I think all of you folks who are so willing to disregard the FOX special need to expalin these photos:
In this first one the shadows are clearly going in opposite directions:
Shadows1
In this picture objects that should not be next to each other clearly are:
Too close?
This picture seems to be too good, too well developed with excrutiating detail.
Picture Perfect
What’s wrong with this picture you may ask. Where are the stars?
No stars?
First of all, you appear to concede in that last paragraph that it is possible to photograph things in shadow on the Moon. So I guess we can lay that chestnut to rest.
But as for your comments: Wrong, wrong, wrong. What you “think of it” is irrelevant. Let’s try again:
If you are standing on the surface on the Earth on a moonlit night, the only light source is the light that the Moon reflects. That light is sufficient to illuminate things.
If you are standing in the shadow of the LEM on the surface of the Moon, the only light source is the light that the Moon reflects. We’ll assume it’s a new Earth.
The fact that the Sun is “up” or not up is irrelevant. The sun’s always “up” to someone; it doesn’t turn off. The only way it cannot illuminate you is if you are in shadow; that is, if something solid is between you and the Sun. In the above cases, you are in shadow. It doesn’t matter if the shadow is cast by the LEM or by having the Earth between you and the sun. In either case, you are blocked from the sun, and the only light source is scattered light that’s bouncing off the Moon. If you’re standing behind the LEM, you can’t be lit by driect sunlight, can you? But you could be lit up by moonlight - just like your friend back on Earth.
So you’re standing in the shadow of the LEM. The sun’s blocked from you; it isn’t illuminating you. But the Moon itself obviously would. Something in shadow on the Moon absolutely would be partially illuminated by the light bouncing off the Moon’s surface.
Whoa, lots of catching up to do.
Nimune: “Sure, those hills look grey to you, but the fact that you can see them at all is proof that they are reflecting light.”
I never argued that the moon’s surface is completely non-reflective. But RickJay keeps coming back to the idea that, since the moon appears quite bright from earth, it must be blindingly bright if you are standing on it. Though this would hold true for the sun, I think the pictures of the gray moon dust are proof enough that it does not hold true for the moon. Assuming the pictures are legitimate, of course.
Your second point is a good one–the fuzziness I see when viewing a distant mountain is due to atmosphere. But we’re not talking about a camera that is focused on distant mountains that nevertheless appear fuzzy. We’re talking about a camera focused on an object only a few feet away. I don’t think it holds that just because the moon has no atmosphere, all visible objects would simultaneously appear equally in focus to an observer. That is to say, if I hold up a newspaper on the moon and attempt to read it, the lack of atmosphere is not going to change the fact that objects in the far distance will appear out of focus to me while I am reading the paper.
But I’m not going to say that I have any way of knowing for sure how far away the mountains in those photos are. You may be right that they are quite distant. Back here on earth, I decided to do a little test today on the way to work. I live in Tucson, which has mountain ranges on all four sides. As I drove eastward from my home, I could easily notice a “parallax shift” after driving 2 miles eastward. The mountains were approximately 15 miles to the north as the crow flies. Without any way of judging how far away the moon mountains may or may not have been, this experiment may have been useless, but I just wanted to try.
Robot Arm: “Cop Rock” was on ABC, wasn’t it? Well, it’s good to know you’re on top of the fact-checking detail. 
On to RickJay…
You say:
“I would imagine shadows on the Moon ARE less illuminated than shadows would be on Earth on a similar surface… The shadows in the Moon photos look really dark to me… look at the shadow on the left side of the LEM in picture 1. It’s very dark.”
At this point, you’re either agreeing with me without knowing it or disagreeing with me without thinking about it. Look at the shadow in picture 1. It’s dark. Now look at the huge black shadow Aldrin is under in picture 6. If “shadows on the Moon ARE less illuminated” than they would be on earth, how can you explain the brightness of Aldrin and the “shadowed” LEM? You say you are convinced there is no extra light source in the photo—then what’s going on? Are we back to “Earthshine”?
As to whether Aldrin’s boots are really blue… false color is one thing, but it’s hardly the only thing. So they’re grey and not blue–it still doesn’t explain why they (and the rest of Aldrin) are not in shadows.
Then again you ask: “how can you say the Moon would not illuminate objects a few feet away when it can illuminate things thousands of miles away?” Well, you just went on record as saying the shadows cast by the moon are perfectly black, and on top of that we can plainly see that the lunar surface is a fairly dark gray, so I don’t find it difficult to say that Aldrin is NOT being illuminated by reflected light from the lunar surface. As you say, check out the leftmost LEM leg in the first photo. Why isn’t it being illuminated by reflected light from the lunar surface?
Back to the car… is your car at all shiny? I mean, compared to say, the dirt on the moon?
