ApolloHoax.net

Apollo Discussions => The Hoax Theory => Topic started by: IZRAUL on August 24, 2019, 07:16:07 PM

Title: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: IZRAUL on August 24, 2019, 07:16:07 PM
The moon hoax argument has been going on for a long time. And I, like many people, argued against the hoax claims. One day it dawned upon me that I hadn't even researched enough to be arguing for or against it. So I decided to do what most people who argue about it don't. I decided to do some real research and prove the hoaxers wrong. I spent months combing through the NASA's photo archives.

I examined each photo I chose for hours with different software. I zoomed in with lincosz3 capabilities, inverted colors, dabbled with monochrome and played with lightning & contrast. I found Gimp (the same software NASA uses) to be sufficient.

I had trouble in the beginning because of my bias against the hoaxers, so I let things slide because I didn't want to be wrong. I wanted to prove those other people were idiots so bad, I refused to believe what I was seeing. I had to learn to let go of my bias and approach with an open mind. I had to teach myself to observe from a neutral standpoint. That wasn't easy, but I got the hang of it. Having to accept I was wrong kinda sucked, but I ate my crow.

If you haven't put in the long hours it took to uncover this stuff, you have no business yapping. Everyone should be researching for themselves if they have an opinion or something negative to say. And no matter what you believe, these things will eventually come out. As technology & software advances, there won't be anymore more denying it. NASA will have to come clean eventually. That's just a fact.


https://photos.app.goo.gl/ihbALTzhsTyGZ15d6


Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: Von_Smith on August 24, 2019, 08:21:26 PM
I don't see the things you are talking about in the images.  I don't see a spotlight in the first image, for example.  I see a bit of glare that is most likely the sun itself. 

How did you decide that it was a spotlight?  And why do you think it is "from below"? 
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: JayUtah on August 24, 2019, 08:34:00 PM
If you haven't put in the long hours it took to uncover this stuff, you have no business yapping.

I've been researching Apollo photography and the rest of the Apollo record since the early 1990s.  My work has been acknowledged in several prominent sources, including the journal Science.  Kindly don't try to intimidate me or the other regulars with descriptions of playing around with the sliders in a free Photoshop clone and pretending that constitutes some sort of detailed or professional examination.

In your first photo you claim a spotlight was used.  You identify no evidence of a spotlight.  You literally just reproduce a well-known photograph and offer a naked assertion about it, then go on to suggest that anyone who doesn't believe you must be "gullible."  Even more laughable, you mistake the Earth for the Sun.  Had you really done any sort of research on this photo, you'd have discovered it was taken precisely to try to get the flag and the Earth in the same shot.  And since when has the Sun appeared in phases in photographs?  You need to do much better than that.

In your second photo you claim nine people are reflected in the astronaut's visor.  You do not identify what features of the photo you believe are the reflections of people.  Nor do you say what you did to confirm they were reflections of people rather than other things.

In your third photo, you simply draw circles around areas of the image without saying what about them you find remarkable or problematic.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: Obviousman on August 24, 2019, 09:13:09 PM
The claims kinda remind me of the Jack White lunacy. Maybe he's been reincarnated?
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: AtomicDog on August 24, 2019, 10:10:05 PM
The claims kinda remind me of the Jack White lunacy. Maybe he's been reincarnated?

They remind of this song:

"and they took twenty-seven 8 x 10 colored 
Glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of 
Each one explainin' what each one was, to be used as evidence against us
Took pictures of the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner, the 
Southwest corner
And that's not to mention the aerial photography!"

- Arlo Guthrie, Alice's Restaurant Massacree
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: JayUtah on August 24, 2019, 10:19:03 PM
The claims kinda remind me of the Jack White lunacy. Maybe he's been reincarnated?

Not recognizing the difference between the Earth and the Sun is idiocy well on par with Jack White's legendary ineptness.  Does anyone recall if White himself made these specific claims?  Could they just have been copied from White's material?

I went to the linked photo album.  Utterly stupid claims.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: AtomicDog on August 24, 2019, 10:23:50 PM
The claims kinda remind me of the Jack White lunacy. Maybe he's been reincarnated?

Not recognizing the difference between the Earth and the Sun is idiocy well on par with Jack White's legendary ineptness.  Does anyone recall if White himself made these specific claims?  Could they just have been copied from White's material?

