Just a few hours before they passed behind the moon and entered into lunar orbit, the crew could look out the window and see it growing bigger.

Conrad: Boy, that moon looks big today, Houston. Thing's about the size of a baseball held at arm's length. And you can see all the mountains and craters. It's really a beautiful sight. We're starting to move on the far side of the sun from it, so we only see about an eighth of it. But that eighth of it is really stark. You can see - particularly up near the poles - On the LM, you can start to see that it's not a nice smooth ball anymore. It's got some little ridges and bumps that would be mountains or craters if you could see them right head on. It's a beautiful sight. On the other hand, the Earth looks like about the size of a quarter held at arm's length, which is pretty small.

Bean: Boy, the moon is still getting big out there, Houston. It's about the size of a large grapefruit when you hold it about half-arm's length. It's a monster.

This is the first time we have been able to look at it, and in the mare area - up to now - it looked very, very smooth; but now when you look at the mare area, you can see there's a, quite a number of long ridges. The features are very, very stark, and I never really realized how high the edges of these craters are. These large craters are steep, and it is a pretty rough looking satellite.