# Yes, It's Another Moon Hoax Thread **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 19, 2001, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520 "2001-09-19T02:58:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2001, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/81 "2001-09-23T07:32:42Z")
Okay, that’s enough of that sort of thing here. You obviously want a debate, not answers, so off to GD with it. bibliophage moderator GQ ---
**Author:** ![BickByro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BickByro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BickByro)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2001, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/82 "2001-09-23T08:13:16Z")
Oh, for crying out loud, **Bad Astronomer** , surely you realize that “question after question and nitpick after nitpick” is the only road to good science, something you endorse strongly on your Web site. In certain cases, the information I’m looking for is readily available and yes, I’m being a bit lazy, but a lot of this stuff isn’t that easy to find. Dopers are always chiming in with “I saw this moon program” or “I read this book” or any number of insights that are not necessarily accessible, even over the Internet. But I went to the Internet first; in fact, I went to your Web site and asked you one of the questions in my OP pretty much verbatim. You implore me to “find a source” for information that would assuage my concerns about a lunar conspiracy. So I went to a site that says: > [@](#): > > There are lots of rumors spreading around about this, and rest assured they are all completely false. The claims made by these conspiracy theorists are actually all wrong, and some are laughably so. Some involve some subtle (but understandable!) physics, while others are easily shown to be false. Rather bold words, and not without a certain, shall we say, prejudice. But they certainly seem to have been written by a person with an interest in fostering knowledge about what really happened during those Apollo missions. A person who, if he doesn’t know all the answers, at least might help you find them. And you must admit that there is a lot of misinformation out there—though you may not agree with the conslusions I reach, I have pointed out quite serious contradictions in arguments presented here by you and other Dopers. I’m not always right, by any means, but I’m not always wrong either. Hell, even this last bit you put up: > [@](#): > > Not every picture taken had the same camera setting. Some took longer exposures or had the aperture set wider, others didn’t. In this case, it looks to me that the picture was set for short exposure and narrow aperture. I could have sworn that during my last SDMB moon thread, it was established that the astronauts’ chest-mounted cameras did not have astronaut-accesible controls for exposure time, aperture width, etc. Maybe I’m misremembering, and if so, I’m sorry, but that’s the impression I had and it’s why I said what I did. But don’t think I can’t see right through a statement like > [@](#): > > you are looking to attack anyone’s ideas who doesn’t believe in the conspiracy theory… Nothing said here will ever convince you that the Apollo missions were real, so I for one will stop trying. Hopefully people sitting on the fence in this issue will see past what you are doing and realize that you have achieved a diminishing returns, where you have to dig deeper and deeper to find “flaws”, when all along the biggest reasons you had in the first place have long since been debunked. Complete crap. The biggest reasons I had in the first place still stand; only in the last 24 hours or so have I really “dug deep” into the whole illuminated-shadows-in-still-color-photos thing, a point that I freely admitted I didn’t know much about and only delved into because **Chas.E** appeared very knowledgable about the principles necessary to make an independent evaluation of NASA’s photos. I figured since he was here and it was his specialty, we could talk about it for a while. But the hoary old Aldrin-descending-the-LEM question was not one of my original concerns, and I think anyone sitting on the fence in this issue could see that many of my best questions have gone unanswered. Not that this surprises me. Obviously people are going to hit me whenever I screw up my facts or ask a dumb question. I don’t generally get upset about it; I realize I’m arguing an outlandish point. And I try not to take it personally when no matter how good a point I make, someone will always qualify it by saying “yeah, but any number of unknown factors _could_ have been present”—factors which they sometimes do not fully understand, but which they feel instinctively could at least possibly account for the anomalies I claim to point out. That’s nitpicking. That’s asking questions in response to questions. That’s thinking. And it’s what I was under the impression you and the SDMB were all about. You’re bailing out of this argument now as though you’ve answered all my questions, but you’ve yet to answer for your three-faced approach to the [space.com](http://space.com) “landing site” photo (which, I might add, was demonstrated to be in conflict with NASA’s own testimony by someone other than myself—and I’ve heard no one speak a word about that since I pointed it out). As far as I can tell, you simultaneously embraced three mutually contradictory views whose only uniting thread was that they could be used to disprove my arguments. If this wasn’t the case, you certainly could have let me know. But the impression you have given is that of a man uninterested in knowing or even thinking about _why_ we can know NASA went to the moon, but interested only in rehashing a few pet points and embracing any number of contradictory ideas, as long as none of them admit to even the possibility of forgery. And you never even touched my question about the dust cloud in the LEM ascent footage. Why do you bother running a debunking Web site, **Bad Astronomer** , if you’re only interested in preaching to the choir and ridiculing those who might dare to ask the questions which you claim to be “all wrong,” but whose answers you claim to be “understandable” and “easily shown”? If you’ve read the above, **Chas.E** , you probably got the point that I’m not particularly interested in dissecting the prints, because I realize I’d have to bone up on my photography. Like I said, I was really just hopping down this trail because you seemed to be a font of photographic information. But I don’t want to test your patience. As I said a few posts back, there are plenty of other points I’ve made that haven’t been answered yet (no matter what **The Bad Astronomer** would like you to believe). If you’re game for them, I am. **DaveW:** I still don’t understand your “why isn’t your friend’s face blue?” experiment. When you’re outside in daylight, all the light shining on you is going through the blue sky—how does the lack of blue color on my friend’s face prove that atmospheric dispersion isn’t occuring on the small scale? I honestly don’t understand this. > [@](#): > > A little thought ought to show that if photons often did U-turns in the space of a few feet, the air itself would have a fairly uniform glow to it from all the light traveling in all sorts of random directions. I don’t think diffraction implies “U-turns.” That seems a bit extreme, don’t you think? > [@](#): > > You’re wrong on that point. The zoom out begins just before ignition. _Fine_, but that’s still not what I thought was so impossible-looking. > [@](#): > > If you cling to the idea that the camera motion is a ‘reaction’, I’m done here. I don’t know how I can explain it any differently than I already have. I’m not trying to be irritating here, honestly. Your explanation, as far as I can tell, consisted of “the cameraman would have executed certain moves that he hoped would catch the LEM, but I can’t tell you more without showing you the equipment I use at work.” If you can’t explain it any more than that, fine, I suppose there are some things you just have to see to understand. But you’ve got to understand my skepticism—even if you do have “experience actually trying to track a moving object with a stinking joystick on a time delay,” **DaveW** , I have no way of knowing you’ve ever tracked an object moving at orbital velocity on an uncertain trajectory against an absolutely featureless black void. I don’t mean to be offensive by asking, but what objects have you tracked against a time delay, how fast were they moving, and what kind of reference points did you have in the background? > [@](#): > > Allow me to use your tactic of asking more questions: if that 1-second change in camera motion is a ‘reaction’, then why did he fail to react and keep the ascent stage in view? After the change, it’s much longer than one second before it crawls off the other edge of the frame. I don’t know the answer to that question, and I’ll freely admit it. But I can try: _if_ the change in motion is actually a reaction, then the footage is fake (I assume we’re in agreement on that?). If it was faked, well, who knows what they would have tried in order to make it seem more realistic. I know that’s a pat conspiracy-theorist answer, but with a first premise of “it’s fake,” it’s hard to explain why some errors would be there and others would not. But I don’t think one can use that difficulty as a proof in itself for the absence of a conspiracy. Sorry I can’t give you a better answer than that. > [@](#): > > For one thing, you can only zoom out so far. There’s a limit. Secondly, the planned trajectory of the ascent stage may have taken it in directions which would be impossible to track directly - for example, if it went over the camera, which, from pictures of the rover, appears to be a fairly-standard kind of pan/tilt head, which can’t track to 90 degrees of azimuth, much less past 90. The operator would have had to spin the camera around horizontally and then tilt it down some. In other words, there’s a limit to how “high” you can track, too. Excellent, informative response. Thanks; that’s what I’m looking for. So there’s a good reason why he would have lost contact with it in the first place. I still don’t get the zig-zag thing, but regardless of that, could you explain why, if the LEM went over the camera (ie “too high”) and the camera had to spin horizontally and tilt down, we then later seem to see the LEM shooting straight up again (well, first at a 45-degree angle, then straight up, then 90 degrees to the right)? Regardless of whether they support a moon conspiracy argument, I just don’t understand how those moves were being made. It _looks_ like the LEM passes above the camera twice. > [@](#): > > That’s fine with me. I accept “getting lucky” as a suitable debunking of your claim. Well, that fine with me too. I don’t think it’s adequate, personally, but it’s certainly interesting to consider the possibility that footage in question was captured essentially by accident (which is all “luck” really means here, as far as I can tell). Remember, too, that others in this discussion have posited that Fendell had it all planned out down to the second and wasn’t just shooting craps; if you don’t accept my argument, it at least seems you’re rejecting theirs. Such clarification and evaluation of the reasons to proclaim an argument “debunked” is reward enough for me—consistency in debunking arguments is what I’m looking for. > [@](#): > > And what you consider to be conclusive evidence (that the landings were faked - or just the images - I can’t tell what you’re providing evidence for anymore), many other people, including myself, apparently feel has mundane explanations. I’m arguing strictly footage, although I’m also trying to show (and I believe I have shown) that the [space.com](http://space.com) not only doesn’t prove we landed on the moon, but it doesn’t even do a good job of pretending to. > [@](#): > > It certainly wasn’t meant as derogatory, it was meant as a reminder to not fall into the same logical trap as so many others have before you. If you find that derogatory, perhaps it’s too late. I find it derogatory that, just because I made the mistake of letting my argument get sidetracked by the secondary-lighting issue, you would invoke faeries, ghosts and UFOs. I’ve been talking about a whole lot more than that, and as I’ve stated before, many of my best points have gone unanswered (anybody want to tackle that dust cloud?) or qualified (your “it must have been good luck”) without a clear scientific basis. You can agree or disagree with the points I’m trying to make, but I don’t think it arrogant of me to say I’m doing a far more intelligent and thorough job of it than any moon hoaxer _you’ve_ ever seen, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t attempt to undercut my argument by making such humiliating comparisons. If I’m that misguided in my arguments, the facts should be more than enough. > [@](#): > > As for stubbornness, I’d like you to quote passages from my posts where you think I’ve been stubborn… And fear? Please. If you think my world revolves so strongly around whether or not the Moon landings happened that I’d be scared to have my opinion overturned by good evidence, you are very much mistaken. Okay, then don’t lump my arguments in with every other “out there” viewpoint you reject because you disagree with the methods of its advocates. It’s just not fair, and it certainly makes you look as though you reject with prejudice any viewpoint that does not match “accepted scientific reality.” And prejudice is nothing, I maintain, but stubbornness and fear. > [@](#): > > Ever see sunbeams coming through clouds right here on Earth? Why don’t they look parallel to each other? Go find out, and I expect you’ll find the answer to the non-parallel shadows on the Moon, without need of wide-angle lens distortion. Well, I’ve seen sunbeams, but I’ve also looked off my second-story patio into my apartment complex’s parking lot and seen all the shadows facing the same direction. What gives? Comparing the astronaut’s shadow to the antenna’s shadow, there seems to be a very large difference in angle, and I can’t recall ever seeing that happen on earth. **bibliophage:** I wanted answers, not a debate. But nobody had the answers. So now we have a debate. I’m sorry, but that’s how it went. ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2001, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/83 "2001-09-23T10:19:22Z")
