NASA photographic record of Manned Moonlanding:Is there evidence of fabrication?

[smartcooky]

To illustrate the point further I created the following drawing, which shows how the shadow cast by a cube changes with different angles of view (from overhead to side view).  The rocks in the foreground of image AS14-68-9486 are viewed from approximately the middle perspective while the LM is viewed from approximately the bottom perspective.



Furthermore, as I indicated here, I believe the LM's shadow may be projected onto a slight uphill incline, as seen in AS14-66-9276.  Adding this incline into the illustration, we get something like this:



So even though the shadow is in fact angled about 45 degrees toward the direction of the camera, it give the impression that it is projected to the right.
 

Like this

[ka9q]

So, are you in the group photo in the article in the December Playboy, "Mission Out of Control",  by Pat Jordan, pages 78-79? The six people in the photo are unfortunately not named.

No, but I do recognize 4 or 5. I didn't even know that article existed. I found it here

http://www.playboy.com/articles/mission-out-of-control

and I'll have to read it.

I was only there for a couple of days during the ISEE-3 flyby of the earth-moon system; the rest of the time I was working at home in San Diego.

[ka9q]

It's a pity that ISEE-3 had run out of nitrogen.

Yeah. This was a big mystery to me, as I couldn't figure out how the N₂ could leak while leaving the hydrazine (N₂H₄) behind. The N₂ was in the propellant tanks, not in separate tanks, with no bladders separating it from the hydrazine. (Bladders are often used when a tank has to work in 0 G, but the spinning ISEE-3 induced fairly substantial artificial gravity in its tanks.)

I suggested the possibility that the hydrazine was simply frozen (it freezes at a relatively high +1C). They'd already thought of that, and turned on the tank heaters to ensure that the hydrazine was liquid. That didn't help. They were also careful to select only one of the two banks of propellant tanks at a time so that if one contained a leak, you wouldn't empty the other bank through it.

Finally Dennis explained the leading hypothesis to me. It was apparently known to the people who built the propellant valves that N₂ could diffuse very slowly through the seals (some form of Teflon, I think). If it was indeed molecular diffusion, this could explain why the larger N₂H₄ molecules were left behind.

I don't remember what convinced them that the hydrazine was still in the tanks; I'll have to consult my email on that.

I made an observation that I still haven't explained, though I haven't worked on it for some time. My role in the project was to demodulate and decode the telemetry (this is sort of a specialty for me). Someone else noticed a very small frequency modulation in the carrier frequency at the spacecraft spin rate. At first my only concern was to keep it from upsetting my carrier tracking loop, but then I began to wonder why it should be present in the first place. Obviously it was caused by the S-band antenna being displaced from the spin axis, but it was supposed to be directly on the spin axis; I estimated an offset of a few cm. But the mass properties document showed the spacecraft to be exquisitely well balanced, so why was this happening? Could something have taken a chunk out of the spacecraft in a non-vulnerable spot, perhaps during the 1985 comet encounter? Were the propellant tanks unequally filled? Or was it just the normal result of a small dynamic imbalance? I still have to crunch the data and see, but like a lot of the people on the project we were kinda burned out by the intense effort we all put in prior to the encounter.

[JayUtah]

Were the propellant tanks unequally filled? Or was it just the normal result of a small dynamic imbalance?

Propellant slosh?

[Count Zero]

One of the clearest examples of lens distortion in Apollo photographs comes from two images in the panorama that Buzz Aldrin took on Roll 40



AS11-40-5885 (Left) shows the flagpole (on the right side of the image) tilted to the right with respect to the horizon, whereas the next photo in the pan, AS11-40-5886 (Right), shows the flagpole (near the left edge of the image) tilted to the left with respect to the horizon.

When I started making stereo pairs, I used these two images as a "Rosetta Stone" to deconvolve (is that the right word?) the images so that I could compare the right side of one image with the left side of another with minimal distortion.

[ka9q]

Propellant slosh?

