounded to arc-minutes, where published sources agree: 32°59′S 148°15′E (Wikipedia gives 32°59′52″S 148°15′47″E; other listings differ by a few arc-seconds).
• Murriyang is the Wiradjuri name of the 64 m dish (CSIRO, https://www.csiro.au/en/about/facilities-collections/atnf/parkes-radio-telescope-murriyang).