> [@](#): > > surely you realize that “question after question and nitpick after nitpick” is the only road to good science Wrong-O, bucko. _Informed_ question after _informed_ question is the only road to good science. What YOU are doing is asking a question, getting a perfectly sound explanation, and then asking a _different_ question and asking why the original explanation doesn’t conform with the new question… ignoring that the first question and the second question do not involve the same set of circumstances. In my line of work (being intelligent), we call that “grasping at straws”. ---
**Author:** ![DaveW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DaveW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaveW)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2001, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/84 "2001-09-23T17:53:48Z")
**BickByro** wrote: > [@](#): > > I still don’t understand your “why isn’t your friend’s face blue?” experiment. When you’re outside in daylight, all the light shining on you is going through the blue sky—how does the lack of blue color on my friend’s face prove that atmospheric dispersion isn’t occuring on the small scale? I honestly don’t understand this. It _only_ shows that the amount of light coming from the blue in the sky is negligible, compared to the other secondary sources. It takes many thousands of feet or air to produce that blue, too, not one or two yards. > [@](#): > > I don’t think diffraction implies “U-turns.” That seems a bit extreme, don’t you think? Not when your friend is facing 180 degrees away from the sun. Close to 100% of the photons which light his face will come from reflected light, and not from atmospheric dispersion. But the whole point was actually to show that when your eyes are flooded with light (step one), your friend’s face will look very dark, if not black. Blocking that flood will allow you to see the doubly-reflected light coming from his face. > [@](#): > > I’m not trying to be irritating here, honestly. Your explanation, as far as I can tell, consisted of “the cameraman would have executed certain moves that he hoped would catch the LEM, but I can’t tell you more without showing you the equipment I use at work.” Then let me be more clear: my explanation was that the cameraman _might_ have executed some sort of “find the LEM” plan - not that he did, I don’t know. It seems reasonable. Secondly, I _could_ tell you more of what I’ve already tried to explain, but I’d basically be repeating myself. More words aren’t the answer here, and a demonstration is the only other way I can think of to show you. > [@](#): > > If you can’t explain it any more than that, fine, I suppose there are some things you just have to see to understand. But you’ve got to understand my skepticism—even if you do have “experience actually trying to track a moving object with a stinking joystick on a time delay,” DaveW, I have no way of knowing you’ve ever tracked an object moving at orbital velocity on an uncertain trajectory against an absolutely featureless black void. I don’t mean to be offensive by asking, but what objects have you tracked against a time delay, how fast were they moving, and what kind of reference points did you have in the background? No offense taken, since the things I’ve done are admittedly much easier than what Fendell had to do. It’s never been my intent to suggest otherwise. I’ve just done something similar, and hoped my input would make a difference to you. I doubt so much that I could find a third-party source on such information that I haven’t even tried. I can’t even think of a decent analogous situation you might have experienced yourself. > [@](#): > > I don’t know the answer to that question, and I’ll freely admit it. But I can try: if the change in motion is actually a reaction, then the footage is fake (I assume we’re in agreement on that?). If it was faked, well, who knows what they would have tried in order to make it seem more realistic. I know that’s a pat conspiracy-theorist answer, but with a first premise of “it’s fake,” it’s hard to explain why some errors would be there and others would not. But I don’t think one can use that difficulty as a proof in itself for the absence of a conspiracy. Sorry I can’t give you a better answer than that. Yes, it is a pat answer, and applicable to so many other things. But what you still don’t seem to realize is that it’s not up to us to prove that there was no conspiracy, it’s up to you to prove that there was one. You need to prove that the change in direction _was_ a reaction in order to support your theory. It’s not enough to say, “looks like a reaction to me,” or the more-general “nobody can explain these things.” A conclusion of “it’s fake” doesn’t logically follow. > [@](#): > > Excellent, informative response. Thanks; that’s what I’m looking for. So there’s a good reason why he would have lost contact with it in the first place. NO! It’s a good reason why he **might** have lost contact with it. I’d never suggest it as anything other than a possibility, since neither I nor you know (right now) what trajectory the LEM followed after lift-off. I’d bet that with a little digging, a person could learn which way the LEM went into orbit, _and_ the location of the rover relative to the LEM, and thus figure out whether or not my suggestion has any merit as an explanation for any particular loss-of-tracking incident in the video. > [@](#): > > I still don’t get the zig-zag thing, but regardless of that, could you explain why, if the LEM went over the camera (ie “too high”) and the camera had to spin horizontally and tilt down, we then later seem to see the LEM shooting straight up again (well, first at a 45-degree angle, then straight up, then 90 degrees to the right)? Regardless of whether they support a moon conspiracy argument, I just don’t understand how those moves were being made. It looks like the LEM passes above the camera twice. And with no references (featureless void of space), it’s impossible, looking at only the footage, to tell whether or not any particular motion is the LEM or the camera. We’d need a film of Fendell’s hands on the camera controls, and we could synch the two together to find out what was really going on. > [@](#): > > Well, that fine with me too. I don’t think it’s adequate, personally… Well, I think that’s part of the problem you and I have. I think you’ve set the bar far too high regarding what _kinds_ of answers will be satisfactory for you, from the people here on this message board. As an extreme example, even if everyone here were completely knowledgable on all aspects of physics, optics, photography, and the Moon landings, there will _always_ be another level of “why” questions if a person digs far enough. Eventually, one runs up against the limits of all possible knowledge to date, and the answer becomes a completely unsatisfying “because that’s the way it is - we’ve got mounds of evidence which show us that that is, indeed, the way it is, but we don’t know why.” I think you’re running up against some of the limits here (the zig-zagging, for instance, you’d have to ask someone like Fendell). > [@](#): > > …but it’s certainly interesting to consider the possibility that footage in question was captured essentially by accident (which is all “luck” really means here, as far as I can tell). Absolutely. I suggest you go back to the LSJ and examine the lift-off footage from other missions. Apollo 16’s video is very different from 17’s. Compare and contrast. > [@](#): > > Remember, too, that others in this discussion have posited that Fendell had it all planned out down to the second and wasn’t just shooting craps; if you don’t accept my argument, it at least seems you’re rejecting theirs. And again, I maintain that the timing of the _initial_ part of the lift-off was timed to the second. The folks responsible knew, I believe, that this was the last chance to get such a nifty piece of footage (again, compare it to other lift-off videos). After the first 13 seconds or so, however, we don’t know what the pilot was doing (“steering?”), we don’t know the general path of the LEM, and we don’t know how well Fendell himself thought he’d be able to track it. Please note the “we” - I’m including you. Because we don’t know all these things, the conclusion of “it’s fake” is unsupported. > [@](#): > > Such clarification and evaluation of the reasons to proclaim an argument “debunked” is reward enough for me—consistency in debunking arguments is what I’m looking for. That’s great. Keep it up. > [@](#): > > I’m arguing strictly footage… But what are you arguing _about_ it? What’s your ultimate goal? I somehow got the bizarre impression earlier that you were arguing that we _did_ go to the Moon, but faked up a bunch of videos and stills. I hope that impression was mistaken. > [@](#): > > …although I’m also trying to show (and I believe I have shown) that the [space.com](http://space.com) not only doesn’t prove we landed on the moon, but it doesn’t even do a good job of pretending to. Well, I’ve purposefully avoiding even looking. Would you like me to? > [@](#): > > I find it derogatory that, just because I made the mistake of letting my argument get sidetracked by the secondary-lighting issue, you would invoke faeries, ghosts and UFOs. I’ve been talking about a whole lot more than that, and as I’ve stated before, many of my best points have gone unanswered (anybody want to tackle that dust cloud?) or qualified (your “it must have been good luck”) without a clear scientific basis. You can agree or disagree with the points I’m trying to make, but I don’t think it arrogant of me to say I’m doing a far more intelligent and thorough job of it than any moon hoaxer you’ve ever seen, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t attempt to undercut my argument by making such humiliating comparisons. If I’m that misguided in my arguments, the facts should be more than enough. The _reason_ I brought up those things was in order to point out that your _apparent_ reasoning (that nobody can explain these anomolies in a way you find satisfactory, therefore the footage must have been faked) is very much like that of those other people. The reasoning is a complete non-sequitor, logically invalid. The comparison ends there, and was simply illustrative. Perhaps you’d find a comparison to someone saying, for example, “I can’t find my car keys, someone must have broken in and stolen them” less humiliating? I guess I’ll just have to offend you, because I can’t think of an example of that illogic that won’t be insulting to you if you feel that you are a logically-thinking person. My reference to ghosts (etc.) was just a ‘shorthand’ way of providing examples which should be familiar. > [@](#): > > Okay, then don’t lump my arguments in with every other “out there” viewpoint you reject because you disagree with the methods of its advocates. It’s just not fair, and it certainly makes you look as though you reject with prejudice any viewpoint that does not match “accepted scientific reality.” What I reject are the logically invalid arguments given _for_ those viewpoints, not the viewpoints themselves, and not the people holding those views. > [@](#): > > Well, I’ve seen sunbeams, but I’ve also looked off my second-story patio into my apartment complex’s parking lot and seen all the shadows facing the same direction. What gives? Try taking a picture of your apartment complex’s parking lot, and then getting out a ruler and actually measuring the distances. Better yet - go into the parking lot, and stand in the middle of one end of a parking space. It ought to be clear that the perceived distance between the ends of the lines closest to you is _much_ wider (so wide you may not be able to see these ends) than the other ends of the same two lines. Go stand in the middle of a straight road, and [look down it](http://www.uiuc.edu/navigation/photos/mathews.n.springfield.gif) - it should be obvious that the road appears to get thinner and thinner, and that the sides of the road don’t _appear_ to be parallel at all, even though you know they generally are. Check out [this photo](http://www.dalrachney.co.uk/lounge.jpg), in which it is obvious that the lines made by the meetings of the walls with floor or ceiling are not parallel, but most-likely are in reality. > [@](#): > > Comparing the astronaut’s shadow to the antenna’s shadow, there seems to be a very large difference in angle, and I can’t recall ever seeing that happen on earth. If you go out and _look_ for it, you’ll find it [all over the place](http://www.newsminer.com/heartland/hland103199/h31sno13.htm). ---
**Author:** ![BickByro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BickByro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BickByro)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2001, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/85 "2001-09-23T21:18:52Z")
> [@](#): > > _Orginally posted by SPOOFE_ > What YOU are doing is asking a question, getting a perfectly sound explanation, and then asking a different question and asking why the original explanation doesn’t conform with the new question… ignoring that the first question and the second question do not involve the same set of circumstances. Bullshit. Many of the explanations given for the various effects under discussion have been far from “perfectly sound.” And, I will repeat again for those of you still missing it, I’ve made very good points that have gone unanswered (dust cloud? NASA claiming a bright, not dark circle around the LEM? anybody???). Point me to an example of what you describe above that does _not_ involve the more recent secondary-light-source issues, please. I’d like to see where I’ve been screwing up. **DaveW:** I still don’t understand what you’re driving at with this: > [@](#): > > It only shows that the amount of light coming from the blue in the sky is negligible, compared to the other secondary sources. It takes many thousands of feet or air to produce that blue, too, not one or two yards. The “blue light factor” may be negligible, but again, _all_ the light shining down on someone outside is coming through the sky—it’s already as blue as it’s gonna get, isn’t it? I guess I just still don’t see how you’ve demonstrated that diffusion doesn’t occur on a small scale. And by “secondary sources,” do you mean “light bouncing off the cars and pavement in the parking lot?” I’m just