I don't think so. There are 8 propellant tanks arrayed around the equator of the spacecraft, with the takeoffs on the outside (the direction of acceleration from the spin). There are two banks of four interleaved such that the spacecraft should remain balanced even if the banks are unevenly depleted.

[Luke Pemberton]

One of the clearest examples of lens distortion in Apollo photographs comes from two images in the panorama that Buzz Aldrin took on Roll 40

This is not my area to be quite honest, so this a genuine question: Can some of the tilting also be explained by the angle at which the composition was taken? The camera has been moved between the two images and given how it is chest mounted could rotation also contribute to the tilting?

It's a good example for the uninitiated in this area. Thanks for posting.

[Bryanpoprobson]

Look at the angle of the solar wind experiment as well as the flag, they both show the same angle of tilt, you may well be right Luke..

[Luke Pemberton]

Look at the angle of the solar wind experiment as well as the flag, they both show the same angle of tilt, you may well be right Luke..

There is that too. Getting into the CTs mind for a minute I guess they would argue that flag was tilted because of the wind on the 'moonset.' I would say that the solar wind composition experiment would negate this, and that both flag and solar wind composition experiment are tilted at the same angle due to the movement of the camera.

I do defer this to others with far more expertise of image analysis.

[Kiwi]

...The things is, you don't have to be a photographer to understand some of the basic aspects of photography. It isn't always easy to explain "technical blunders" in some of the sciences; physics, mathematics, chemistry etc. in simple terms that the layman can understand, but this issue of non-parallel shadows is simple and straight forward. Anyone can understand it.

To use Romulus' example, he claims that this photo is faked.



He claims that, because the LM shadow (in the distance) and the shadow of the rocks (in the foreground) are not parallel, that this is undebunkable proof-positive that the photo was faked. He claims that such non-parallel shadows are impossible...

For anyone who's interested in seeing more examples of how this effect occurs, JayUtah has long had some examples at Clavius -- links below.  Three lots of photos show what happens when a rock's shadow is photographed from high above, then at increasing distances.  The photos are composed so that the shadows are at 15º, 30º and 45º to the lens axis, and a wooden stake points along the lens axis.  Note that at the greatest distance from the rock, in each case the shadow looks as if it is at or very close to right angles to the lens axis.

http://www.clavius.org/shad15.html
http://www.clavius.org/shad30.html
http://www.clavius.org/shad45.html

[Count Zero]

This is not my area to be quite honest, so this a genuine question: Can some of the tilting also be explained by the angle at which the composition was taken? The camera has been moved between the two images and given how it is chest mounted could rotation also contribute to the tilting?

I don't think so.  Here are the Hi-Res versions:
AS11-40-5885
AS11-40-5886

If you zoom-in and look at the features behind the flagpole and the solar wind experiment, you can see that the camera did not change position very much - I'm guessing less than a foot.  This would be consistent with the movement of the lens as the photographer rotates in place (It took 12 frames to complete the panorama.  Imagine Buzz snapping a picture, rotating 30-degrees, then snapping another).  The lens is tracing the circumference of a circle whose radius runs from Buzz's center of rotation, through the RCU and the camera body.  If that radius is ~18 inches, then the camera lens will be shifting ~9 inches to the right, going clockwise.  Of course, the center of rotation may change a little as Buzz repositions his feet, but that can either increase or decrease the parallax between images.

The important thing is that the angle between the flagpole and the horizon appears to have changed between the images.  If the camera tilted between shots, the angle from the pole and the horizon to the image frame would be different, but not the angle between the flagpole and the horizon.  Comparing these images to AS11-40-5875 (which was taken from the reverse angle), the slight right-tilt in AS11-40-5885 appears close to the actual angle. 

Incidentally, the flagpole itself did not shift while Buzz was taking the pan.  I checked both the video and the DAC.

[Luke Pemberton]

If you zoom-in and look at the features behind the flagpole and the solar wind experiment, you can see that the camera did not change position very much - I'm guessing less than a foot. 

I see this now, the movement is not that great. Zooming in on the high resolution images, it appears that the stars in the USA flag have been stretched out a little too, where the blue pane in the flag is mishapen when the flag is closest to the left hand side of the image.