And no matter how many times you tell me that the Apollo astronauts did receive substantial doses of alpha radiation, unless you can tell me how much the “substantial dose,” it’s just hearsay. So far, the ONLY figures anyone has been able to turn up for how radioactive it is out there pertain to one 5-minute segment of the Van Allen belts. That’s just not enough information for us to definitively conclude that the astronauts would not have been fried in their seats.
I think there’s a flaw in the “the astronauts and NASA knew there was a risk, but they took it” argument. The astronauts, though they were obviously embarking upon the in-itself dangerous enterprise of going to the moon and back, were by no means NASA’s disposable radiation guinea pigs—these men had to come back healthy national heroes.
Think about the way NASA used the aged John Glenn (who of course didn’t go to the moon, but whatever) as a promotional tool when they sent him up on the space shuttle. If Glenn and all his peers had dropped off like flies 25 years ago because NASA’s “calculated risk” didn’t pay off, it would have been a lot more difficult to get that swelling patriotic feeling about the space program. I know this isn’t a very concrete point, but I think it is worth considering. When I read in NASA’s report that they only found out the danger from cosmic rays was not considerable once the astronauts were ALREADY up there… I don’t know, seems pretty shaky. What do you tell the Russians: “well, we got a man to the moon and back… of course, he’s dead now, but it was a calculated risk”?
As for the dust–you say it would have been “thrown sideways.” Okay. But the thrust was coming down from the center of the LEM, not from the footpads. If dust was forced out to the sides of the central thrust area, wouldn’t it still end up on the feet of the LEM?
Next up: Bobort.
Thank you for the clarification of the high-radiation-area issue; something didn’t seem to add up there.
“…the Apollo astronaut’s dose falls into a sort of gray area between acute and chronic dose, and you’re not going to be able to find a convenient table summarizing the effects of doses for such a time period.”
Acutally, Sam Stone’s link to srag-nt.jsc.nasa.gov/FAQ/Protect.htm provides just that: NASA’s guidelines for space-radiation exposure during a 30-day mission (not quite 9.5 days, but closer than the yearly figures to what the astronauts would have been going through).
“You’re really grasping at straws here”–hey, I told you I was about to make an outlandishly conspiratorial point! Just trying to cover all the bases here. Obviously there is no compelling reason not to dismiss the 50 rem coincidence as just that–coincidence. But hey, you never know. I thought it was worth noting.
The author simply introduces the concept of the Van Allen belts, says they are dangerous and presented a challenge to the moon mission, then leaves it at that. Can you blame me for being just a bit skeptical?
Then you say: “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to be saying that because the article has a scientific-sounding name it must therefore be the final authority an all aspects of the radiation exposure during the Apollo missions.”
I wouldn’t exactly say this article had merely a “scientific-sounding” name–it came from the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, after all. It’s on NASA’s web site, for crying out loud–it’s not like we’re looking at a high school science report here. Perhaps it is not the “final authority” on the issue but I certainly have good reason to believe it is AN authority—and looking over the data presented, again, I note that we are given no information about how much radiation is actually present in space, nor are we told how NASA got around the challenges they themselves predicted.
What, exactly, do you suppose the purpose of this document was? Simply to show us pictures of the astronauts’ Geiger counters? Seems to me it purports to discuss the radiation protection afforded the astronauts on the missions (that is part of the title, after all) yet it does not do so in any way, shape or form, other than to say “yes, they were protected.” The preface indeed claims that the report is a “summary” of the studies carried out during the Apollo Program—please point out to me, Bobort, the part where these studies are even discussed, much less summarized. As I see it, we have been given no data about the Van Allen belts, no data about solar radiation levels during the missions, etc. etc. The report’s only function seems to be to assert that the astronauts were not exposed to radiation, yet we are left with no idea why or how.
But yes, I will concede there may be more in-depth documents out there somewhere. I can tell you one thing, though: the author of the report in question sure didn’t leave us a lot of references to cross-check.
As to the discrepancy between the two charts: I could tell immediately that they were in different units, but I assumed (wrongly, I guess) that there exists some linear conversion factor between the two.
So there is NO way, without more information, to tell whether the statistics on the charts are even related to each other at all? Without more specific breakdowns of what types of radiation the 'nauts were exposed to and for how long? How disappointing. Just when I thought we were getting somewhere.
Finally, Bobort, let’s talk about your “educated guess as to the upper bound” (I won’t call it an estimate) of 500mSv. I certainly hope you won’t mind me using you as an example here for Nimune, who said I should be more deferent to “people who can use terms like ‘250sMv’ with a straight face.” Well, Nimune, I just got our resident “sMv” expert to admit that because his number “didn’t come from NASA,” it is “meaningless” to our discussion. Don’t assume that just because somebody is talking about something you don’t know much about that you are automatically being trumped intellectually.
pldennison: I still don’t see the connection between the lunar surface appearing dark gray as opposed to bright white and the “why aren’t there any stars visible” issue. Please explain.
Well, aynrandlover, from what pldennison wrote here, it looks like you never saw the new moon at night.