not grokking this point; I couldn’t tell you whether I agree with it or not. > [@](#): > > Then let me be more clear: my explanation was that the cameraman might have executed some sort of “find the LEM” plan - not that he did, I don’t know. It seems reasonable. That’s fine; I just don’t want anybody reading this thread to get the impression that I’m being knocked down by concrete scientific arguments and am rising up vainly to protest the machinations of physics. You propose that maybe Fendell could have had some plan that might have allowed him, in the best case scenario, to luck out and catch the LEM a few times in a way that would cause the footage to appear to show Fendell reacting in real time to events 2.58 seconds away. Obviously, I can’t refute a point with so little basis in known facts and so much realiance on “certain” camera movements and a large helping of luck. So you can consider my point _debunked_ if you want; but it’s certainly not been _disproven_. > [@](#): > > No offense taken, since the things I’ve done are admittedly much easier than what Fendell had to do. It’s never been my intent to suggest otherwise. I’ve just done something similar, and hoped my input would make a difference to you. I doubt so much that I could find a third-party source on such information that I haven’t even tried. I can’t even think of a decent analogous situation you might have experienced yourself. Okay, but if all you’ve ever done is track, say, a moving person with a predictable trajectory against a background with clear landmarks, then the comparison between your experience and Fendell’s is about as valid as comparing my experiences with photography on my porch to NASA’s on the moon. And we all know how well _that_ went over. I don’t mean to be dismissive, but it seems you’re comparing apples to oranges here (even if, to extend the analogy, I myself have never seen either fruit). > [@](#): > > …what you still don’t seem to realize is that it’s not up to us to prove that there was no conspiracy, it’s up to you to prove that there was one. You need to prove that the change in direction was a reaction in order to support your theory. It’s not enough to say, “looks like a reaction to me,” or the more-general “nobody can explain these things.” A conclusion of “it’s fake” doesn’t logically follow. You’re right; it is up to me to prove it’s a reaction. I don’t think it just looks like a reaction to _me_; I’m sure that’s how it would look on first (or even second) blush to most people. The only other standing theory is yours, which is “Fendell might have had a plan which enabled him to luck out”—a possible explanation, but not, I maintain, either a probable or certain one. I guess that’s going to have to be where this issue stands until more information can be found (if that is indeed possible). But let me ask you this: what would I have to do to prove to you that we are, in fact, witnessing real-time reactions? 'Cause I doubt I’m going to find Fendell on record saying “I faked it.” > [@](#): > > NO! It’s a good reason why he might have lost contact with it. I’d never suggest it as anything other than a possibility, since neither I nor you know (right now) what trajectory the LEM followed after lift-off. Just trying to give your argument the benefit of the doubt, there—it’s the best explanation so far for how he could lost the object for 10 seconds but acquire, correct, lose and reacquire in 3.7. > [@](#): > > I’d bet that with a little digging, a person could learn which way the LEM went into orbit, and the location of the rover relative to the LEM, and thus figure out whether or not my suggestion has any merit as an explanation for any particular loss-of-tracking incident in the video. Fair enough; I’ll get my shovel. > [@](#): > > And with no references (featureless void of space), it’s impossible, looking at only the footage, to tell whether or not any particular motion is the LEM or the camera. We’d need a film of Fendell’s hands on the camera controls, and we could synch the two together to find out what was really going on. Okay; I’m guessing this might be your answer to my above question of “how _could_ I prove it fake?”. > [@](#): > > I think you’ve set the bar far too high regarding what kinds of answers will be satisfactory for you, from the people here on this message board. As an extreme example, even if everyone here were completely knowledgable on all aspects of physics, optics, photography, and the Moon landings, there will always be another level of “why” questions if a person digs far enough. This sounds dangerously close to the “unless you’ve been to the moon, you’re not qualified to evaluate NASA’s photos” argument, though I assume that’s not what you’re trying to say. Sorry if I expect too much of you folks, but NASA evidently has no interest in doing an official debunking, and all the debunking Web sites maintain sentiments similar to **The Bad Astronomer’s** almost impossibly hubristic “The claims made by these conspiracy theorists are actually all wrong, and some are laughably so. Some involve some subtle (but understandable!) physics, while others are easily shown to be false.” At the very least, have I not proven to you how wrong that statement is? Where is the subtle but understandable physics that so handily defeats ALL my arguments? So yeah, maybe some of these questions have answers too complex for the SDMB. But if _that’s_ the case, at least I don’t have to be made to feel stupid/blindly conspiratorial for not getting it. This _is_ the SDMB, after all. > [@](#): > > And again, I maintain that the timing of the initial part of the lift-off was timed to the second. The folks responsible knew, I believe, that this was the last chance to get such a nifty piece of footage (again, compare it to other lift-off videos). After the first 13 seconds or so, however, we don’t know what the pilot was doing (“steering?”), we don’t know the general path of the LEM, and we don’t know how well Fendell himself thought he’d be able to track it. Please note the “we” - I’m including you. Because we don’t know all these things, the conclusion of “it’s fake” is unsupported. As is the conclusion of “it’s real,” unless you resort to the “take NASA’s word for it” method of debunking. Just so we’re in agreement on that. > [@](#): > > But what are you arguing about it? What’s your ultimate goal? I somehow got the bizarre impression earlier that you were arguing that we did go to the Moon, but faked up a bunch of videos and stills. I hope that impression was mistaken. All I know is that I’ve seen things that don’t make sense to me, and that most of them still don’t make sense to me even after all this discussion. Whether that means that some of the footage was faked, all of the footage was faked, or we didn’t go to the moon altogether, I can’t tell you. I’m not trying to digest the entire body of evidence pro and con right now; I’m just looking at a few select cases. If these cases point to forgery, any number of conclusions can be drawn as to motive. But I don’t really care about motive at this point; I just want some explanations for what I consider to be anomalies. It’s not like I _like_ the idea of NASA faking part or all of the lunar missions; in fact, as a lifelong space cadet, it makes me rather queasy. But I calls 'em as I sees 'em. > [@](#): > > ## quote: > > ## …although I’m also trying to show (and I believe I have shown) that the [space.com](http://space.com) not only doesn’t prove we landed on the moon, but it doesn’t even do a good job of pretending to. > > Well, I’ve purposefully avoiding even looking. Would you like me to? You haven’t even _looked_ at the [space.com](http://space.com) “blast site” photos yet? Well, hell yes, I want you to look at them! And look at the NASA quote posted by, I believe, **CurtC** , which stands in direct opposition to [space.com](http://space.com)’s claims—what “logical traps” you think I’ve fallen into there? > [@](#): > > The reason I brought up those things was in order to point out that your apparent reasoning (that nobody can explain these anomolies in a way you find satisfactory, therefore the footage must have been faked) is very much like that of those other people. I’m not saying that because nobody can explain the anomalies, the footage _must_ have been faked, but that it _could_ have been faked. Put enough of these examples together, and things start to look suspicious. That dust cloud in the LEM ascent footage, for example—according to all the debunking science I’ve seen out there, the cloud should be impossible. But there it is! This doesn’t prove the footage is fake—it may only prove that the debunkers don’t know what they’re talking about. But that, in turn, would resurrect all the old questions about, say, dust on the feet of the LEM which were previously “debunked” using the “no clouds of dust on the moon” argument. So you can see how I wouldn’t be too keen on settling for a _possibility_ as a true debunking. Debunking is supposed to involve facts, not possibilities, in my book. I don’t think that’s a logical shortcoming on my part. > [@](#): > > If you go out and _look_ for it, you’ll find it [all over the place](http://www.newsminer.com/heartland/hland103199/h31sno13.htm). I found that picture more helpful than the road and the room put together. Now here, yes, I can clearly see an effect which looks like what’s happening in [this photo](http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0106/rover_apollo17_big.jpg). The effect still looks much more extreme in the moon photo, but I suppose there’s a good explanation for that. The smaller size of the moon, perhaps? ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2001, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/86 "2001-09-23T22:24:17Z")
Hey Bick have you ever used your so called photo analysis techniques on pictures taken yourself, to see if your methods hold true. I think you would find many anomalies in your own photographs, you are only seeing what you want to see just like Percival Lowell. One day a new lunar obiter will map the surface at high resolution like the landsat program, and undoubtedly the Apollo landing sites will be photographed and the remaining equipment documented. ---
**Author:** ![Kamandi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5daacb/32.png) [@Kamandi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamandi)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2001, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/87 "2001-09-24T00:00:08Z")
Whew. **Bick** , I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. I knew I shouldn’t have gotten involved in one of these moon hoax threads. I just haven’t got the stamina. You’ve mentioned a few times in the last page that you’ve gotten no satisfying answers to some key questions. So perhaps -for clarity and to try to drag this thread back toward some semblance of fighting ignorance- you could in your next post just list the specific unexplained anomalies you would like to discuss. We can all then just limit our posts to helping you out with those. ---
**Author:** ![BickByro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BickByro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BickByro)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2001, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/88 "2001-09-24T01:34:05Z")
**Icerigger:** If I had the disposable income to purchase some professional-quality cameras and equipment, I might give your suggestion a shot. Unfortunately, I don’t have that kind of budget, and my attempts to test my theories with lower-grade equipment have already been ridiculed here. > [@](#): > > One day a new lunar obiter will map the surface at high resolution like the landsat program, and undoubtedly the Apollo landing sites will be photographed and the remaining equipment documented. Yeah, well, that hasn’t happened yet. When it does, we’ll see what we see. > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Kamandi_ > Whew. Bick, I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. I knew I shouldn’t have gotten involved in one of these moon hoax threads. I just haven’t got the stamina. You see why I waited six months to get back into this! > [@](#): > > You’ve mentioned a few times in the last page that you’ve gotten no satisfying answers to some key questions. So perhaps -for clarity and to try to drag this thread back toward some semblance of fighting ignorance- you could in your next post just list the specific unexplained anomalies you would like to discuss. We can all then just limit our posts to helping you out with those. I would like that very much. One of my better points involved pointing out **The Bad Astronomer’s** simultaneous proposal of three contradictory explanations for the apparent anomalies in the “landing site” photo at [space.com](http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/apollo15_touchdown_photos_010427.html). I wouldn’t ordinarily consider it much of a victory to revel in another Doper’s missteps, but in this case the guy isn’t just a Doper, he’s the webmaster of one of the preeminent moon-hoax debunking sites. But it looks like he took his ball and went home, so I guess it’s on to the next point. Looking at the article and photo at [space.com](http://space.com), you’ll notice a black circular mark purported to lie “within a 165-foot (50-meter) to 490-foot (150-meter) radius around the landing site” of Apollo 15. The scientist at Brown who discovered the spot “contends that the alteration has been created by the lunar module’s engine during touchdown.” Now, earlier in this thread I ran through a number of arguments against the existance of such a mark, some of which I still stand by (the engine, according to the debunkers, simply wouldn’t have put out enough thrust to displace that amount of dust, for example). But the real clincher came when **CurtC** posted a quotation from [NASA](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/frame.html) saying > [@](#): > > Jack Schmitt speculates that the Descent Engine plume swept away the smallest particles, leaving a higher than normal percentage of larger particles. The more jagged surface is a better reflector of sunlight than the normal surface and, therefore, appears brighter. _Certainly, from orbit, the areas around the landed LM’s are brighter than the normal surface._ > (italics mine) So a dark spot around the LEM, visible from orbit, is being used by [space.com](http://space.com) as debunking fodder while NASA clearly states the spot should be bright. Somebody doesn’t know what they’re talking about, and this time I don’t think it’s me. The next point: the billowing dust cloud that looms toward the camera as the LEM blasts off in the video clip at [the Apollo 17 Lunar Surface Journal](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/a17.launch.html) at time-reference 188:00:06. Dust clouds like that should be impossible on the moon. As **The Bad Astronomer** himself puts it, comparing conditions on earth to conditions on the moon by way of the analogy of blowing on a pile of flour: > [@](#): > > …note that the flour goes up, and sideways, and aloft into the air. If you blow hard enough, you might see little curlicues of air lifting the flour farther than your breath alone could have, and doing so to dust well outside of where your breath actually blew. > > That’s the heart of this problem. We are used to air helping us blow things around. The air itself is displaced by your breath, which pushed on more air, and so on. On the Earth, your breath might blow flour that was dozens of centimeters away, even though your actual breath didn’t reach that far. On the Moon, there is no air. The only dust that gets blown around by the exhaust of the rocket (which, remember, isn’t nearly as strong as the HBs claim) is the dust physically touched by the exhaust, or dust hit by other bits of flying dust. In the end, only the dust directly under or a bit around the rocket was blown out by the exhaust. The rest was left where it was. Look at the dust clouds kicked up by the LEM’s ascent in the video clip, one of which partially obscures the ascending module. Does this “lunar dust” look like it is following the properties described by **The Bad Astronomer?