[Bob B.]

The thing that I notice is that the angle between the horizontal support rod at the top of the flag and the flagpole has changed between images.  In 5885 they form nearly a right angle, while in 5886 they form about an 80 degree angle.  It appears that the horizontal rod's orientation with respect to the horizon doesn't change much.

[ChrLz]

Great post, thanks Jay!

....
One of those ways is the concept of the eyespan.  While your eye sees a surprisingly wide field of view, physiologically it's most sensitive near its optical axis.  And cognitively, your brain applies certain interpretive processes only to that eyespan -- roughly a 30° cone in the center of your vision.

Going off topic, sorry... I used to teach basic photography, and I used a few party tricks to show how the eye *really* works when you don't let the brain 'cheat'.

One of them was to get the class to stare fixedly at a little circle I drew on the whiteboard.  I then uncovered two pieces of paper above and below that circle, only about 20cm/8" away from the dot, upon which was some reasonably large text, text that should be easily read from anywhere in the room.  I then asked them, without moving their eyes from the circle, to use their peripheral vision to tell me what was written on the upper and lower sheets.  There was silence, and then laughter as they gradually gave up and then had to move their eyes to read it (can't remember the joke I used..).

It's quite a weird sensation when you do this - if you are curious, try it by looking at a large paragraph of text you haven't read, and then focus on the middle word.  Without moving your eye, see how much of the lines above and below you can actually read using only peripheral vision - you'll be surprised at how quickly the resolution falls away.  Yet your brain, somehow, makes you still perceive the unresolved characters as sort of 'sharp', even though they are definitely not.  And as soon as you glance at them, they snap into legibility.. and then stay there.

Thanks, brain!

[HeadLikeARock]

I haven't participated in this thread, which has unfurled somewhat like a particularly painful slow mo train crash.

My hopes for Romulus faded entirely with this post:-

There is no rational explanation. there is a bullshit tissue of lies that doesn't make sense

...to you.

If you can come up with an explanation for a 45 degree divergence of shadows in objects illuminated by 'The Sun" at nearly the same distance from the camera that makes sense to you, you're retarded. Not just scientifically illiterate, but RETARDED

As we all know, What he is claiming to be completely inexplicable can be easily reproduced by anyone in possession of a camera, some sunlight, and some common sense. It's not only his denial, but the forthright and offensive nature of that denial, that show that not only can he not possibly have a basic grasp of some fairly straightforward optical principles, but he can't even contemplate the possibility of being wrong, implying some serious cognitive bias.

He compounds his error in this paragraph:-

VERY GOOD PROPAGANDA! Only one problem. The Photographer who took the picture of his and his companions shadow is  using a lens that purposely and unnaturally greatly magnifies and exaggerates the effects of parallax in order to be used as propaganda.. IF TWO VERTICAL  OBJECTS ARE AT A DISTANCE IN A PHOTOGRAPH AND THEIR SHADOWS (AND THEREFOR THE LIGHT SOURCE IS ILLUMINATING THEM FROM THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION)   PERPENDICULAR TO THE AXIS OF THE LENS THE EFFECTS OF PARALLAX SHOULD BE NEXT TO NOTHING. And yet in the Apollo photographic record I have over a hundred examples of just this

Firstly, the sentence he capitalised is complete gibberrish. Nothing more than word salad.

Secondly, he stated (incorrectly) that some kind of special "propaganda" lens was used - yet failed to make the connection that for his argument to be internally consistent, why couldn't the Apollo photos also have been taken with this "propaganda" lens?

Thirdly, he effectively admits that taking such a photograph is indeed possible, yet in the paragraph above, he stated that anyone who could come up worth an explanation that made sense to them, they were retarded - and yet, he came up with an explanation that made sense to him. So, a triple epic fail in this single paragraph.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone announce themselves onto this forum with so much fanfare, pomp and self-aggrandisement, then  humiliate themselves so painfully and publically. Is it wrong to feel sympathy for him?