And while you’re here, “annrandlover”… (1) it’s Bick (2) we have yet to establish the surface brightness of the moon. Look in the photos—there just isn’t enough light coming off of that dirt to ILLUMINATE (again, not just “render distinct from black”) anything.
Ha ha! Thanks for the comic relief, Tretiak.
Now I have a bone to pick with BickByro:
What are you talking about? If something is visible, then it (the visible object) is illuminating the point from which it is visible. If I can see the moon’s surface while standing in the shadow of the LEM, that means that the reflected light from the moon is hitting my retinas. Since I’m standing in the shade of the LEM, my retinas are in the shadow of the LEM, and hence the area of the LEM in shadow is being illuminated–otherwise I couldn’t see it, capiche? Light cannot distinguish between my retinas and the side of the LEM, or are you arguing that it can?
Now, I have a serious objection to make. You’re putting more credibility in the claims of the hoax believers (as they’re referred to on the Bad Astronomy page) than in the scientists you have clearly explained how wrong the reasoning is that the HB’s use. Why do you prefer one claim over another? Why do you believe that the Van Allen belts are a radiation danger but don’t believe the scientists who say that it is navigable and that we in fact did it?
It is irrational pure and simple.
I’ll take one simple example of the claims you refer to:
I looked at the image. The complaint is:
You’ve got to be kidding me, right? First, the site doesn’t provide you with a link or reference to the original photograph, so they (the HB’s) could have altered it after the fact and you’d never know (see the photos Tretiak linked to for examples of that). Secondly–you’ve never taken a picture at an angle and then cropped it so the straight lines (horizon, trees, etc.) align with the edges of the picture? This is ludicrous.
As for the lighting issue, look at the picture more closely. You’ll notice that the surfaces that point away from the surfact are darker than those that point down (the flag on the back of the backpack, the top of the spacesuit helmet, the top of the arms, etc). All of this points to illumination from below Aldrin. This is entirely consistent with light reflecting off the surface. And look how bright the surface is compared to the shadow. It is dark in the shadow, but not completely black.
And note how the camera appears to be taking the picture from inside the shadow. Apparently light can’t tell the difference between a camera and a retina either. Surely you’re not claiming that a camera is different than the other surfaces in the picture? They should be illuminated also.
Your complaint is that it should be darker. You have made no statement (nor has any other HB) to back that up. Have you done the surface integral to approximate the amount of light energy reflected from the surface of the moon to the shadows to verify how much darker it should be? Have you been to the moon to see what it “really” looks like? I’ll give you a hint: Armstrong and Aldrin have been there and that’s what it looks like.
Tretiak: wow, somebody on MY side! Well, we’ll see how those photos go over… it’s a tough crowd.
RickJay: I never argued that it is impossible to photograph things in shadow on the moon. I argued that things in shadow on the moon do not show up AS BRIGHT in photographs as things NOT in shadow on the moon (again, the Aldrin-descending-LEM photo is a good example). I stick by this argument. You assume that the amount of glare off the lunar surface is anywhere near comparable to the strength of sunlight; and here, it seems it is you who are wrong, wrong, wrong. But I already went over a lot of this in my last post; if you disagree, by all means let me know.
You know how I hate either/or absolutism, so how’s this for a theory: We successfully send astronauts to the Moon, they return, the film gets developed, and the framing on most of the photos taken with those preposterous chest-mount, viewfinderless Hasselblads is about as good as you would expect (try it at home!). Photo experts crop the photos but the resulting increased graininess leaves the photos looking truly awful.
NASA bigwig looks at them and says, “There’s no way we can show these to the American public and have them think they got their money’s worth! Fake some.”
Off to, say, Area 51 (gotta fit it into EVERY conspiracy theory!) for a photo shoot. Use some prisoners or other disposable people for models, kill them afterwards to reduce the number of witnesses, and release the pics mixed in with the few good ones from the Moon.
The result? NASA gets its Moon missions done, the public gets some STUNNING photos, and little mistakes convince some people that the whole program was faked.
emarkp: Bone-picking is what I’m all about. Let me explain this to you as a “thought experiment.” Go outside on a moonless night. Look at your hand. Can you see it? That’s because it is VISIBLE. Does your hand appear to have a spotlight shining directly on it? No–that’s because it’s not ILLUMINATED. There is a difference.
As to your claim that I’ve put “more credibility in the claims of the hoax believers… than in the scientists you have clearly explained how wrong the reasoning is that the HB’s use,” I have no idea what you’re talking about. It seems you expect me to believe something just because a scientist said it—apparently you do not believe that a scientist should be expected to provide empirical data to back up his claims. Now THAT’S irrational.
As for whatever complaints my link may have had about the crosshairs, I was simply citing the photo as an example of illumination in the shadows. I take no stand on the crosshair issue.
“It is dark in the shadow, but not completely black…
Your complaint is that it should be darker. You have made no statement (nor has any other HB) to back that up.”