** It doesn’t to me. **DaveW** and I seem to have reached an impasse in our discussion of the subsequent tracking anomalies later in the same video; I still maintain that if the best debunking we’ve got is “the cameraman probably got lucky,” we shouldn’t consider the case closed. But it doesn’t look like we’re going to get much farther with it at the moment. Finally, in my OP, I pointed out that, in the foreground astronaut’s shadow seems to change lengths as he recedes from and approaches the camera in a clip that can be found at [http://www.nasa.gov/gallery/video/index.html](http://www.nasa.gov/gallery/video/index.html) under the “Human Space Flight” heading as “Apollo Video Clips.” I got a couple of responses on this, but the point got lost in the discussion pretty quickly. I still think it looks weird, and I got thinking about it again when **Chas.E** showed me [this photo](http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0106/rover_apollo17_big.jpg), in which the round rock on the far left at about the height of the astronaut’s ankles has a much longer shadow than the rocks on the right side of the picture (please note that I’m talking about shadow _length_ in that question, not non-parallelism. **DaveW** just provided [an excellent example of non-parallelism on earth](http://www.newsminer.com/heartland/hland103199/h31sno13.htm)—although dammit, I just have to ask, **DaveW** , isn’t the photographer much farther away from his subjects in that one, thus increasing the effect?). But the video and the still photo are really two different points—the video one, in my book, being much stronger because I think you can really see the shadow getting shorter, then longer again as the foreground astronaut moves from the camera to the flag and back. So, with the exception of my unfortunate parenthetical digression just above, let’s stick to the key points for the time being and see what we come up with. Cool? ---
**Author:** ![DaveW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DaveW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaveW)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2001, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/89 "2001-09-24T06:10:10Z")
_(I apologize in advance. This reply was written almost entirely off-line, and without rechecking this thread, and so I didn’t see **BickByro** ’s latest post, but am replying to the previous one in which he and I are discussing things. I, for one, am “cool” with getting back to the basics, and I do address many in what follows. The fact of the matter is, though, that I’ve just spent perhaps four hours on this stuff, and so I beg your forgiveness for not editing this stuff for the 79th time to rearrange it into some sort of coherent reply to your latest post - although I will try to do a quick axe-job to some of it. There were some other points I think needed answering, too.)_ **BickByro** wrote: > [@](#): > > That’s fine; I just don’t want anybody reading this thread to get the impression that I’m being knocked down by concrete scientific arguments and am rising up vainly to protest the machinations of physics. Actually, now that I think about it, I think you’ve only asked about two things which are truly scientific in nature (effects in the rover photo, and the crater shadows). Your point about the liftoff footage, for example, is based on your opinion that it looks wrong, but you really can’t nail down how it _should_ look, either. Compare that with your point about the rover shadows not being parallel, which _is_ a ‘concrete’ (but incorrect) alternative explanation. Non-scientific questions generally can’t be answered to _anyone’s_ satisfaction by scientific arguments. > [@](#): > > You propose that maybe Fendell could have had some plan that might have allowed him, in the best case scenario, to luck out and catch the LEM a few times in a way that would cause the footage to appear to show Fendell reacting in real time to events 2.58 seconds away. Obviously, I can’t refute a point with so little basis in known facts and so much realiance on “certain” camera movements and a large helping of luck. So you can consider my point debunked if you want; but it’s certainly not been disproven. Hmmmm. Given what you write about just wanting explanations for what you think are anomolies, then you’re not really making any points which require debunking or disproving (and you are, indeed, getting a handful of possible explanations, some better than others). > [@](#): > > Okay, but if all you’ve ever done is track, say, a moving person with a predictable trajectory against a background with clear landmarks, then the comparison between your experience and Fendell’s is about as valid as comparing my experiences with photography on my porch to NASA’s on the moon. And we all know how well that went over. I don’t mean to be dismissive, but it seems you’re comparing apples to oranges here (even if, to extend the analogy, I myself have never seen either fruit). No, dismissing it is okay, since whether or not it’s comparable experience, it still boils down to just an anecdote from an admitted non-expert, which is fairly worthless in the grand scheme of things. Again, I ask you to compare, for yourself, the 17 footage to that of other missions (don’t know if any mission lacking a rover had a pan/tilt head on a camera, though). I was wrong, by the way, in saying that I’d be repeating myself if I wrote more about this. Here’s something I remembered this afternoon: Given the delay, if you just hold the controls in one position, anything which does pop up on the screen will likely just shoot off another side before you can react to stop the motion. It’s better to “nudge” the controls by, say, half the screen ‘width’ (in degrees). Fendell probably had an idea of where the LM was supposed to be, and was trying to nudge the camera to it. Perhaps one nudge ended (luckily) about 1.58 seconds before the LM popped onto the screen, which could be why the diagonal motion ends one second after it appears. No overall “plan” to reacquire, just tentative motions. I’ve got no more response to the other things that look odd in the footage. In fact, for some of them, I can’t think of a decent explanation of why they’d occur even if Fendell had been on the Moon with no delay at all. > [@](#): > > But let me ask you this: what would I have to do to prove to you that we are, in fact, witnessing real-time reactions? 'Cause I doubt I’m going to find Fendell on record saying “I faked it.” > > . . . > > Okay; I’m guessing this might be your answer to my above question of “how could I prove it fake?”. It’s _a_ possible proof, yes. Heck, just finding out more about the pan/tilt head and the controls could be good, too. For example: did the pan/tilt controls allow for varying rates of panning and tilting, or did they work at one fixed speed? From what I saw in the ‘practice’ clips, I’m guessing the latter. > [@](#): > > Sorry if I expect too much of you folks, but NASA evidently has no interest in doing an official debunking, and all the debunking Web sites maintain sentiments similar to The Bad Astronomer’s almost impossibly hubristic “The claims made by these conspiracy theorists are actually all wrong, and some are laughably so. Some involve some subtle (but understandable!) physics, while others are easily shown to be false.” > > At the very least, have I not proven to you how wrong that statement is? Not at all. He probably wasn’t thinking about these particular questions of yours when he wrote that, especially since you state that you’re not posing these questions as “claims” that the Moon landings were faked, right? We need to compare apples to apples, but your questions are oranges. > [@](#): > > Where is the subtle but understandable physics that so handily defeats ALL my arguments? Nowhere, since you just want answers to your questions, and aren’t making arguments that the landings were faked. Plus, as above, I doubt that the lift-off footage is amenable to a physics-based explanation (beyond that, **The Bad Astronomer** did say ‘some’). > [@](#): > > As is the conclusion of “it’s real,” unless you resort to the “take NASA’s word for it” method of debunking. Just so we’re in agreement on that. We’re not, really, since the fact that there is not a single _solid_ argument that we did not go to the Moon says quite a bit when coupled with all the evidence that we did. Add to that the difficulty in keeping such a massive thing “hushed up” for so many years (the government has done that poorly on other ‘projects’). The possibility that the landings were faked is much less than the possibility that they were real. No, we’re not in agreement on that point. > [@](#): > > You haven’t even looked at the [space.com](http://space.com) “blast site” photos yet? Nope. I was, as you asked in the OP, trying to limit myself. > [@](#): > > Well, hell yes, I want you to look at them! And look at the NASA quote posted by, I believe, CurtC, which stands in direct opposition to [space.com](http://space.com)’s claims—what “logical traps” you think I’ve fallen into there? After looking at a [photo of the site](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/a15.pan9814LM.jpg) taken two orbits after launch of the LM, and the [space.com](http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=h_apollo_site_02.jpg) photo, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that the [space.com](http://space.com) photo is actually a negative, and nobody bothered to tell the reporter, or he neglected to mention it to his readers. _Given the fact that **Leonard David** doesn’t seem to mind quoting people who call the spot both ‘darkened’ **and** ‘brightened’_, it appears to me that _he_ is the one who’s gotta answer this question. NASA seems to consistently call it brightened. The latest researchers mostly call it darkened. If their photos _are_ negatives, then they aren’t wrong, and it’s the reporter (and his editor) who are making this confusing. > [@](#): > > I’m not saying that because nobody can explain the anomalies, the footage must have been faked, but that it could have been faked. But even _without_ anomolies, the footage _could_ have been faked! > [@](#): > > Put enough of these examples together, and things start to look suspicious. That dust cloud in the LEM ascent footage, for example—according to all the debunking science I’ve seen out there, the cloud should be impossible. But there it is! To be honest, I don’t see a cloud of dust. I do see cloudiness, but whether or not it’s dust I can’t tell, and I’m not sure how you can. I _think_ it’s another example of blooming, but we’d need to speak with an expert on the type of TV camera used and its lens. > [@](#): > > So you can see how I wouldn’t be too keen on settling for a possibility as a true debunking. Debunking is supposed to involve facts, not possibilities, in my book. I don’t think that’s a logical shortcoming on my part. No, some debunking must necessarily be by possibility - it simply counters the “must be faked” arguments you’re _not_ making (the fact that there are other, reasonable alternatives - even if they’re not ‘concrete’ - debunks the word “must” quite well). > [@](#): > > I found that picture more helpful than the road and the room put together. Now here, yes, I can clearly see an effect which looks like what’s happening in this photo. The effect still looks much more extreme in the moon photo, but I suppose there’s a good explanation for that. The smaller size of the moon, perhaps? Nah, but I’ll get to that in a minute. The point of all the photos, and what you should see if you do the things I suggest (and I really think you should, to see for yourself), is the fact that when “mapping” our three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional photo or image in our brains, the _only_ lines which will appear to be truly parallel are those which are also _entirely_ eqidistant to the camera lens or eye. Take a picture of two telephone poles, taken from, say, 50 feet away by a person on the ground, for example. If your film and ruler are both of high-enough resolution, you should be able to measure that the tops of the poles in the photo are closer together than the bottoms of the poles. Or, just take the ruler and hold it close to your face. It looks huge. Hold if far away, and it looks small. A little math will tell you that the tops of the poles are farther away from the camera lens than the bottoms of the poles, so a “ruler” that’s exactly the distance between them will look smaller at a height than at ground level. Not by much, but some. So why do the shadows from the rover look like they do? Because the sources of the shadows are all farther away from the camera lens (making them look closer together) than the other ends (which appear to be farther apart), and the photo was taken toward the sun. Had the photo been snapped looking away from the sun, you’d have asked why the shadows were all getting closer together. The reason that the effect is more pronounced in the Moon photo than in the artic photo is that the people and objects in the artic photo appear to all be farther away from the camera than in the Moon photo, and as things get farther away, the differences in distances which cause the effect get smaller, too. There’s a “distance squared” relationship going on, so the differences in the apparent size of an object at 10 feet versus 11 feet will be much greater then the differences at 20 feet versus 21 feet. If you call the apparent size at 10 feet “100%”, then at 11 feet it will appear to be about 83%. At 20 feet it’ll be 25%, and at 21 feet it’ll be about 23%. You can see how for the same difference in distance, the apparent size changes less when the object is farther away than closer up. ---