I went to the linked photo album.  Utterly stupid claims.

My god, he thought that was the SUN?
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: JayUtah on August 24, 2019, 10:26:34 PM
Yep.  Look at the top of the first attached photo.  He points an arrow to the Earth, clearly in a slightly gibbous phase and clearly a blue textured object, and claims it's the Sun.  This is the level of genius we're dealing with.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: Peter B on August 25, 2019, 01:48:31 AM
G'day Izraul and welcome to the forum.

I went to the link you included in your post. Sorry, not particularly convincing.

For example, the second photo on the top row shows an astronaut saluting, with the flag to the right. Then you reckon the reflection in the astronaut's helmet is a person. This raises the obvious question - if that reflection is a person, then where's the reflection of the flag? (Hint: the reflection in the helmet is the flag.)

This is sort of like the people who claim that the bright light they saw in the sky was a UFO. When they deny that the light is Venus, the obvious question is, "Well, where was Venus?"

Oh, and nobody claims astronauts broadcast anything from the Moon with a photographic camera. Just sayin'.

I see your checkmate and raise you a Golden Duck (or a Golden Sombrero, if baseball's your thing).
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: sts60 on August 25, 2019, 03:38:20 AM
Hello, Izraul.  Welcome to the board.

...If you haven't put in the long hours it took to uncover this stuff, you have no business yapping.

I’ve spent almost thirty years working on space systems.  I’ve spent more time on console during actual space missions then you have playing with Gimp.

...Everyone should be researching for themselves if they have an opinion or something negative to say...

The end result of your “research” is that you pointed to an image of what is very obviously the Earth and identified it as the Sun.

Would you care to take a deep breath and start over?
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: onebigmonkey on August 25, 2019, 03:58:12 AM
Weird, because when I Iook at the photos carefully using software that NASA uses (Photoshop, not GIMP) I find that the evidence in them, such as small rocks and craters not known about at the time but subsequently confirmed by modern probes, or the astronomically and meteorologically correct images of Earth that could only gave been taken during the mission timeline from locations off Earth, absolutely confirm the Apollo narrative

Your move I guess.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: onebigmonkey on August 25, 2019, 04:02:45 AM
Oh, and your remark about you putting the hours in is highly presumptive. You're assuming that you are truly special and that no-one else has put the hours in that you have. There's a term for that, and it starts with bull.

Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: onebigmonkey on August 25, 2019, 04:07:03 AM
Apologies for spamming, but I'm phone posting so it's easier than editing.

To be fair to the OP I think he's pointing at Earth (the astronomically and meteorigically correct one) as a way of illustrating the direction from which the sunlight is coming.

The fact that he can't fathom out why the sun's reflection is where it is on the curved helmet glass shows the lack of 3D spatial awareness that is fairly typical of the HB mindset.

Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: Jason Thompson on August 25, 2019, 04:26:26 AM
I examined each photo I chose for hours with different software. I zoomed in with lincosz3 capabilities, inverted colors, dabbled with monochrome and played with lightning & contrast. I found Gimp (the same software NASA uses) to be sufficient.

Why do you think this makes for a valid analysis? Where did you obtain the images you 'analysed'? Did you go to the original film? Or to the fuly hi-res scans now available? Did you research the type of camera used and the resultant expected artifacts such as lens flares that would result from the optical system? Did you research the environment the images were taken in to find out how it should appear?

Quote
I had trouble in the beginning because of my bias against the hoaxers, so I let things slide because I didn't want to be wrong. I wanted to prove those other people were idiots so bad, I refused to believe what I was seeing. I had to learn to let go of my bias and approach with an open mind. I had to teach myself to observe from a neutral standpoint. That wasn't easy, but I got the hang of it. Having to accept I was wrong kinda sucked, but I ate my crow.

Oh how often we have heard that. Usually followed, as in this case, by the most superficial of 'analyses' that clearly do not have the depth required to draw defensible conclusions.
 
Quote
If you haven't put in the long hours it took to uncover this stuff, you have no business yapping. Everyone should be researching for themselves if they have an opinion or something negative to say.