Look, you people are going to have to make up your minds whether shadows cast on the moon are black or not. Please explain to me how your statements are compatible with RickJay’s statement that “shadows on the Moon ARE less illuminated than shadows would be on Earth on a similar surface… The shadows in the Moon photos look really dark to me.” I’d like to see some uniformity in the arguments against me.
But I’ll say it again, just so my opinion is clear: shadows on the moon are darker than shadows on the earth because there is no atmosphere to diffuse light into shadowed areas.
Finally:
“Have you done the surface integral to approximate the amount of light energy reflected from the surface of the moon to the shadows to verify how much darker it should be? Have you been to the moon to see what it ‘really’ looks like?”
If you have done either of these things yourself, emarkp, please let me know; I’d love to know the details.
You know, the tragic thing about this argument is if we hadn’t STOPPED going to the Moon,(grrr) it would be devilishly easy to prove that we HAD gone.
Goddammit, it’s been twenty-nine bleeding years! Why the HELL haven’t we been back?!!
Bick, here’s the problem:
On the one hand, we have you. You’re making all sorts of assertions about what things should look like on the moon, based only on what you know about what things look like on Earth.
On the other hand, you have a combination of professional and semiprofessional photographers, professional and amateur astronomers, and people who say they’ve been there describing exactly what things on the moon would and do look like.
Do you see the disconnect here? You’re asserting that “Such and such should look like this on the moon because it looks like that on Earth” simply doesn’t make any sense.
Here’s a question for you: my local cable systen has a NASA that runs live footage of all of the Shuttle missions. Does your system have anything like that? Ever watch one of the missions at length? Ever seen what things really look like in space?
Oh, you’ve also yet to address the 800+ pounds of lunar samples brought back by the Apollo flights. These things aren’t just in museums; they’re still studied by scientists around the world. You don’t think that in 32 years, one of them would have stood up and said, “Um, guys, these are just plain old rocks”?
I did not say that. Lord, you’re making stuff up now.
It depends, obviously, on the angle of the Sun, the position of the object being illuminated, and the surrounding terrain - just like any object anywhere. Wouldn’t you expect some things in shadow to be very dark and some to not be very dark? Why would that surprise you? It sure doesn’t seem strange to me.
If ALL the shadows in the pictures were exactly the same, that would be quite suspicious. They aren’t, because they’re all in different situations.
This is becoming frustrating: I said nothing of the kind. You’re either making stuff up now, or you’re getting really confused. I’m NEVER stated shadows on the Moon are “perfectly black.” I said they look darker than shadows on Earth. In the photos, they do. That does not mean I think they are all “perfectly black.” It does not mean that some shadows will not be lighter than others. It DOES mean that, on the whole, they seem noticeably darker than similar shadows on Earth - which is exactly what you would expect. I have been very careful in choosing my words, and I have not said what you attribute to me here.
So let me get this straight; you’re saying that Aldrin would be illuminted by the moon if he were standing on the roof of my house, 250,000 miles from the moon, but if he got 250,000 miles clsoer all that light from the moon would magically stop working? What sort of light only enters the visible spectrum after it’s travelled a quarter of a million miles?
You just don’t seem to understand the simple fact that the damned Moon reflects a lot of light. So parts of it look dark in the photos; what does that prove, aside from the fact that the Moon is gray and things look funny in photos? It seems REALLY self-evident to me that the more shallow the angle you photograph the Moon’s surface at, the darker it will appear.
Try going outside and looking at the Moon sometime. It reflects light. That’s why you can SEE it. It would seem to reflect enough light that it can be seen very clearly, with its topographical features easy to spot. Surfaces, even grey and uneven ones, reflect far more light than you seem to be willing to admit. They must, because otherwise you can’t rationally explain why things appear the way they do.
Big hint: it has something to do with the specific position of the leg or the angle it’s sitting at. Here’s a challenge for you; get a scale model of a LEM. Place it on a table in a darkened room. Shine a halogen light on it from the far corner of the room and turn out all the other lights. You will find that some parts of the model are less shadowed than others. Which is what you would expect.
And if the LEM’s leg is dark, how does that support a moon hoax theory?
You have been provided with the relevant links.
Well, why don’t you do some of your own damned research? You have specific links that explain A-radiation doses by time. You can certainly look up how long it takes a spacecraft to fly through the Van Allen belts. Why don’t YOU take some of YOUR time doing some research and calculation, and provide evidence that supports your position? We’ve all gone to a lot of trouble trying to explain to you why your objections are wrong, and a LOT of detail has been provided around radiation doses. The different types of radiation have been explained. If you’re still insistent on this point, it’s YOUR turn to do some research.
I’ll be interested in your rebuttals on the matter of radiation when you display the alacrity to actually provide your own evidence, rather than accusing everyone else of not doing a good enough job as your research assistants. If you want me to work for you, start paying me. On the other hand, if you want to make an extraordinary claim, the onus is on YOU to provide extraordinary evidence. Do you have any objective, verifiable evidence that a human being on an Apollo-type mission would be fried to a crisp?
