What were "Ritter" and "Schmidt" Buz Aldrin saw after their take off from the moon in Apollo 11?

Question

Taken from the official transcripts from NASA:

"05 04 26 56 LMP (EAGLE) - Okay. There's Ritter out there. There it is, right there, there's Schmidt Man, that's impressive

looking, isn't it?"

Answer 1

"Ritter" and "Schmidt" were lunar landmarks (craters) Aldrin referred to to indicate that they were on course to rendezvous with the command module after the lunar module blasted off from the surface of the moon.

Some people may ask, "Why did they need landmarks when they had navigational computers?" The navigational computers onboard the Apollo landers were less powerful than most digital wristwatches available today- they even became overwhelmed during Apollo 11's landing ("1201 alarm" and "1202 alarm"). The crew were trained to rely on other methods of navigation in case of equipment failure. (Gordo Cooper had a major electrical failure during his Mercury flight and had to manually determine his pitch angle for re-entry based on the apparent location of Earth's horizon and familiar star formations.)

And, sometimes, it's just a lot quicker to look outside the window and read the street signs to figure out where you're at.

Answer 2

The lunar module windows actually had markings on them to help the pilots sight landmarks and navigate visually.

Both the descent and ascent computer programs were what engineers called open-loop control systems.  That is, they reckoned the spacecraft's position only by their notion of the starting conditions and the measured control actions of the pilots.  If the spacecraft should have drifted off course for any other reason, the computer wouldn't know about it because it doesn't consult any external references for its position.  The crew, however, could double-check the computer by noting whether they met the right landmarks at the expected times.

This was actually very important during the landing.  The crew noted that they were seeing landmarks too soon, suggesting they were actually farther along the path than the computer believed.  This error was traced back to some air trapped in the space between the two modules that escaped when they separated prior to the descent, which imparted velocity that had not been taken into account in the data uploaded to the open-loop landing software.  Had the pilots not paid attention to the sightings through the window, they would not have noticed this error.  So they were paying close attention to the landmarks on the ascent.

Answer 3

You wouldn't believe me if I told you...