If you had taken the time to look into this forum you would know that most of the people here have literally spent years researching for themselves. One is a recognised authority on the subject, has his own website and has made appearances on documentataries. One is a published author on the subject of the television used on Apollo.
 
Quote
https://photos.app.goo.gl/ihbALTzhsTyGZ15d6

This is such a poor analysis it's hardly worth debunking. However, without even trying I can see you have failed to identify the sources of your images. For example you point to an apparent anomaly in the position of the sun and the light shining on the mountains, but fail to recognise the image as a stitched-together panorama from several images (despite the obvious bundaries). You point to the image of Alan Bean with two astronaits in the visor reflection and insist NASA edited out the second astronaut in the other image, but have failed to account for where the images came from. What is your evidence that the one with two astronauts in is the original? In fact that's a well-known 'spoof' image with a badly photoshopped in second astronaut.

In short your 'analysis' is nothing of the sort, and has more holes than swiss cheese.



[/quote]
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: Von_Smith on August 25, 2019, 07:04:39 AM
Yep.  Look at the top of the first attached photo.  He points an arrow to the Earth, clearly in a slightly gibbous phase and clearly a blue textured object, and claims it's the Sun.  This is the level of genius we're dealing with.

Seriously?  I gave him too much credit.  I thought he was just pointing at the Earth's phase to suggest what the sun's angle was supposed to be.  And then suggesting that there is  spotlight at a different angle.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: jfb on August 25, 2019, 07:29:45 AM
Yep.  Look at the top of the first attached photo.  He points an arrow to the Earth, clearly in a slightly gibbous phase and clearly a blue textured object, and claims it's the Sun.  This is the level of genius we're dealing with.

Not to give the guy credit, but I don’t think he’s claiming it’s the Sun.  He’s claiming that the Earth is being illuminated from a particular angle, but the astronaut appears to be illuminated from a different angle - thus, spotlight.

He’s still wrong, he’s just not that wrong.

As for the other images - if you play with digital images enough (especially highly compressed ones posted to the Web), you can find all kinds of compression artifacts that look like “something”.  I certainly don’t see nine people reflected in a visor (I frankly have no clue what he’s seeing to give that impression).
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: bknight on August 25, 2019, 07:42:06 AM
In your second image, I went to ALSJ which contain the high resolution images of all the Apollo images.
https://history.nasa.gov/alsj/

AS17-134-20452 (OF300) ( 124k or 744k )
168:47:03 Station 9. Jack mounting LRV, sunstruck.

Found the image and I don't see 9 people in the visor, just a poor copy of the image.
This appears to be JAQ and using Jack White's material(IIRC).
You should not use his work as it contains many errors one of which I indicated.

I have only been doing this type of analysis, but you should be prepared to defend your arguments with the people here who have been doing this a lot longer than I.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: sts60 on August 25, 2019, 09:49:07 AM
Several of you have pointed out that in his first attached image, the OP is probably pointing at the Earth to show a presumed Sun angle, not actually claiming it is the Sun.  I agree. 

Izraul, I withdraw my earlier statement that you misidentified the Earth for the Sun.

In one of your linked images, however, you showed a picture from Earth orbit to show the size of the Moon as seen from Earth, then you showed a picture of the earth and moon clearly taken from a spacecraft quite distant from the Moon and identified it as being a picture of the Earth as seen from the Moon.

My original point stands: would you like  to take a deep breath and start over?
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: JayUtah on August 25, 2019, 10:25:07 AM
Several of you have pointed out that in his first attached image, the OP is probably pointing at the Earth to show a presumed Sun angle, not actually claiming it is the Sun.  I agree.

I'll certainly accept that as a possible interpretation of the label in the first attached photo.  But I'm not withdrawing my response until he comes back to confirm that was his intent.  As I wrote initially, he provides little rationale or line of reasoning for any of his claims.  Therefore I do not accept responsibility for the result of such ambiguity.  Forcing one's critics to ferret out what one means, and then chastising them for their density when they get it wrong, is part of the hoax claimant's game.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: Jason Thompson on August 25, 2019, 10:55:54 AM
Let's just take a couple of these and see if the OP would actually care to address the obvious flaws. Let's start here:

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOj5syxGtZ97KgUNGo_2C0lqAZ3-qGCX-sP4jsrzN1pLNR88SZfkUpNps3gybuIeA/photo/AF1QipMbfZmA5_4OgpRqXr76l6GfzbmAIHGhXh6H06gA?key=SUhhVXExU19VbGdBQi1jbjk1VUJMbXcxN2dOdy1R (https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOj5syxGtZ97KgUNGo_2C0lqAZ3-qGCX-sP4jsrzN1pLNR88SZfkUpNps3gybuIeA/photo/AF1QipMbfZmA5_4OgpRqXr76l6GfzbmAIHGhXh6H06gA?key=SUhhVXExU19VbGdBQi1jbjk1VUJMbXcxN2dOdy1R)

Just the comparison on the left, how exactly do you justify the claim that the lower image is of the Earth from the Moon when it clearly has the Moon in it? It has clearly been taken from some distance behind the Moon, not 'from the Moon'. In fact the exact providence of that image, including how far away the satellite that took it was, is available. Did you bother to look that information up, and the consider what effect that would have on the apparent relative sizes of the two objects? We've seen this claim before, from someone who couldn't understand that the Moon could ever look smaller than the Earth if it was between the Earth and the photographer.

In the second set of images, how do you justify the claim that the Earth looks '6x smaller' than the Moon?

Now how about this:

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOj5syxGtZ97KgUNGo_2C0lqAZ3-qGCX-sP4jsrzN1pLNR88SZfkUpNps3gybuIeA/photo/AF1QipNxPK-SoZqQgnS5EUhi63lZbKdi43n9YFc8xqu3?key=SUhhVXExU19VbGdBQi1jbjk1VUJMbXcxN2dOdy1R (https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOj5syxGtZ97KgUNGo_2C0lqAZ3-qGCX-sP4jsrzN1pLNR88SZfkUpNps3gybuIeA/photo/AF1QipNxPK-SoZqQgnS5EUhi63lZbKdi43n9YFc8xqu3?key=SUhhVXExU19VbGdBQi1jbjk1VUJMbXcxN2dOdy1R)

Justify the claim that the image with two astronauts in the reflection is the original. It is quite clear that one of the astronauts has been added in later. In fact this is a well-known 'spoof' image. Secondly, explain why you go on to show another 'analysis' of this image but use the one with only one astronaut relfected.

Your explanations need to include:

1: Why NASA edited out the second astronaut but didn't correct any of the other flaws.
2: Why there would ever even be a second astronaut to be reflected when they are supposedly trying to sell the story that only two astronauts landed on the Moon at any one time.

You also need to explain why your 'analysis' fails in most cases to even identify which image is being used. Every single one had an indentity number. No serious analyst would leave those off, unless he was trying to make it harder for his critics to go and find the images themselves to do their own work and see if they draw the same conclusions.

In short, you need to go back to the drawing board and learn what actual anlaysis entails if you expect to be taken seriously as an analyst.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: gillianren on August 25, 2019, 11:36:12 AM
Honestly?  It doesn't take that much study to know that the hoax claims don't stand up.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: JayUtah on August 25, 2019, 12:34:52 PM
Weird, because when I Iook at the photos carefully using software that NASA uses (Photoshop, not GIMP)...

In practice, both.  The NASA centers I have personal knowledge of are chiefly Apple shops.  And they do use Adobe products, since they are a de facto standard.  But there was also a pretty big investment in Gentoo Linux, especially for their high-performance (i.e., non-desktop) computing.  Since The GIMP is free and often distributed as part of many Linux distributions, there is no reason it cannot be used at NASA.

The more pertinent question is which toolchain was used to operate on the photos our poster has chosen.  The answer is likely any or all available.  As others have pointed out, most of the photos seem to have come from various convenience sources in various places on the web.  Some of them clearly are from Jack White, viz. the ones in which features are circled with ellipses (a Jack White hallmark).  Unless one is able to undo or control for the effects of previous manipulations, there is almost nothing of probative value to be extracted by subsequent raster-style image manipulation.

The advantage in using The GIMP is that it's an open-source tool.  If there's ever any question about what some particular feature accomplishes, one can turn to the source code to get a definitive answer.  To know what Adobe Photoshop is doing, one often has to search through their documentation.  And then trust that the code actually conforms to it.  For example, our OP says one of the things he did was to use "monochrome," by which I understand he converted the image to monochrome to test some particular hypothesis.  But desaturating a color image for forensic purposes is non-trivial.  The math easy enough in principle, but the math is necessarily parameterized in ways that compel the investigator to make choices that bear on the validity of the final result to his desired outcome.