No, it wouldn’t. For that matter, you haven’t even provided any evidence some dust DIDN’T end up on the footpads. But I still don’t understand why it would. The dust immediately below the rocket blast would have been thrown further than that, I would think.
And how is this evidence for a moon hoax?
Then why does it illuminate things?
I did not say that. Lord, you’re making stuff up now.
It depends, obviously, on the angle of the Sun, the position of the object being illuminated, and the surrounding terrain - just like any object anywhere. Wouldn’t you expect some things in shadow to be very dark and some to not be very dark? Why would that surprise you? It sure doesn’t seem strange to me.
If ALL the shadows in the pictures were exactly the same, that would be quite suspicious. They aren’t, because they’re all in different situations.
This is becoming frustrating: I said nothing of the kind. You’re either making stuff up now, or you’re getting really confused. I’m NEVER stated shadows on the Moon are “perfectly black.” I said they look darker than shadows on Earth. In the photos, they do. That does not mean I think they are all “perfectly black.” It does not mean that some shadows will not be lighter than others. It DOES mean that, on the whole, they seem noticeably darker than similar shadows on Earth - which is exactly what you would expect. I have been very careful in choosing my words, and I have not said what you attribute to me here.
So let me get this straight; you’re saying that Aldrin would be illuminted by the moon if he were standing on the roof of my house, 250,000 miles from the moon, but if he got 250,000 miles clsoer all that light from the moon would magically stop working? What sort of light only enters the visible spectrum after it’s travelled a quarter of a million miles?
You just don’t seem to understand the simple fact that the damned Moon reflects a lot of light. So parts of it look dark in the photos; what does that prove, aside from the fact that the Moon is gray and things look funny in photos? It seems REALLY self-evident to me that the more shallow the angle you photograph the Moon’s surface at, the darker it will appear.
Try going outside and looking at the Moon sometime. It reflects light. That’s why you can SEE it. It would seem to reflect enough light that it can be seen very clearly, with its topographical features easy to spot. Surfaces, even grey and uneven ones, reflect far more light than you seem to be willing to admit. They must, because otherwise you can’t rationally explain why things appear the way they do.
Big hint: it has something to do with the specific position of the leg or the angle it’s sitting at. Here’s a challenge for you; get a scale model of a LEM. Place it on a table in a darkened room. Shine a halogen light on it from the far corner of the room and turn out all the other lights. You will find that some parts of the model are less shadowed than others. Which is what you would expect.
And if the LEM’s leg is dark, how does that support a moon hoax theory?
You have been provided with the relevant links.
Well, why don’t you do some of your own damned research? You have specific links that explain A-radiation doses by time. You can certainly look up how long it takes a spacecraft to fly through the Van Allen belts. Why don’t YOU take some of YOUR time doing some research and calculation, and provide evidence that supports your position? We’ve all gone to a lot of trouble trying to explain to you why your objections are wrong, and a LOT of detail has been provided around radiation doses. The different types of radiation have been explained. If you’re still insistent on this point, it’s YOUR turn to do some research.
I’ll be interested in your rebuttals on the matter of radiation when you display the alacrity to actually provide your own evidence, rather than accusing everyone else of not doing a good enough job as your research assistants. If you want me to work for you, start paying me. On the other hand, if you want to make an extraordinary claim, the onus is on YOU to provide extraordinary evidence. Do you have any objective, verifiable evidence that a human being on an Apollo-type mission would be fried to a crisp?
No, it wouldn’t. For that matter, you haven’t even provided any evidence some dust DIDN’T end up on the footpads. But I still don’t understand why it would. The dust immediately below the rocket blast would have been thrown further than that, I would think.
And how is this evidence for a moon hoax?
Then why does it illuminate things?
Okay, bear with me. I’ve done the surface integral, but it’s been a while since my Electromagnetics class in college.
Variables:
[note: I'm using "^2" to mean "squared"]
I : incoming solar radiation energy per unit of area
a : moon's albedo (percent of energy reflected)
w^2: area of the target in shadow
r : distance from the target to any point on surface
r0 : distance from target to edge of shadow
t : theta - angle from target to any point on surface
h : height of target from ground
l : radius of moon
d : distance to horizon from point at height h
So let’s see how far away the horizon is for a target on the moon. With radius of l (which turns out to be about 1700 km–see http://www.solarviews.com/eng/moon.htm ) and a target height h (call it 1 meter for simplicity) we get:
(l+h)^2 = l^2 + d^2
l^2 + 2hl + h^2 = l^2 + d^2
2hl + h^2 = d^2
d = sqrt(2hl + h^2)
= sqrt(2 * 1.7*10^6 m^2 + 1 m^2)
= 1800 meters.