**Author:** ![Kamandi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5daacb/32.png) [@Kamandi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamandi)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2001, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/90 "2001-09-24T18:20:36Z")
All right. Back on track. 1. _The spot in the [Space.com photo](http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/apollo15_touchdown_photos_010427.html) is too big to have been made by the LEM engine._ From the above link: > [@](#): > > The anomaly is within a 165-foot (50-meter) to 490-foot (150-meter) radius around the landing site, Kreslavsky said. That is a suspiciously large range, indicating that the scientists found it very difficult to measure precisely. Could the LEM engine, the ascent stage engine and the activities of the astronauts and the rover have disturbed the regolith out to a radius of 50+ metres around the landing point? I don’t know. 2) _Nasa says landing area seen from orbit is a bright spot, [Space.com photo](http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/apollo15_touchdown_photos_010427.html) says it’s a dark spot_ Dunno about that. As **DaveW** says, [space.com](http://space.com)’s photo could be a negative. Doesn’t look like it to me, but that’s just my opinion. The red filter may have turned the bright spot dark. From the above link: > [@](#): > > The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization’s … Clementine probe circled the Moon in 1994, making use of a camera that snapped well over a million images in the **ultraviolet** to visible range. Perhaps the photo in question was actually taken in ultraviolet light, and the disturbed regolith reflects UV less strongly than undisturbed regolith. Finally, the [space.com](http://space.com) photo may not be a photo of the landing site at all. The scientists may have made an error, in which case the photo proves nothing. 3) _Billowing dust clouds at LEM launch_ Sorry, my computer at work does not have any of the plugins to allow me to see video, so I can’t look at that footage. 4) _Anomalous shadow lengths in moon photos_ Despite my previous flub about the effect of red filters, I do know a bit about photography. Wide-angle lenses introduce distortions as they project a three-dimentional scene onto a flat piece of film. All lenses, for that matter, distort the image one way or another, but wide angle lenses exaggerate the effect. What you are seeing in the anomalous shadow lengths and non-parallelism is simply that. I’ve seen it countless times in my photographs. For excellent explanations of these and other photographic issues (including the dynamic range - shadows and highlights - of negatives and prints), I suggest you read Ansel Adams’ books [The Camera](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0821221841/ref=pd_sim_books/107-3860836-0582954) and [The Negative](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0821221868/qid=1001352300/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_3_2/107-3860836-0582954). ---
**Author:** ![The\_Bad\_Astronomer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f05b48/32.png) [@The\_Bad\_Astronomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Bad_Astronomer)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2001, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/91 "2001-09-24T19:11:29Z")
I wasn’t going to post again, but I cannot let this stand. > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BickByro \* > One of my better points involved pointing out **The Bad Astronomer’s** simultaneous proposal of three contradictory explanations for the apparent anomalies in the “landing site” photo at [space.com](http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/apollo15_touchdown_photos_010427.html). I have looked over this entire thread, and I do not see where I ever give _any_ explanation of that particular photo except to say _just once_ that I heard it is supposed to be a scorch mark. I don’t say that is the answer (and even point out that the image is unconfirmed to be from the Apollo 15 landing site, though it looks to me to be pretty likely). I reread the [space.com](http://space.com) article and I the researcher doesn’t say it’s a scorch mark; the area is disturbed from the Ascent Module exhaust, and I inferred that’s from the heat scorching it. This may very well be wrong; the researcher involved said: “Some brightening of the immediate vicinity of the landing point is seen on the second photo,” strongly implying reflection effects, not scorching. The image posted by [space.com](http://space.com) and others is therefore most likely a negative, as is common in astronomical images. My statement is not “three explanations”, let alone contradictory ones. In a different subthread, I mentioned reflected light and I talked a bit about reflective properties of disturbed versus undisturbed sand. I did not offer this as an explanation of the Clementine image. I also talk about heiligenschein. Again, this was not offerred as an explanation of the Clementine image. It was brought up to explain the fill in the shadowed images. So it looks to me like this statement of yours is a bit brash. Incidentally, I don’t talk about the Clementine image on my website. Now, about my website: yes, I come on very strong there. I do this because we are not discussing some scientific theory like the Big Bang, we are discussing a documented case of historical fact. I do make one implication that I will change; I imply one has to be an idiot to believe in the Hoax. This is not true. The people _perpetrating_ the hoax theory are the ones being bad; they are giving just enough information out to make themselves sound good, but not giving enough for people to make an informed opinion. When I originally wrote that page, the Fox show had just aired, and I couldn’t believe many people would fall for it. Yet it had 15 million viewers after the second airing. Clearly, a lot of people are interested. I plan on updating my site, rewriting that page to make it more even-handed and put in more info about shadow fill and the non-parallel shadows, but it’ll be a while. ---
**Author:** ![BickByro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BickByro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BickByro)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2001, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/92 "2001-09-24T23:00:42Z")
Well, **Bad Astronomer,** I thank you for at least continuing to read this thread, even if you’re now done posting. > [@](#): > > I have looked over this entire thread, and I do not see where I ever give _any_ explanation of that particular photo except to say _just once_ that I heard it is supposed to be a scorch mark. I don’t say that is the answer (and even point out that the image is unconfirmed to be from the Apollo 15 landing site, though it looks to me to be pretty likely). Pointing out that the image is unconfirmed counts, in my book, as an explanation; you’re essentially saying “they might be wrong.” This is a far different thing from accepting the [space.com](http://space.com) article and photo as fact and then trying to explain why they show what they show—seems like you’re trying to have it both ways. And you didn’t even say you _heard_ it was a scorch mark, technically speaking, you said “it did leave scorch marks, I believe.” Whether you said it “just once” or not, the fact remains that you said it. So what was explanation #3? Admittedly, you weren’t as straightforward about it, but you mentioned that > [@](#): > > Dirt and sand reflects very differently when disturbed than when it is smoothed over. Find a baseball diamond, go to the infield and try for yourself. View it at different angles to the sunlight, too… The difference is astonishing. This comment was in response to my disbelief that the LEM could have kicked up enough dust to make a mark visible from space, specifically that I didn’t believe the small amount of dust the LEM would have kicked up would have significantly changed the surface reflectivity around the LEM (a belief supported by your website’s stats on the excavative power of the LEM engine). For you to pursue this line of argument at least implied to me that you were arguing in favor of the LEM displacing enough dust to make a mark visible from space. You now state that this comment was not to be interpreted as support for the “displaced dust crater” theory as regards the Clementine image. If I was wrong about this, I’m sorry, but that’s how things looked from where I was sitting. > [@](#): > > I reread the [space.com](http://space.com) article and I the researcher doesn’t say it’s a scorch mark; the area is disturbed from the Ascent Module exhaust, and I inferred that’s from the heat scorching it. No, he doesn’t say it’s a scorch mark; I never attributed that belief to anyone but you. Looks like you might want to brush up on your reading comprehension; not only did you invent the scorch mark, but you also missed that Kreslavsky “contends that the alteration has been created by the lunar module’s engine during touchdown”—not during ascent. Though I can see where you’d get confused, because Kreslavsky seems to have ignored the fact that during touchdown, the LEM’s engine was at very low power, if not off, whereas it was turned to the escape-velocity setting for the subsequent ascent. This is yet another piece of evidence, in my estimation, to prove that the [space.com](http://space.com) article is almost pure fiction (or one of the worst pieces of reporting in recent astronomical history). > [@](#): > > The image posted by [space.com](http://space.com) and others is therefore most likely a negative, as is common in astronomical images. I’ll get to this issue in just a second in my response to **DaveW**. Stay tuned! > [@](#): > > Incidentally, I don’t talk about the Clementine image on my website. I realize this, but you certainly come off as being able to explain away any “ridiculous” moon hoax claim. But it looks like you’re softening that position a little… > [@](#): > > I do make one implication that I will change; I imply one has to be an idiot to believe in the Hoax. This is not true. Well, it’s about gee-darned time somebody on Team Debunker came out and admitted what I’ve been saying since I first got into this mess. I applaud your honesty, **Bad Astronomer** , and I thank you for saying what you’ve said. Which isn’t to say I _believe_ in the hoax, by the way, but I still do have my suspicions. I believe in the possibility. Okay, let me just wrap things up with **DaveW** here, and then we’ll get deeper into the nitty-gritty of the [space.com](http://space.com) article… > [@](#): > > Actually, now that I think about it, I think you’ve only asked about two things which are truly scientific in nature (effects in the rover photo, and the crater shadows). Your point about the liftoff footage, for example, is based on your opinion that it looks wrong, but you really can’t nail down how it _should_ look, either… Non-scientific questions generally can’t be answered to _anyone’s_ satisfaction by scientific arguments. I thought the one-second reaction time argument was fairly scientific in nature, as reactions should have taken 2.58 seconds; obviously you’ve come up with a possible explanation for it, but I don’t think that means the original objection was not scientific. > [@](#): > > Given what you write about just wanting explanations for what you think are anomolies, then you’re not really making any points which require debunking or disproving (and you are, indeed, getting a handful of possible explanations, some better than others). I’d like someone to prove that the anomalies I think I see are not, in fact, anomalies—that’s the “disproving” I’m looking for. But I get the feeling we’re splitting hairs here. > [@](#): > > No, dismissing it is okay, since whether or not it’s comparable experience, it still boils down to just an anecdote from an admitted non-expert, which is fairly worthless in the grand scheme of things. Stop it, you’re going to make me cry!!! > [@](#): > > I’ve got no more response to the other things that look odd in the footage. In fact, for some of them, I can’t think of a decent explanation of why they’d occur even if Fendell had been on the Moon with no delay at all. Like the zig-zags? Yeah, well, like I said, I don’t have a whole scenario constructed for why all these things would have been considered necessary to fake it, if indeed it was faked. I guess we may never know… > [@](#): > > Heck, just finding out more about the pan/tilt head and the controls could be good, too. For example: did the pan/tilt controls allow for varying rates of panning and tilting, or did they work at one fixed speed? From what I saw in the ‘practice’ clips, I’m guessing the latter. I guess it’s time for me to hit the bricks… > [@](#): > > [The Bad Astronomer] probably wasn’t thinking about these particular questions of yours when he wrote that, especially since you state that you’re not posing these questions as “claims” that the Moon landings were faked, right? I’m not claiming the landings were faked, but I am claiming that there are anomalies in the footage, until such time as they are proven to me that they are not anomalies. The point is that unless **The Bad Astronomer** has heard and evaluated all