Black-and-white photographers were well acquainted with the use of color filters to control which actual wavelengths of light the film sees.  If you use a deep red filter, for example, the blue of the sky doesn't penetrate and thus the sky areas of the photo will be dark.  Digital photos are almost always already quantized to supply only some wavelength -- relative intensities in certain preselected wavelengths of red, green, and blue.  This approximates the energies in the spectrum of the original image.  A tuple of the coefficients that apply to each wavelength represents what is stored as the approximation of color for some spot in the image, some pixel.  Those coefficients can be transformed into a further reduction to some smaller color space, but there's no One True Wavelength that represents a meaningful monochromatic version of the image.  Assuming we start from a triple of red, green, and blue intensity coefficients, the reduction is typically expressed as further weights on those coefficients.  The academic literature provides a number of good choices for those weights, but one would have to go into the computer code to see which ones were used and therefore whether the wavelengths represented in the resulting data are appropriate to what you need.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: Abaddon on August 25, 2019, 01:10:39 PM
Educational video for the OP

Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: Trebor on August 25, 2019, 04:57:35 PM
I've looked at the photos he highlighted and really have absolutely no idea what he is on about.
Its a mystery.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: onebigmonkey on August 26, 2019, 05:44:11 AM
It seems unlikely our OP will return, I think he's happy that he's proved what idiots we all are and has ridden off into the sunset cackling at the superiority of his genius, but just in case...

The Apollo 17 image he starts with is based on what he thinks is a spotlight, not the sun, in the wrong place.

The visor is a mirror image of reality, and it's also curved, so what happens if you reverse the image and make the horizon in it horizontal?

(https://i.imgur.com/g08cD4B.jpg)

The mountains in the left of the image are in the north. That would make the area on the right hand side the east. The 'spotlight' is above that horizon. See if you can have a guess where the sun would be at about 01:20 on 12/12/72 in the lunar sky, go on, guess...
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: JayUtah on August 26, 2019, 11:11:56 AM
Agreed:  unlikely to return.  Registered in 2017, then two seagull posts and gone.  I've never been able to understand that sort of thing.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: stutefish on August 29, 2019, 03:36:12 PM
Yep.  Look at the top of the first attached photo.  He points an arrow to the Earth, clearly in a slightly gibbous phase and clearly a blue textured object, and claims it's the Sun.  This is the level of genius we're dealing with.

I took him to be pointing at the gibbous Earth and extrapolating a line perpendicular to the terminator, pointing to a sun somewhere out of frame.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: MBDK on August 29, 2019, 10:24:50 PM
I took him to be pointing at the gibbous Earth and extrapolating a line perpendicular to the terminator, pointing to a sun somewhere out of frame.
I read his post AND looked at his linked page.  From the convoluted and seemingly uneducated conclusions he made, I cannot find any reason to assume he has made ANY logical notations.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: Obviousman on August 30, 2019, 04:46:35 AM
A seagull poster, also known as a mudguard.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: Kiwi on August 30, 2019, 10:13:28 AM
I read his post AND looked at his linked page.  From the convoluted and seemingly uneducated conclusions he made, I cannot find any reason to assume he has made ANY logical notations.

Nor can I.

Izraul appears to be stunningly ignorant of basic photographic principles, can't tell a reflection from a light source, seems unable to recognise a panorama when it's staring him in the face, sounds incredulous that a 360 degree panorama has both up-sun and down-sun views, can't understand the reflections in a semi-spherical spacesuit visor, probably doesn't know the difference between a spotlight, a floodlight and sunlight, has few clues about what happened on the moon, has a severe case of pareidolia, "analyses" photos that are probably a few generations removed from the originals, and makes up things about the shapes, colours and blotches that were produced by his zooming, inverting, dabbling and playing.

He needs to read Bob Dylan's quote at the bottom of this post and leave photo-analysis to those who are competent.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: JayUtah on August 30, 2019, 10:52:21 AM
A seagull poster, also known as a mudguard.