(only 2 significant figures here for simplicity)
Now, the incoming solar radiation from the sun is I * w^2 if there is no shadow. The amount of reflected light from a patch of surface would be:
(w^2)
Ia r dr dt * ------------------
4/3 * pi * r^2 / 2
The term on the left is I * albedo (total light energy * albedo) * (area of infinitesimal patch). On the right is the ratio of the area of the target to the area of a hemisphere centered at the patch with a radius to the target. That is, imagine all of the reflected light from the patch distributed over a hemisphere centered on the patch. The ratio of the target area to that area is the percentage of the reflected light that hits the target.
Now, given all of that the integral for the total contributed insolation from the surface is:
_ d _ 2*pi
/ /
| | (w^2)
| | Ia r dr dt * ------------------
| | 4/3 * pi * r^2 / 2
_/ _/
r0 0
Okay, the integration from 0 to 2pi only adds a constant multiplier of 2pi, so doing that and moving some constants outside the integrals, we get:
_ d
/
| dr
3 Ia w^2 | ---
| r
_/
r0
Which is the natural log. Integrating and replacing r with the constants gives us:
= 3 w^2 Ia (ln d - ln r0)
= 3 w^2 Ia (ln (d/r0) )
Now the ratio of the surface reflection (which is what we just figured out, call it S) to the insolation in an area not in shadow is:
S 1
--------- = ---------
I*w^2 + S I*w^2/S + 1
Let’s now calculate I*w^2/S
That’s
I*w^2 1
--------------------- = ----------------
3 w^2 Ia (ln (d/r0) ) 3 a (ln (d/r0) )
a = 0.12
d/r0 = 1800/1 (let's say the shadow is 1 meter in radius)
= 1/(3 * 0.12 * ln(1800)) = 1/2.7 = 0.37
So the ratio of light energy in shadow to light energy in non-shadow is:
1/(1+0.37) = 0.73
Now brightness is the square of energy, so the ratio of apparent brightness is:
0.73^2 = 0.53
About half as bright. That’s not even close to black.
Anybody else having trouble making the SDMB work?
Okay, let’s see here…
Bobort: I notice now that in my 10:08 am post, I accidentally left a weird paragraph quoting myself in the middle of my response to you. It’s the one about the VA Belt information provided in the NASA report; please disregard it.
dropzone: Actually, I think your theory is entirely plausible. But there are people here who are arguing rather forcefully that not only was the mission real, but the pictures as well. Can we prove the pictures were real? Can we prove the pictures were fake? Shake up the magic eight-ball…
pldennison: Now you’re accusing me of “making all sorts of assertions about what things should look like on the moon, based only on what you know about what things look like on Earth” or saying “such and such should look like this on the moon because it looks like that on Earth.”
Actually, quite a bit of my argument has had to do with the lack of light-dispersing atmosphere on the moon, a condition markedly DIFFERENT from that on earth. So please tell me, what are you talking about?
In any case, what makes you think that “professional and semiprofessional photographers” have any better idea what the conditions are like on the moon than I do? Astronomers maybe, but even then, not every astronomer specializes in photgraphic conditions on other planets/moons. I doubt very many at all do.
And I have twice (this’ll be #3) addressed the issue of the 800+ pounds of lunar samples brought back by the Apollo flights. The answer is simple: the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community right now is that the moon was originally part of the earth. They know this because they compared moon rocks to rocks from the beginning of earth’s history and found they were compositionally identical.
Hey, has anybody found out the answer to “how did the astronauts eat/drink/excrete on the moon” yet? Does anybody happen to know?
On to RickJay…
You asked the following question:
“if the moon can illuminate objects 250,000 MILES away, why can’t it illuminate objects four feet away?”
I may be wrong, but I read that statement’s underlying logic as “if the moon appears quite bright from earth, it must be blindingly bright if you are standing on it.” I honestly don’t know how I’m misreading you here, I’m sorry.
I pointed out that if “shadows on the Moon ARE less illuminated” than they would be on earth, it would be difficult to explain the brightness of Aldrin and the “shadowed” LEM. Your reply is that “it depends, obviously, on the angle of the Sun, the position of the object… and the surrounding terrain.”
But come on, look at the photo. What angle could the sun be at that would cause it do illuminate an object that was standing IN THE SHADOW of the sun? You propose a paradox–the sun doesn’t illuminate its own shadows.
As for the position of the object and the surrounding terrain… I don’t see how the LEM foot’s “position” (a few inches above the ground under a huge black shadow, if I recall) could have been such as to receive that amount of reflected light. And the moon’s terrain, at least where the astronauts were landing, is basically flat. It’s not White Sands, it’s not the Grand Canyon, it’s not the Rocky Mountains. It’s just flat, gray ground. You can invent all the “hidden factors” you want to explain the bizarre lighting effects but you’re not really giving me any reason to believe such explanations.