the questions that can be asked of the legitimacy of the Apollo evidence, he has no business proclaiming that “The claims made by these conspiracy theorists are actually all wrong, and some are laughably so” (unless he just _wants_ to look like a blowhard). Clearly **The Bad Astronomer** lumped me with the conspiracy theorists, so let’s hear why “actually all” my claims are wrong, eh? > [@](#): > > …beyond that, **The Bad Astronomer** did say ‘some’ Yeah, but that “some” was only in reference to the points that could not be “easily shown to be false.” The guy just comes off as too cocksure. But I’m done picking on **The Bad Astronomer** ; not only did he finally discard the old Earthshine argument, but he even said I wasn’t necessarily an idiot! What more can you ask? > [@](#): > > We’re not, really, since the fact that there is not a single _solid_ argument that we did not go to the Moon says quite a bit when coupled with all the evidence that we did. Add to that the difficulty in keeping such a massive thing “hushed up” for so many years (the government has done that poorly on other ‘projects’). The possibility that the landings were faked is much less than the possibility that they were real. I didn’t ask which had a greater possibility. I was simply stating that without knowledge of, as you put it “what the pilot was doing… the general path of the LEM, and how well Fendell himself thought he’d be able to track it,” we have no more basis for deeming the LEM ascent footage authentic than for deeming it inauthentic. I stand by that, unless we’re once again falling into the “NASA said it, so NASA did it” trap. As for the difficulty in keeping such a massive thing hushed up, we by definition wouldn’t know if the government has even been able to pull off such a thing before (although we do know, admittedly, that they have sometimes tried and failed). But like I say, this isn’t about possibilities and probabilities, this is about whether we can **know** that a given piece of footage (in this case, the LEM ascent footage) is authentic. > [@](#): > > After looking at a [photo of the site](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/a15.pan9814LM.jpg) taken two orbits after launch of the LM, and the [space.com](http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=h_apollo_site_02.jpg) photo, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that the [space.com](http://space.com) photo is actually a negative, and nobody bothered to tell the reporter, or he neglected to mention it to his readers. Comparing the two photos, I’m more convinced than ever that the [space.com](http://space.com) photo is not a picture of the Apollo 15 landing site. Look at the surrounding terrain—it’s _completely_ different, even when considerably reduced, enhanced for contrast, and rotated 20 degrees counterclockwise! Regardless of that, since you and **The Bad Astronomer** both speculate that the [space.com](http://space.com) is a negative, I inverted the image’s colors using Photoshop. Unfortunately, the craters in the [space.com](http://space.com) image no longer look realistic when inverted. But here’s what’s really interesting: I then inverted the colors on the picture _you_ provided, and the craters in _that_ photo suddenly looked far more realistic—where there had been “mounds,” there were now proper holes. Check it out for yourself, if you can—I’d bet money that the picture you provided was itself a negative! The plot thickens… > [@](#): > > Given the fact that **Leonard David** doesn’t seem to mind quoting people who call the spot both ‘darkened’ **and** ‘brightened’, it appears to me that _he_ is the one who’s gotta answer this question. NASA seems to consistently call it brightened. The latest researchers mostly call it darkened. If their photos _are_ negatives, then they aren’t wrong, and it’s the reporter (and his editor) who are making this confusing. I kind of assumed that the one reference to “brightening of the immediate vicinity of the landing point [in] the second photo” meant that they actually caught a reflection of light off the remains of the LEM. I suppose it is possible that your explanation is correct, though it would represent some truly horrible reporting on the part of [space.com](http://space.com)’s Senior Space Writer (!), who also half-quoted Kreslavsky as saying “a diffuse dark spot can be seen exactly at the landing site.” Regardless, the [space.com](http://space.com) photo does not appear to be a negative, as I stated above. > [@](#): > > But even _without_ anomolies, the footage _could_ have been faked! That wouldn’t be as likely, though; one would expect _some_ mistakes. But you’re right, a lack of anomalies doesn’t _prove_ the footage wasn’t faked. > [@](#): > > To be honest, I don’t see a cloud of dust. I do see cloudiness, but whether or not it’s dust I can’t tell, and I’m not sure how you can. I _think_ it’s another example of blooming, but we’d need to speak with an expert on the type of TV camera used and its lens. Admittedly, a higher-resolution copy of the footage would be useful here. But the cloud becomes clearly visible against the black background by 1:08.9 (it obscures the base of the LEM well before that), while the tilt up does not begin until 1:09.4. This seems to rule out the blooming argument, given what you said about blooming earlier in this thread (“pointing the camera up into the darkness of space opened the iris as wide as it would go, allowing light from odd angles to enter the lens”). The camera actually has _less_ blackness in its field of view after zooming out (up until the point it starts tilting up) doesn’t it? > [@](#): > > No, some debunking must necessarily be by possibility - it simply counters the “must be faked” arguments you’re _not_ making (the fact that there are other, reasonable alternatives - even if they’re not ‘concrete’ - debunks the word “must” quite well). True enough. But “reasonable” is a hell of a qualifier—many juries have spent a lot of time debating, for instance, whether a case has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. What’s reasonable? Anyway, how about, instead of “must be faked,” “looks like fake”? That’s a more accurate summation of my stance. If you think this stance necessarily makes my points immune to _per se_ debunking, that’s cool, but I doubt everybody else here agrees with you… > [@](#): > > The point of all the photos, and what you should see if you do the things I suggest (and I really think you should, to see for yourself), is the fact that when “mapping” our three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional photo or image in our brains, the _only_ lines which will appear to be truly parallel are those which are also _entirely_ eqidistant to the camera lens or eye. I understand that some distortion is to be expected, but I still question the _amount_ of distortion. > [@](#): > > and the photo was taken toward the sun. Had the photo been snapped looking away from the sun, you’d have asked why the shadows were all getting closer together. I still don’t see as how this photo was taken too much toward the sun—the astronaut’s shadow runs off the left of the image; it doesn’t really come toward the camera. I’m not sure how you’d tell which of the shadows in the photo represents the “closest to non-distorted”—can you help on that? > [@](#): > > There’s a “distance squared” relationship going on, so the differences in the apparent size of an object at 10 feet versus 11 feet will be much greater then the differences at 20 feet versus 21 feet. If you call the apparent size at 10 feet “100%”, then at 11 feet it will appear to be about 83%. At 20 feet it’ll be 25%, and at 21 feet it’ll be about 23%. You can see how for the same difference in distance, the apparent size changes less when the object is farther away than closer up. Makes sense. Thanks! Now on to **Kamandi.** > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Kamandi_ > That is a suspiciously large range, indicating that the scientists found it very difficult to measure precisely. Could the LEM engine, the ascent stage engine and the activities of the astronauts and the rover have disturbed the regolith out to a radius of 50+ metres around the landing point? I don’t know. Yeah, the range seems decently large (I gotta be honest, I don’t know what’s considered a “large” or “small” range in orbital photos), but the spot also seems pretty distinct, and there _are_ smaller marks to be found in the photo. But okay, sure, so there was a big range—does that mean the mission would have left even an evenly-colored 330-foot spot on the moon? Not likely, if **The Bad Astronomer** is to be believed (“In the end, only the dust directly under or a bit around the rocket was blown out by the exhaust”). Bear in mind, as well, that the activities of the astronauts _reversed_ the effects of the LEM (“As they walk around, the astronauts disturb this modified surface and, in effect, restore its normal condition,” from [http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/frame.html](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/frame.html)). It’s unclear what effect the rover would have had, though I’d imagine its effects to be similar to the astronauts’. > [@](#): > > As **DaveW** says, [space.com](http://space.com)’s photo could be a negative. Doesn’t look like it to me, but that’s just my opinion. The red filter may have turned the bright spot dark. I’m almost positive it’s not a negative. Can’t tell ya for sure about the red filter, but I’m guessing it wouldn’t have _inverted_ the bright spot. > [@](#): > > Perhaps the photo in question was actually taken in ultraviolet light, and the disturbed regolith reflects UV less strongly than undisturbed regolith. Looks like a “regular” photo to me, and the article does say ultraviolet to _visible_, anyhow. But maybe somebody out there will be able to add to this. Supposing you’re right, though—then we’d have disturbed regolith reflecting standard light back better but UV light worse, and we’d have to account for this effect. > [@](#): > > Finally, the [space.com](http://space.com) photo may not be a photo of the landing site at all. The scientists may have made an error, in which case the photo proves nothing. That would be a pretty big error. And considering how smugly the article begins (“Put aside those absurd claims the Apollo Moon landings were a hoax”) and that it was written by [space.com](http://space.com)’s Senior Space Writer, it would be a pretty ironic one. But I guess anything’s possible. It would prove, to me at least, that just because somebody _says_ they’ve debunked the moon hoax doesn’t mean they’ve actually done so. I think people tend to forget that. > [@](#): > > Sorry, my computer at work does not have any of the plugins to allow me to see video, so I can’t look at that footage. I guess downloading RealPlayer would be too suspicious? Oh well; hopefully others will be able to help on that one. > [@](#): > > Wide-angle lenses introduce distortions as they project a three-dimentional scene onto a flat piece of film. All lenses, for that matter, distort the image one way or another, but wide angle lenses exaggerate the effect. What you are seeing in the anomalous shadow lengths and non-parallelism is simply that. Well, since **DaveW** has already told me “you’ll find the answer to the non-parallel shadows on the Moon, _without_ need of wide-angle lens distortion,” I’m not sure what to make of your comments. But hell, were they even _using_ wide-angle lenses? I’ve got a final little note that I admit is off-topic; I wish I had seen it a couple days ago. I hope you’re reading this **Chas.E** , 'cause this touches on a point you were making, and that’s why I’m putting it in here. Jim Scotti, astronomer at the University of Arizona right here in Tucson, says on [this page](http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/NOT_faked/FOX.html) that “We see no stars in the images because the images are exposed for the bright sunlit scenes.” If this is the case, it rules out your hypothesis that the Aldrin-descending-LEM photo was “exposed for the shadows,” doesn’t it? Sorry to drag us back into this, but that seemed like a flat-out contradiction to me, and thus one worth noting. ---
**Author:** ![Kamandi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5daacb/32.png) [@Kamandi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamandi)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2001, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/93 "2001-09-24T23:56:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BickByro \* > > > [@](#): > > > > Finally, the [space.com](http://space.com) photo may not be a photo of the landing site at all. The scientists may have made an error, in which case the photo proves nothing. > > That would be a pretty big error. And considering how smugly the article begins (“Put aside those absurd claims the Apollo Moon landings were a hoax”) and that it was written by [space.com](http://space.com)’s Senior Space Writer, it would be a pretty ironic one. But I guess anything’s possible. It would prove, to me at least, that just because somebody _says_ they’ve debunked the moon hoax doesn’t mean they’ve actually done so. I think people tend to forget that. Agreed. But we must also remember that in order for Moon Hoax Believers to be taken seriously, they must come up with some pretty good evidence. I think people tend to forget that, too. The points we are discussing here are in my opinion worth discussing (otherwise I wouldn’t be here), but they don’t constitute evidence of a hoax. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Wide-angle lenses introduce distortions as they project a three-dimentional scene onto a flat piece of film. All lenses, for that matter, distort the image one way or another, but wide angle lenses exaggerate the effect. What you are seeing in the anomalous shadow lengths and non-parallelism is simply that. > > Well, since **DaveW** has already told me “you’ll find the answer to the non-parallel shadows on the Moon, _without_ need of wide-angle lens distortion,” I’m not sure what to make of your comments. But hell, were they even _using_ wide-angle lenses? The wide angle lens comment was in reference to [this photo](http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0106/rover_apollo17_big.jpg), which to my photographer’s eye is clearly taken with a wide-angle lens. What’s a wide angle lens? In 35mm photography, it’s one with focal length less than 50mm. (50mm is considered a “normal” lens, whose magnification in the viewfinder corresponds most closely to our own visual field. Any lens longer than 50mm is considered a telephoto lens.) In medium-format photography (bigger negative than 35mm) which I believe is what the astronauts used on the moon (but I could be wrong) a wide-angle lens has focal length less than around 80mm. Yes, you can see converging and diverging shadows from parallel objects without using a lens at all. It’s simple visual perspective. But this photo, taken at close range with a wide angle lens just exaggerates the effect. Read the Ansel Adams books I linked to before, they’ll explain it much more clearly than I can. They’re in your local library. > [@](#): > > I’ve got a final little note that I admit is off-topic; I wish I had seen it a couple days ago. I hope you’re reading this **Chas.E** , 'cause this touches on a point you were making, and that’s why I’m putting it in here. Jim Scotti, astronomer at the University of Arizona right here in Tucson, says on [this page](http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/NOT_faked/FOX.html) that “We see no stars in the images because the images are exposed for the bright sunlit scenes.” If this is the case, it rules out your hypothesis that the Aldrin-descending-LEM photo was “exposed for the shadows,” doesn’t it? Sorry to drag us back into this, but that seemed like a flat-out contradiction to me, and thus one worth noting. \*\* Oh for crying out loud. **Bick** , if you’re not going to try to comprehend what we’re explaining to you, what’s the point of this thread? The “bright sunlit scenes” _includes the shadows in those scenes_. That’s why the writer said _scenes_ and not “the images are exposed for the bright sunlit _highlights_”. The shadows on the moon can still be FAR brighter than the stars. I haven’t taken many astronomical photos, but those that I have done required 20+ seconds of exposure, with faster film than available to the astronauts and a wider aperture. At that exposure, the moon - including its shadows - is hopelessly overexposed. ---
**Author:** ![BickByro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BickByro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BickByro)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2001, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/94 "2001-09-25T00:16:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Kamandi \* > Agreed. But we must also remember that in order for Moon Hoax Believers to be taken seriously, they must come up with some pretty good evidence. I think people tend to forget that, too. The points we are discussing here are in my opinion worth discussing (otherwise I wouldn’t be here), but they don’t constitute evidence of a hoax. Well, that’s fine. I’m not about to go shouting from the rooftops that the moon hoax _must_ have happened because [space.com](http://space.com) got its facts wrong. But certain of the issues brought up by the [space.com](http://space.com) debate _do_ have a bearing on other debunkings more directly concerned with an evaluation of NASA’s evidence, so a conclusion regarding what’s going on a [space.com](http://space.com) may indeed lead to some progress on the hoax front. It remains to be seen, since nobody seems to know for sure what’s going on in this particular case. > [@](#): > > In medium-format photography (bigger negative than 35mm) which I believe is what the astronauts used on the moon (but I could be wrong) a wide-angle lens has focal length less than around 80mm. > > Yes, you can see converging and diverging shadows from parallel objects without using a lens at all. It’s simple visual perspective. But this photo, taken at close range with a wide angle lens just exaggerates the effect. Okay, just checking. It’s confusing to have two people give two different explanations for the same effect, that’s all… > [@](#): > > The “bright sunlit scenes” _includes the shadows in those scenes_. That’s why the writer said _scenes_ and not “the images are exposed for the bright sunlit _highlights_”. If you’re not a photographer, that’s far from obvious. If the cameras are set for bright scenes, I can only assume that does not mean “set for optimum exposure of dark scenes within bright scenes.” **Chas.E** specifically distinguished between exposing for shadows and exposing for highlights, postulating that the astronauts were exposing for shadows. Shadows, last time I checked, are neither “bright” nor “sunlit.” So you can see where I might get confused. Sorry I didn’t figure it out, but there’s no need to get upset! ---
**Author:** ![DaveW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DaveW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaveW)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2001, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/95 "2001-09-25T05:28:30Z")
**BickByro** wrote to **The Bad Astronomer** : > [@](#): > > Looks like you might want to brush up on your reading comprehension and to me: > [@](#): > > Stop it, you’re going to make me cry!!! and to **Kamandi** : > [@](#): > > I guess downloading RealPlayer would be too suspicious? I don’t think there’s any need to make people feel stupid, do you? The fact that two out of three of us agreed with you that things had gone too far should have given you enough satisfaction, no? I was under the impression we’d be getting back to your questions, not opening ourselves up to ridicule. Guess I was wrong. And so, I suggest that you:[ul][li]Decide whether or not you’re going to claim the Moon landings were faked, because phrases like “The plot thickens…” sure make it sound like you’re not really _just_ looking for answers.[/li] [li]Realize that when you come right down to it, you’re going to have to take _someone’s_ word for _any_ explanation of the LM movements seen in the footage (they could be recreated either with a time-delay or without), and so you need to decide what explanation is _more likely_ to be true. The footage doesn’t stand on its own, there’s all sorts of other reasons to think that it’s real. We don’t have to discuss it “in a vacuum” unless you really want to (I don’t).[/li] [li]Look up the term [anomaly](http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=anomaly), and realize that an explained anomaly is still an anomaly.[/li] [li]Realize that in reality, a lack of anomalies would be evidence _for_ a fake.[/li] [li]Email Leonard David ([ldavid@hq.space.com](mailto:ldavid@hq.space.com)) and ask him what _he_ thinks about the difference between the [space.com](http://space.com) photo and the NASA photo (which is a detail photo on a much smaller scale than [space.com](http://space.com)’s - the full-sized image can be found [here](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/images15.html#Maps), under “Pan Camera 9814” - for some reason, my computer has trouble with the big jpeg). My opinion: he shouldn’t be reporting - the other _serious_ omission from the article is the name of the journal in which this research will be (or has been) published, or a note that says it won’t be.[/li] [li]Learn something about Clementine, from the [USGS](http://wwwflag.wr.usgs.gov/USGSFlag/Space/clementine/clementine.html), [NASA](http://www-pdsimage.jpl.nasa.gov/PDS/public/clementine/frontpage.html), or the [LPI](http://cass.jsc.nasa.gov/pub/expmoon/clementine/clementine.html). Specifically, learn the specs of the [UV/Vis](http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1994-004A-1.html) camera to see if anyone can safely compare the gray scale of a Clementine photo (without knowing which band of light was being imaged) to the grayscale in an Apollo orbiter photo (big hint: probably not - forget the ‘negative’ thing altogether).[/li] [li]And, finally, read what I write. “Towards the sun” is not the same as “too much towards the sun.” The optical highlights _and_ the shadows all make it quite obvious that the camera is pointed a good deal less than 90 degrees away from the sun, which, in my book, means “towards.” “Too much” towards the sun, and the camera would have been swamped out, and we wouldn’t even be discussing the photo at all.[/ul]Honestly, if you’re going to agrue about something, you should at least try to learn what it is you’re arguing about _before_ you start pointing at ‘anomalies’. For example, the shadows, “UFOs” and other things in the rover photo aren’t even really anomalies, they’re “normalities.” This, I think, is one reason why folks like **The Bad Astronomer** get so easily annoyed - people say, “hey, those shadows look weird” without ever even looking at the shadows in their own parking lots for similar things (close one eye - it’ll help shut down your brain’s use of depth perception to “even things out”; in other words, it’ll make the scene look more like a photo to your brain).[/li] Instead of reading tomorrow that “this site over here appears to contradict that site over there” or some such again, I’m much rather see you write, “this apparent contradiction between these two sites was resolved when I learned from this third site that they’re actually talking about two different things,” or something similar. Something which would show you’re making an attempt on your own to figure out the answers, instead of just plying the Internet for more things which “look odd” to throw at us. I’m sure that somewhere out there, there’s a site which explains shadows in photographs (in general) much more definitively than I did. Go find it. It might even tell you which shadows will be the least distorted. ---
**Author:** ![pldennison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@pldennison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pldennison)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2001, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/96 "2001-09-25T16:00:04Z")
> [@](#): > > I’m not claiming the landings were faked, but I am claiming that there are anomalies in the footage, until such time as they are proven to me that they are not anomalies. This has been and remains the entire problem with your debate. For one thing, you assign others the burden of disproving your claims, rather than taking upon yourself the burden of proving them. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out why neither our court system nor any other system of logic works this way. For another, the fact that something is anomalous is, in itself, meaningless; and it furthermore implies, in the way you hold steadfastly to your claims, that you and you alone know what things should look like on the moon, and these “anomalies” don’t match your idea. I think it has been demonstrated to everyone’s satisfaction, however, that you in fact don’t have any idea what photographs on the moon (or for that matter, in many cases, on Earth) should like like. ---
**Author:** ![BickByro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BickByro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BickByro)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2001, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/97 "2001-09-25T17:41:21Z")
**DaveW** : The only one I was “ridiculing” there was **The Bad Astronomer** , who managed to take two facts out of the [space.com](http://space.com) article that were not there—that’s some pretty sloppy science for a guy who runs a site devoted to the elimination of sloppy science. As for you, I wasn’t exactly serious that I was going to cry, but I certainly wasn’t making fun of you! It was just the way you put it (“dismissing it is okay… fairly worthless in the grand scheme of things”); it seemed overly harsh regarding the value of your own experience. I thought you were being too hard on yourself, and I thought a little joke like “stop it, you’re going to make me cry!” would be understood as just that. Sorry, **Dave** , believe me, I wasn’t trying to make you feel stupid! And I honestly don’t see how my comments to **Kamandi** could possibly have been considered ridicule, though I again apologize if they were. **Kamandi** said > [@](#): > > …my computer at work does not have any of the plugins to allow me to see video, so I can’t look at that footage. To which I simply was trying to say “Well, if you’re using your work computer, you might not want to be so conspicuous as to be downloading unnecessary applications off the Internet.” That’s absolutely all I meant, and I don’t see where you’re getting this “ridicule” factor from. I was actually implying, if anything, the **Kamandi** was too intelligent to take risks downloading apps at work. I sincerely regret any confusion or anger my comments may have caused, **Kamandi** and **DaveW** —I have nothing but respect for the way you both have contributed to this discussion. Given your misunderstanding, **DaveW** , I’ll try not to be too harsh in my evaluation of the rest of your post; I understand you were a bit pissed when you wrote it. > [@](#): > > Decide whether or not you’re going to claim the Moon landings were faked, because phrases like “The plot thickens…” sure make it sound like you’re not really just looking for answers. Look, if you provide me a photograph that’s actually a negative, and I reverse it and see a black spot where the Apollo 15 landing is supposed to have taken place, and I compare that photo to NASA’s statements that “clearly, the landing sites look brighter from orbit,” then I have found yet another inconsistency. That’s what I meant by “the plot thickens”—just that now we’ve got TWO photos of a dark blast site, and still haven’t resolved their existance with NASA’s brightness comments. > [@](#): > > Realize that when you come right down to it, you’re going to have to take someone’s word for any explanation of the LM movements seen in the footage (they could be recreated either with a time-delay or without), and so you need to decide what explanation is more likely to be true. Okay. Well, I was working with your testimony until you recanted it as “fairly worthless in the grand scheme of things.” So when you say I’m going to have to take someone’s word for it, what “someone” are you talking about? > [@](#): > > Look up the term anomaly, and realize that an explained anomaly is still an anomaly. From Webster’s: “anomaly 1 : deviation from the common rule.” If something I think is an anomaly (i.e. a deviation from the “rule” of physics) can be shown not to actually be a deviation (i.e. it fits in with accepted laws