I get the seagull analogy.  (It's our state bird.)  Explain mudguard, if you please.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: JayUtah on August 30, 2019, 12:58:04 PM
I read his post AND looked at his linked page.  From the convoluted and seemingly uneducated conclusions he made, I cannot find any reason to assume he has made ANY logical notations.

Agreed, but still kind of a ad hominem. (Not in the malicious way, but just in the "logically sketchy" way.)  That the claimant is evidently inept at visual reasoning does not compel belief that the annotations must be incorrect.  The correctness of the annotations can be adjudicated on their own, irrespective of the traits of the author, and in fact are the primary evidence themselves of the traits we attribute to the author.  The author is a nitwit because the annotations make specious claims, not the other way round.  Moreover,  viewing the gallery and the posted photos in toto, one can make the case that "Izraul" didn't make any of the annotations or draw any of the conclusions himself anyway.  The photos evidently come from a hodge podge of sources, at least one of which appears to be Jack White.  Hence we have no reason to believe he is the author of any of them.  The claim insinuated in his post is that the photos he presents are the result of his diligent research and investigative effort, including veiled claims of expertise in digital image analysis.  But we know that to be false in at least some of the cases; the photos were identified, commented upon, and annotated by others.  The best we can conclude according to the evidence is that Izraul has collected them and is now presenting them for some reason that continues to elude us.  He has not returned to defend his claims against the criticism that has ensued.  There remains some question whether criticism was a reasonable expectation to attribute to him.  Others have come here mistakenly thinking it is where hoax claims are welcome and endorsed, rather than reviewed critically.  One can view his post as postured to appeal to other hoax claimants:  "I sought to debunk the hoax claimants and ended up agreeing with them."

The separate question of whether the annotations are clear lets me come clean.  I didn't initially notice the annotation on the Earth.  It was up near the top edge, and I extracted the claim regarding the photo entirely from the caption at the bottom.  I did, however, notice the annotation in the center of the photo, in which the arrowhead seemed simply to indicate the lower half of the photo.  When I went back later to pay closer attention to all the available information, I interpreted the top annotation the same way:  that the arrowhead was meant to focus attention and not to indicate a direction.  The arrows appear to be used inconsistently, and silly me tried to give them a consistent role.  That in turn colored my interpretation of the text of the annotation, which does not say, "This is the Sun."

As others came at the evidence with less bias, it became more parsimonious to interpret the annotation near Earth to indicate an inference of illumination angle.  It is important in many cases to argue in a way that draws all inferences in favor of one's opponent.  That makes it less credible for an opponent to dismiss your criticism as a straw man.  Here it is more reasonable to say that the author has correctly identified the object in the photo as the Earth and has attempted intelligently to infer illumination information based on that correct identification, than it is to infer that the author is so inept as to be unable to distinguish the Earth from the Sun in a photograph.

But most of us here are used to proponents drawing preposterous conclusions and making claims based on confidently erroneous identifications or assumptions.  The generous practice of drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the opponent bites us when we consider that quite a lot of the inferences that proponents rely upon are not at all reasonable.  And, as I mentioned, there is the nefarious rhetorical practice of making ambiguous arguments in order to bait one's opponent to be the one to make the (intended) inference, only to tar him with the consequences of having done that.  In the wake of so many such propositions, we have adopted a stern practice of requiring the proponent to make his inferences explicit.  Hence I held my concession in abeyance pending a clarification from the proponent -- which is almost certainly not going to come forth.

"But Jay," one might ask, "did you abate the concession because of the rhetorical dilemma you identify, or instead to save face after having been thoroughly contradicted by other reasonable critics."  Heh, probably more the latter.  No one is immune to the effects of ego.  The sting of probably having interpreted the annotation contrary to its reasonable intent gets blunted by being able to pivot to something I am still abstractly right about.  This is why skepticism works.  As careful as I often am in making criticism, there are still people who are simultaneously aligned with me ideologically yet committed enough to fairness to call me out on it.  It's more important that we get it right than that we bludgeon proponents who have reached poor conclusions.
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: Abaddon on August 30, 2019, 03:46:05 PM
A seagull poster, also known as a mudguard.

I get the seagull analogy.  (It's our state bird.)  Explain mudguard, if you please.
New to me also.