For you to say that the shadows appear to have different characteristic because they were in different situations is silly: all the moon missions occured during lunar evening or morning (i.e. the sun was low in the sky) so that the astronauts wouldn’t burn up or freeze. Lighting conditions, in the absence of any earthbound features (cloud cover, dust in the air, trees, water, etc. etc.) would have been pretty much identical throughout the photo sequences.
Maybe you did not go on record as saying the shadows cast by the moon would be PERFECTLY black, but as you point out, “on the whole, they seem noticeably darker than similar shadows on Earth - which is exactly what you would expect.” If this is indeed what we would expect, let me state again the point I’ve apparently not yet made clear: we now have ONE LESS reason to discredit the conspiracy theorists.
For if indeed it is true that we should expect shadows on the moon to be darker than on earth, it only stands to reason that we should expect objects placed WITHIN those shadows to also appear much darker than on earth. Therefore, the unusual brightness of the objects in the photographs remains unexplained.
Now we’re back to this point again:
“…you’re saying that Aldrin would be illuminted by the moon if he were standing on the roof of my house, 250,000 miles from the moon, but if he got 250,000 miles clsoer all that light from the moon would magically stop working?”
I still don’t understand how this is different from my “if the moon looks bright from here, it must be even brighter there” summation of your argument.
But regardless of that, (1) Aldrin would NOT be illuminated by the moon on the roof of your house–visible, perhaps, but not lit up like he appears in the photos (2) I think there’s an important factor you are missing: when we are on the earth, reading by the light of a full moon, we are receiving the SUM TOTAL of the light reflected from the moon’s surface–we see the whole disk reflecting at once. When Aldrin stands on the moon, even OUTSIDE of a huge black shadow, he’s only going to receive the reflected lunar surface light of a very small area in his immediate surroundings. There is a difference.
And the point is not that “parts of” the moon look dark in the photos—even when the moon’s surface is obviously lit, as in the lunar rover photo where the rocks are casting shadows off the sun, the dirt appears dark. You think all this proves is that “things look funny in photos”? This is grasping at straws. Check out tracer’s last post in response to aynrandlover—it’s not just me saying this.
As for:
“Try going outside and looking at the Moon sometime,” let me state this one more time: the fact that we can see the moon from space has absolutely NO connection to whether or not objects standing within shadows on the moon should appear illuminated by a secondary light source.
Remember, the moon doesn’t have any competition. It’s the only thing even remotely close to us that we see hanging out in the midst of the infinite black of nighttime space. In light of that fact, I don’t find it at all strange that we should be able to view it from here even though, as tracer points out, it has an average albedo of only 7%. It doesn’t have any competition!
“And if the LEM’s leg is dark, how does that support a moon hoax theory?”
In itself, it doesn’t. But if we accept your statement that the LEM’s leg appears super-dark (I won’t dare say ‘perfectly black’) compared to how it would appear on earth, yet Aldrin appears super-BRIGHT while standing in such an super-dark shadow, it certainly should raise some eyebrows.
You say I have been “provided with the relevant links” necessary to ascertain how much alpha radiation the astronauts received. I’ve seen NASA’s average numbers for each mission, but that’s it. The specifics of the Van Allen belt and several other sources of cosmic radiation remain a mystery.
You’re right that I certainly could do some of my own research and calculation to determine whether the doses received in the Van Allen belts and beyond would have been lethal. And I appreciate the trouble that you and others have gone to in order to prove me wrong. But I began this line of argument in the interest of debunking the debunkers’ common claim that “anybody with a high school education can prove the moon landings actually took place.” If I’ve gotta start hitting the books to calculate radiation doses in the Van Allen belt and from non-event-related solar radiation, I’d say we’ve gone far beyong the high school level. So at least ONE of my points as been proven.
As for the notion that I’m using you all as research assistants… I’ve thoroughly studied the data presented to me and criticized it internally. Thanks to all of you for providing links to prove me wrong, but it hasn’t worked yet, and it has nothing to do with you being “bad research assistants.” It just boils down to this: there is nothing obvious or elementary about proving that man actually landed on the moon. Not that it’s easy to prove the opposite; I’ve certainly never made that claim.
As for the NASA report, again, I don’t think it is in and of itself evidence of a hoax. But it was presented to me in the guise of evidence in FAVOR of the moon landing. I simply pointed out that the report contains shockingly little evidence one way or the other.
emarkp: Holy shit! Well, there ain’t much I can do to contradict your math, 'cause I truly suck at calculus. I’m trying hard to wrap my head around this, though… Are you saying, then, that the dirt within any given shadow on the moon will be on 47% as dark as non-shadowed dirt? I hate to be a pain in the ass, but do you have any idea how that would compare to the figures for the same conditions on earth?
Almost. I’m saying that assuming a uniform albedo which is the same as the albedo of the moon, an object in shadow 3 feet off the ground should be about 53% as bright as the same object 3 feet off the ground but not in shadow.