of physics just fine), then it would no longer be an anomaly. That’s how I’m looking at it. > [@](#): > > Email Leonard David ([ldavid@hq.space.com](mailto:ldavid@hq.space.com)) and ask him what he thinks about the difference between the [space.com](http://space.com) photo and the NASA photo… My opinion: he shouldn’t be reporting - the other serious omission from the article is the name of the journal in which this research will be (or has been) published, or a note that says it won’t be. The guy may be a bad reporter, and writing to him is a good idea, but regardless of all that, the photo you posted up here yesterday was a negative. When its true colors were revealed, the “touchdown site” was black, not white. This contradicts NASA’s testimony. So whether [space.com](http://space.com) is even involved in this discussion or not, we have the same problem. That’s what I meant by “the plot thickens.” > [@](#): > > Learn something about Clementine, from the USGS, NASA, or the LPI. Specifically, learn the specs of the UV/Vis camera to see if anyone can safely compare the gray scale of a Clementine photo (without knowing which band of light was being imaged) to the grayscale in an Apollo orbiter photo (big hint: probably not - forget the ‘negative’ thing altogether). Okay, I’ll poke around and see what I can find out about Clementine. > [@](#): > > The optical highlights and the shadows all make it quite obvious that the camera is pointed a good deal less than 90 degrees away from the sun, which, in my book, means “towards.” Yes, fine, but **Chas.E** said earlier that “He’s shooting almost right into the sun,” which to me, at least, means he was shooting _almost right into the sun_. I guess you read that as “he’s shooting a good deal less than 90 degrees away from the sun.” Sorry, but that is far from the obvious interpretation. In any case, as you’ll recall, the comments you’re complaining about were followed by the question “I’m not sure how you’d tell which of the shadows in the photo represents the ‘closest to non-distorted’—can you help on that?” I think you’re misrepresenting the fact that I’m trying to learn more by asking you questions; I’m not just standing with my arms crossed saying “I don’t believe it.” > [@](#): > > Honestly, if you’re going to agrue about something, you should at least try to learn what it is you’re arguing about before you start pointing at ‘anomalies’. For example, the shadows, “UFOs” and other things in the rover photo aren’t even really anomalies, they’re “normalities.” This from the guy who just said “an explained anomaly is still an anomaly.” Well, I think you should understand what I mean by “explaining away anomalies” now. Can we get back to the real discussion now and away from this pointless dissection of terminology? > [@](#): > > Instead of reading tomorrow that “this site over here appears to contradict that site over there” or some such again, I’m much rather see you write, “this apparent contradiction between these two sites was resolved when I learned from this third site that they’re actually talking about two different things,” or something similar. I’m sure you’d much rather see that, because it would mean that I was actually wrong all this time. You’re assuming every apparent contradiction _has_ a resolution. > [@](#): > > Something which would show you’re making an attempt on your own to figure out the answers, instead of just plying the Internet for more things which “look odd” to throw at us. Well, let’s see, you threw a photo at me and I used Photoshop to discover said photo was actually a negative—proof I _am_ trying to figure out the answers on my own. But now, rather than respond to my legitimate point (or hell, even _admitting_ that you supplied me with a negative and tried to pass it off as a “positive”) you’re practically flaming me. I understand this is in part because you think I was belittling your intelligence, of course, but I suspect your anger may have blinded you to a few realities. > [@](#): > > I’m sure that somewhere out there, there’s a site which explains shadows in photographs (in general) much more definitively than I did. Go find it. It might even tell you which shadows will be the least distorted. Sure, thing, **DaveW**. I hope we can resume civilized discourse soon… > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by pldennison_ > …you assign others the burden of disproving your claims, rather than taking upon yourself the burden of proving them. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out why neither our court system nor any other system of logic works this way. Ah, you don’t have anything specific to say so you’ll just slag off my entire reason for starting this thread. You know, when people like **DaveW** say stuff like that, at least I know they’ve been doing their best to answer my questions and have become frustrated with my tenacity. When people like you do it, they’re just being jerks. I think it’s pretty clear that unless somebody gives me a moon rocket, I’m never going to be able to, strictly speaking, prove _anything_, because someone like you will always come along and say > [@](#): > > …the fact that something is anomalous is, in itself, meaningless; and it furthermore implies, in the way you hold steadfastly to your claims, that you and you alone know what things should look like on the moon, and these “anomalies” don’t match your idea. I’ve asked it before and I’ll ask it again: what would constitute true proof, to you, **pldennison** , or to anyone out there? What would I have to show you, in a photograph, for you to believe me? Do I actually have to organize a Dopefest on the moon? I want some specifics, here, people, because I was under the impression that things like supposedly impossible dust clouds _were_ proof (though I suppose they may be evidence that the debunkers don’t realize dust clouds actually _are_ possible on the moon). Please let me know what I could ever do to _prove_ that even one photo or piece of footage was faked. ---
**Author:** ![JayUtah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@JayUtah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JayUtah)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2001, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/98 "2001-09-25T18:42:35Z")
If the Clementine photo was taken through a red filter, then any chromatic shift toward the blue would be rendered much darker than the surrounding area, even if the luminosity remained essentially unchanged, or was even brighter as alleged in the unfiltered photograph. That is your reconciliation between the Clementine photo and the NASA allegations of brightness. The dictionary definition you give for “anomaly” does not mention the laws of physics at all. Your use of anomaly in this case relies on your ability to correctly invoke all applicable laws of physics to explain what you see in the photos. In fact, your use of “anomaly” in this discussion seems to be, “a deviation from that which is expected.” You are therefore required to justify your expectations before we can agree that something is, in fact, anomalous. If your expectations are based on the laws of physics, then good for you. But if they are merely based on the subset of the laws of physics with which you are familiar, then I’m afraid we cannot accept your claims of anomaly. The effects of zero-phase lighting are not all that mysterious, but you seem to demand proof for them. This leads us to believe that your expectations are not as well founded upon a comprehensive application of physical law as you lead us to believe. DaveW correctly points out that you are responsible for supporting any points you may wish to make. If you simply point to a photograph and say, “That’s an anomaly,” there’s nothing that can be said about it. If you venture an explanation for the anomaly, then you are responsible for showing that it’s plausible and likely. It’s not possible to prove it was falsified, just as it’s not possible to prove it’s genuine. You demand full consistency from all debunkers. You’re not going to get it, so stop asking for it. If you insist, then we shall be forced to demand full consistency from all hoax enthusiasts, something we know we’re not going to get. It is possible to refute a hoax theory without having to prove that the lunar landings were genuine. If this seems strange to you, then you should study a bit about assertions and proofs. It is not necessary that ALL debunkers be right, only that ONE debunker be right. Let’s get to the point. You ask what would constitute proof for us that a certain photograph or other piece of evidence had been falsified? For me it would have to be someone who came forward with the assertive claim that he was materially involved in the actual falsification of lunar landing evidence with the intent of putting it before the public as evidence of a landing which did not occur. This person would have to produce independently verifiable evidence of the authenticity of his claim, and should ideally be able to demonstrate or duplicate the means used to produce the evidence. You seem, as most conspiracy theorists, to completely misunderstand the nature of the proof you yourself are offering. You show a photograph that contains an image you say is impossible, unlikely, improbable, or otherwise “anomalous”. And then you or someone else puts forward the hypothesis that these anomalies resulted from deliberate falsification. When asked for evidence of that claim, the circular proof is offered that the alleged anomaly itself is the proof. What must happen, and what almost always fails to happen, is that the falsificaiton hypothesis must be shown by other evidence to satisfactorily explain the entire body of applicable evidence, do so parsimoniously, and in a manner clearly more likely than other potential hypotheses. Hoax hypotheses do not explain the entire body of evidence. Hoax hypotheses are as unparsimonious as they can be. Hoax hypotheses are considerably less plausible than other hypotheses. You cannot “prove” your hypothesis simply by showing that your hypothesis, if true, would have produced the observed effect. That’s tautological. You formulated your hypothesis specifically to fit those results. It’s therefore not surprising that it fits the results. If you want to prove a process of falsification, you must show evidence of the PROCESS of falsification, not simply the end result. ---
**Author:** ![BickByro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@BickByro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BickByro)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2001, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/99 "2001-09-25T18:58:12Z")
Checking out the Clementine links you provided, **DaveW** , I can’t find much information on what spectra were used to image the Apollo 15 site, but I also can’t find any information that would suggest that the UV range would make bright objects appear black. I thought perhaps I’d find the answer in the “albedo map” at [this site](http://wwwflag.wr.usgs.gov/USGSFlag/Space/clementine/clementine.html), but all I can get is that they used a wavelength just beyond visible red to get an albedo reading. If they had said they used UV, that would have settled that, but instead we get infrared. However, I did find this quote “lunar soils darken as a function of time and composition following exposure on the lunar surface,” which would seem to, at the least, corroborate NASA’s comments about the brightness surrounding the LEM site. At [this site](http://www-pdsimage.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/jpl_clsearch.pl), I found a handy Clementine Navigator that allegedly lets you do a detailed search of the data using “feature names” (such as Apollo 15, Tycho, etc.), but when I type in “Apollo” (which is mentioned in the List of Features), I get “No images were found that match your search criteria.” I was hoping I’d be able to find out what settings were used in the [space.com](http://space.com) photo. Alas. One interesting thing I _was_ able to find was an Apollo-era view of the [Apollo 16 landing site](http://cass.jsc.nasa.gov/pub/expmoon/clementine/a16_new1.gif), another negative photo which appears to be of higher resolution than the [space.com](http://space.com) photo yet shows no dark OR light spot around the LEM’s touchdown site. The [Clementine image](http://cass.jsc.nasa.gov/pub/expmoon/clementine/a16_new4.gif) of the same area, though lower-res and in true color, may show a bright spot around the site; it’s hard for me to judge exactly. All of this, though, once again makes me question space.com—they quote Kreslavsky as saying that “the Clementine data do not allow similar studies for any other landing sites [other than Apollo 15].” I don’t claim to know what’s going on here, but I just wanted to give you the update… ---
**Author:** ![pldennison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@pldennison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pldennison)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2001, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520/100 "2001-09-25T20:29:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BickByro \* > Ah, you don’t have anything specific to say so you’ll just slag off my entire reason for starting this thread. I did say something specific. Do you mean I didn’t address one of your questions? So what? The people in the thread with more specialized knowledge than I have are addressing them quite fine. I was specifically addressing the fact that you still seem to have rather odd expectations of how things like this work. To wit, your understanding appears to be: **Person 1** : (Outrageous Claim} **Person 2** : Oh? Prove it. **Person 1** : No, you prove I’m wrong! > [@](#): > > I’ve asked it before and I’ll ask it again: what would constitute true proof, to you, **pldennison** , or to anyone out there? A single confession by any single person involved in what would, obviously, have been an **enormous** conspiracy to fake either the moon landing or the footage of the moon landing (and I highly suspect that you want to prove the latter as a means to proving the former). > [@](#): > > What would I have to show you, in a photograph, for you to believe me? I don’t need a photograph. A properly conducted deposition from any single individual would be fine. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-its-another-moon-hoax-thread/82520.md?page=6)