Urban dictionary offers this:

Quote
mudguard
Bald guy with shit for brains.

ie: shiny on top, shit underneath.
Guy1 "Did you hear what delivery date he agreed to during that phone call?"

Guy2 "We'll never meet the deadline, our boss is such a ****ing mudguard."
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: Obviousman on August 30, 2019, 04:23:08 PM
A seagull poster, also known as a mudguard.

I get the seagull analogy.  (It's our state bird.)  Explain mudguard, if you please.
New to me also.

Urban dictionary offers this:

Quote
mudguard
Bald guy with shit for brains.

ie: shiny on top, shit underneath.
Guy1 "Did you hear what delivery date he agreed to during that phone call?"

Guy2 "We'll never meet the deadline, our boss is such a ****ing mudguard."

That's correct, although it doesn't have to be limited to a bald person; it can be applied to someone who appears authentic or convincing on the outside but are in fact full of rubbish under the surface.

I think there could be a second layer here, because if you are a Firefly fan (a 'Browncoat') then shiny can also mean good or valuable; "cool." So being 'shiny' on the exterior but... etc
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: jfb on August 30, 2019, 07:12:39 PM
Looking at the linked page, it's clear someone has no clue what they're looking at.

Row 1, left - Apparently Stanley Kubrick is a squarish black blob, and the other astronaut reflected in the visor is a "stage hand";
Row 1, center - He's looking at the distorted reflection of the flag in the visor and claiming that's another person;
Row 1, right - vignetting == "spotlight"

Row 2, left - he claims he's seeing a boot print in the regolith that's not an astronaut boot.  The images he uses as "proof" are ... not convincing;
Row 2, center - He's obviously confusing elements of the LRV reflected in the visor for "other people" (not that I can see anything that he's talking about - he must be working from a higher-resolution image than what's on the page, because what's on the page is useless);
Row 2, right - this is Pete's famous picture of Al with the sample container.  On the left there's a second person reflected in Al's visor, on the right only Pete is reflected.  The claim is that the left photo is the original, while the right photo is doctored.  This is the first flat-out lie - the exact opposite is true.  Whether it's Izraul's (or whomever's page this is) lie or someone else's, I don't know.

Row 3, left - someone doesn't know the difference between a still camera and a video camera.  Someone also doesn't take into account the difference in signal quality between the lunar broadcasts and the average football game.
Row 3, right - someone doesn't understand how panoramas can be built up from multiple photos and how wide-angle lenses work;

Row 4, left - someone doesn't understand how the position of a light source can affect a picture.
Row 4, right - someone doesn't understand parallax;

... and this isn't fun anymore.  But you get the picture - basically a heaping helping of willful ignorance and stupidity combined with deep dishonesty. 
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: onebigmonkey on August 31, 2019, 04:46:27 AM
Row 2, right - this is Pete's famous picture of Al with the sample container.  On the left there's a second person reflected in Al's visor, on the right only Pete is reflected.  The claim is that the left photo is the original, while the right photo is doctored.  This is the first flat-out lie - the exact opposite is true.  Whether it's Izraul's (or whomever's page this is) lie or someone else's, I don't know.

I spent some time looking at this one today and I'm pretty sure that the image used in the fake one (for the avoidance of doubt: the fake is the one with two astronauts in the visor) is this, AS12-49-7281, with a couple of embellishments to add the shadow:

(https://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/images/browse/AS12/49/7281.jpg)

So the photograph with multiple astronauts in the visor was taken before the photograph with the astronaut pictured in the visor was taken...
Title: Re: What I Found In NASA Photos (incliuding Kubrick)
Post by: bobdude11 on November 11, 2019, 02:37:53 PM
Off topic a bit (and yet, not entirely):

Jay and STS60 correcting their initial statements regarding the identification of Earth, are just 2 of the many things I have seen that have changed how I interact with folks on the intertoobs.

They (and many others on here) have taught me how to:
 - Be more patient
 - Perform thorough research
 - Be honest in my interactions (up to and including making retractions/withdrawals/apologies as required)
 - Be truthful in my interactions
 - To the best of my ability, remove emotion and focus on the facts (still working on the emotion part)

It is these lessons I carry with me everyday and into my entire life (personal and professional) and I want to thank you all for helping me to become a much better person all around and a much better researcher for things such as these.