Each time the camera's field of view passed through a southerly direction there was a faint hazy irregular shaped something located a few degrees above the horizon. (Sun on the left, shadows to the right.) When I first saw the object I thought that one of the astronauts must have produced a temporary dust cloud by flubbing a golf shot. If so, the cloudy object should rapidly dissipate.

It didn't! Neither did it appear to be a camera optics artifact. So, if the object was not local, or an artifact, then it must have been astronomical in nature.

The Apollo 16 lunar landing site (moon at first quarter, on the moon's terminator) was 8 degrees South of the lunar equator. The following picture shows the landing site as well as a drawn-in likeness of the faint hazy object (FHO). (LSCP stands for lunar southern celestial pole.)

Apollo 16 Lunar Landing Site Showing a Likeness of the Faint Hazy Object
(Big Eye camera's location is approximate.)

So what hazy astronomical body is South of the moon? Where large distances are involved, this question can be restated with respect to the Earth. That is not exactly true.

I broke out Menzel's A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets and pored over its polar map of the southern celestial hemisphere. The best I could come up with at the time, was one of the Magellanic clouds. (These are roughly 17 and 21 degrees away from the Earth's southern celestial pole.)

Earth-Moon-Sun locations for 21 Apr 1972.

The plane of the ecliptic is tilted 23.45 degrees (deg) with respect to the celestial equator. The northern-most point of the ecliptic, as projected on the celestial sphere, is at 6 hrs Right Ascension (RA), +23.45 deg Declination (Dec). The ecliptic southern pole (ESN) is 90 degrees south from this northern-most point, or at 6 hrs RA, -66.55 deg Dec. (The ecliptic north pole (ENP) is thus at 18 hrs RA, +66.55 deg Dec.) [Thanks to Joe Harrington for calling attention to a mistake in the Right Ascension value of the ENP and for clearing up some polar nomenclature. ["Tweaked" 08 and 11 Mar 2006.]

The moon's orbit is tilted some five degrees with respect to the ecliptic. If you draw a five-degree-radius circle around the ESP, then the lunar southern celestial pole should be somewhere on that circle. [When this was orignally written, the author had assumed that the lunar rotational axis was perpendicular to the lunar orbit. That turns out to be wrong.] [These two paragraphs were re-written on 24 Sep 2005.]

Southern Lunar Horizon and Approximate Location of Lunar Southern Celestial Pole
as seen from Apollo 16 landing site on 21 April 1972
[Added 23 September 2005.]

According to WordIQ.com, the lunar axis is tilted with respect to the normal [of its orbital plane?] by 1.54 degrees, and the coordinates for the lunar northern celestial pole are RA 17 hours 47 min, Dec 65.46 deg. If one uses those figures to get the coordinates for the its southern celestial pole, then you get RA 5 hours 47 min, Dec -65.46 deg. The location for these coordinates is shown in red on the map above.

On April 21, 1972, an observer located eight degrees south of the lunar equator, at the terminator, and facing south, would see the center of the Large Magellanic Cloud at about four degrees above the southern lunar horizon. This location is more-or-less consistent with the author's recollection of the Big Eye faint hazy object.

Back to 1972.

To my consternation, whenever I set the Field Guide aside for a while, I found that when I came back to its southern hemisphere polar plot, for more "look-sees," that I could never recall where I left the Magellanic clouds. (A polar plot is a polar plot and there is no obvious getting-on or getting-off point.)

Then I noted that the Milky Way, as projected on the polar plot, formed a long curved arc. Aesthetically it looked nice but then I got "bent out of shape" at the celestial plot because the Milky Way is not bent out of shape. The distortion is even worse when you look at the Milky Way on a celestial equatorial projection (where the celestial equator is the undistorted aspect). You might want to stay home!

I decided then and there that I would put together a star map where the Milky Way was the least distorted feature and let our celestial coordinates do the curvy stuff.

A galactic coordinate system was drawn on a celestial sphere globe. Then the underlying celestial coordinates were transferred by eye onto what I call a oblique Mercator galactic projection. On this projection the gradual stretching out of galactic latitude begins at 30 degrees above and below the galactic equator. Latitude-wise the oblique mercator projection stops at plus/minus 80 degrees galactic latitude. Galactic polar plots were prepared which cover the regions from +30 degrees to the North Galactic Pole and from -30 degrees to the Southern Galactic Pole.

Lund Observatory kindly granted permission to overlay a stippled version of their 1958 Panorama of the Heavens on the map. The galactic coordinates used on the map were based on the system used in 1958. (That system has since been replaced with one whose zero galactic longitude is shifted some 32 degrees with respect to that used in 1958.

To eliminate the problem of constellations getting chopped in half at the edges, a 50 degree galactic longitude extension was added on the right hand side of the map.

The Star Atlas in Galactic Perspective (three maps) presents the Milky Way in a form that is insensitive to seasonal or time of day considerations. The distorted celestial coordinates make what I think is a useful tool for remembering constellation locations.

In 1972, my boss, CDR Robert G. Newbegin, IV, USN was a celestial navigator. He said he liked the map but it had to have some way to locate the Zenith (the spot directly overhead) for any date and time. A Local Meridian Finder versus date and time graph was made to serve this purpose. Once you know your local meridian and your latitude, then locating your zenith is easy. (A copy of the Local Meridian Finder is at the bottom of this page.)

The 1972 Star Atlas was done in pen and ink and it has is a certain amount of eyeball subjectivity as to star sizes and positions. These subjectivities are gradually being "reduced." In most places the hand drawn names and Greek characters are being replaced with formal fonts. [Link to the original star atlas added on 23 September 2005.]

A newer Star Map is under construction on this site. In it, the stippled milky way has been replaced by a two color scheme that represents stellar density gradations. [Added 23 September 2005.]

In 2002 the author purchased a NASA book and video covering the Apollo 16 mission, but failed to see the hazy object anywhere in the video. It appears that the focus clarity of the video was degraded from what was broadcast on television in 1972. Does anyone have a clear copy?

The Local Meridian Finder can also be used to tell when any given celestial object will be on a north-south line overhead. Follow the Right Ascension diagonal for your object until you reach your observation time of year. Read the time of day off the vertical axis on the left.

There's an online form to Convert Equatorial to Galactic Coordinates at Johns Hopkins University. To access it, use "equatorial galactic" as a search phrase on Google.com. The page should be number one in the URL lineup.
[Added 08 Oct 2005.]