Now, I believe that Apollo 11 landed in one of the marea, which would have a lower albedo (but I’d assume it’s similar), so let’s be conservative and say the brightness would be expected to be between 25-50% that of an object not in shadow.
I would expect an object directly on the ground to be darker, and objects in shadow to appear to be lit from below, just as we see in the “light-blue boots” photo.
My assumptions included a flat surface–the curve of the moon deviates by 1 meter in 1800 meters, so I figure that’s pretty close. Local variations in lunagraphy would of course affect the brightness.
It would be problematic to attempt to measure relative brightness from the photograph. My experience in photography shows that variations in shutter speed, emulsion quality, and development process do not produce a linear brightness on film even if there’s one in real life. A proper light meter on the moon would be the best way to test the conclusions. However, I’m confident that objects in shadow wouldn’t be too dark.
I have no way to compare the numbers for earth, because I don’t have numbers for the albedo of earth objects (asphalt, grass, gravel, etc.) nor do I know how to easily include values for light scattering or other atmospheric effects.
emarkp: Interesting stuff! I still have three questions I need clarified, and I’m going to try to phrase them as intelligently as possible, but I might ramble a little, so please bear with me.
(1) You calculated for a target point 1 meter above the shadow. Am I right to suspect that the reflective ratio would be lower for target heights less than one meter and greater for target heights above one meter? In other words, for any object placed in shadow on the moon, should we expect to see a continuous brightening of the object from bottom to top? Aldrin looks more or less uniformly lit, from his boots to the top of his helmet.
(2) You’ve calculated for a shadow one meter in radius–in other words, the shadow is twice as wide as the target is high. What if we were dealing with a shadow of 2 or 3 meters radius and the target remained at a height of 1 meter? I bring this up only because the shadow Aldrin is standing under in the photo looks quite large—in fact, I’m not quite sure WHAT is casting this shadow, but that leads me to my next point…
(3) I may be diagramming this all wrong, but it appears you’re discussing a circular shadow randomly appearing in the midst of an illuminated field of dirt. But unless you’re sitting under an umbrella, shadows don’t generally take this form—an object blocks them from the sun, and consequently (I would suspect) also blocks nearly 180 degrees of possible ground-based illumination. Shouldn’t this be taken into consideration?
I’m curious about something…
Is there ANY evidence that could be presented to you to show that humans have been to the Moon?
You won’t accept photographs.
You won’t accept radio or television transmissions.
You won’t accept Moonrocks.
You won’t accept the word of the people that study the Moonrocks.
You won’t accept the word of the astronauts that made the trip.
You won’t accept the word of the people that sent them.
You won’t accept the word of the people that made the machines that sent them.
Is there any evidence that one can produce that you WILL accept? Because if there isn’t, then this argument is an exercise in futility.
As I’ve been reading this thread, I’ve seriously been considering adding it to “Things that made your jaw drop.”
I would like to propose a stipulation, one that defenders of the conspiracy/hoax theory must admit they accept. To wit:
A yes or no will suffice.
BickByro wrote:
“And I have twice (this’ll be #3) addressed the issue of the 800+ pounds of lunar samples brought back by the Apollo flights. The answer is simple: the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community right now is that the moon was originally part of the earth. They know this because they compared moon rocks to rocks from the beginning of earth’s history and found they were compositionally identical.”
You keep saying this. Can you provide any evidence to support this assertation? I’ve heard this theory before, usually in comic books and bad sf novels. Does it have any genuine support in the scientific community? How exactly does this theory work? What made the moon spin off from the Earth in the first place? How long ago did this happen? “The beginning of the earth’s history” is pretty vague. Are we talking about when the solar system was a swirling cloud of gas? When the earth was a ball of molten rock? Was it when dinosaurs still ruled the Earth? During the Reagan administration? Can YOU supply some facts for a change?
Frankly, I don’t think that we have any rocks from the “beginning of Earth’s history,” given the high amount of tectonic activity on the Earth, plus millions and millions of years of weathering due to wind and water. Both of which, by the way, are absent from the moon. Every geologist who has studied the rocks we brought back from the moon says that they were formed in the absence of air and water, which is how we know they came from the moon.
I’d also like to know why you are willing to take the “overwhelming consensus of the scientific community” that the moon was originally part of the Earth, but you won’t take the word of that exact same community that we actually walked on the moon? I like the bit where you say, “They know this because they compared moon rocks to rocks from the beginning of earth’s history and found they were compositionally identical.” Maybe I haven’t been reading to carefully here, but aren’t you the guy who’s saying we’ve never been to the moon? Surely, even YOU can see that this argument makes no logical sense. Or maybe geologist are all just really, really dumb.
“How bizarre! These moon rocks are just like Earth rocks! What are the odds? Ooh, look! A fossil! There must have been life on the moon! And it was a stegosaur, too! What a coincidence!”
Or maybe, just maybe, every single geologist who has studied the rocks we brought back has come to the conclusion that there is absolutely no way these rocks could have been formed on the Earth.