ApolloHoax.net
Apollo Discussions => The Hoax Theory => Topic started by: onebigmonkey on November 08, 2013, 12:25:44 PM
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A poster on collectspace.com was asking about 'missing' Apollo magazines and identified several from Apollo 16.
I managed to find 2 of them, taken by Nikons with an f1.2 55mm lens for low light and earthshine photography, and they are here http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/gallery/apollo/16 (http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/gallery/apollo/16)
Much of what is in there is (naturally enough) underexposed, but there are some gems - including many images of stars. Yes, actual stars!!
So far I've only managed to pin one of the images down to anything definite, AS16-129-20063:
(http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/data_a/AS16/png/AS16-129-20063_SML.png)
compared with a Stellarium view:
(http://img546.imageshack.us/img546/8038/nb3y.jpg)
Naturally there are those who will claim that you could have taken these photographs on Earth, but the magazines also show images of the moon's surface, and I intend to demonstrate that these mostly oblique views could not have been taken from Earth - either because they are of the far side or because they are oblique views that a terrestrial telescope would show as vertical.
Feel free to join in :)
The one I really want to nail down is this one, AS16-129-20076:
(http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/data_a/AS16/png/AS16-129-20076_SML.png)
Like the previous one, there are several similar views taken at different exposure settings.
I also managed to find a 'missing' Apollo 13 magazine (number 93), which has images of Earth taken at around 06:30 on 17/04/70 as confirmed by the satellite meteorology record!
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The 2nd photo can actually be combined with another one to produce a wider view:
(http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/9007/ynsc.jpg)
I need to get out more don't I?
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I wonder why mags 127 & 129 aren't in the ALSJ... Do you have any on how and under what conditions these were taken? Maybe those were the mags that Mattingly retrieved from the metric & panoramic cameras during the coast back to Earth.
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I wonder why mags 127 & 129 aren't in the ALSJ... Do you have any on how and under what conditions these were taken? Maybe those were the mags that Mattingly retrieved from the metric & panoramic cameras during the coast back to Earth.
Pretty sure no, as (http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/pan/) those (http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/metric/) are catalogued differently.
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The 2nd photo can actually be combined with another one to produce a wider view
Is the bright blob Venus? How many hours to even identify that area of sky in the opening picture, you must have amazing patience or a real familiarity with the stars.
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How many hours to even identify that area of sky in the opening picture, you must have amazing patience or a real familiarity with the stars.
Well, it's about the most instantly recognisable bits of sky that there is, the Southern Cross and the pointers. At least I recognised it instantly.
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Yep - Southern Cross.
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How many hours to even identify that area of sky in the opening picture, you must have amazing patience or a real familiarity with the stars.
Any Kiwi or Aussie will recognise that star group immediately...
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg/300px-Flag_of_New_Zealand.svg.png)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_Australia.svg/300px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png)
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Well, it's about the most instantly recognisable bits of sky that there is, the Southern Cross and the pointers. At least I recognised it instantly.
Ah, that's Rigel Kent, not Rigel. How could two very different stars have such confusing names?
I'd say Orion is probably the most instantly recognizable constellation, if only because it's visible in both hemispheres. After that I'd say Ursa Major, because most of the world's population lives up here in the north.
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You can put the star fields in astrometry.net (http://astrometry.net/use.html) to get them recognized. Even if you don't want to bother with the software itself, they have a bot on Flickr.
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The one I really want to nail down is this one, AS16-129-20076:
(http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/data_a/AS16/png/AS16-129-20076_SML.png)
I'm a rank amateur at using stellarium (I hadn't even loaded on my current machine until just now). But I was playing around with the idea of looking for Venus during Apollo 16 and I came up with:
(http://www.ad-lunam.com/stellarium-20076.png)
Stellarium time set to 1972-04-26 12:00:00 UTC.
It that's a match it looks like they photographed Venus, Mars, and Saturn in a single frame.
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Well, it's about the most instantly recognisable bits of sky that there is, the Southern Cross and the pointers. At least I recognised it instantly.
Ah, that's Rigel Kent, not Rigel. How could two very different stars have such confusing names?
I'd say Orion is probably the most instantly recognizable constellation, if only because it's visible in both hemispheres. After that I'd say Ursa Major, because most of the world's population lives up here in the north.
The Southern Cross is visible in both hemispheres.
Rigel Kent is not the official star name, its Alpha Centauri.
It was the first constellation I learned, and I was born and brought up in the northern hemisphere.
There might be a more people in the northern hemisphere, but it is still a familiar and instantly recognisable feature of the sky to about three billion of us!
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Any Kiwi or Aussie will recognise that star group immediately...
Also Papua New Guinea
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Flag_of_Papua_New_Guinea.svg/600px-Flag_of_Papua_New_Guinea.svg.png)
Samoa
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Flag_of_Samoa.svg/640px-Flag_of_Samoa.svg.png)
Brazil
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/720px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png)
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The Southern Cross is visible in both hemispheres.
It is? I live in San Diego (latitude 33N) but I never saw it until I traveled to Australia for the first time. It's at declination 60S, which is never above the horizon for anybody farther north than 30N. Same with Alpha Centauri, which is at about the same declination.
The only parts of the USA south of 30 N are the state of Hawaii, peninsular Florida and the southern parts of Texas and Louisiana.
Rigel Kent is not the official star name, its Alpha Centauri.
Exactly why, when I saw that diagram with only the "Rigel" part showing, I thought of Rigel rather than Alpha Centauri.
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More like 25°N, which means there is nowhere in the continental US that you can see it.The southern tip of Florida is the southernmost part of the USA, at 25° 15'
If you're north of the equator but south of latitude 25°, Hawaii and parts of North Africa, you can still see it. It can be seen in Hawaii if you look south in May & June. It will appear to stand on the southern horizon at its zenith.
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Well done ajv - I also nailed it down to Venus, once I got the perspective right!
The photos, according to
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19740026159_1974026159.pdf (http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19740026159_1974026159.pdf)
were taken as part of a 'Skylab contamination' series, designed to see how venting from eg urine dumps would interfere with photography. The Definitive Apollo Source Book says these photos were taken between 23:24 on 26/04/72 and 00:54 on the 27th. As this puts them much closer to Earth than I had originally thought I set that as the origin in Stellarium, removed the ground and headed for Venus:
(http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/1011/rfc6.jpg)
So, that's an entire weekend going cross-eyed at Stellarium wasted :D
It has, however, given me an idea for a new side-project, which is to try and look in more detail at these low light 35mm photographs from all the Apollo missions that took them and put together a page identifying the stars in them.
Now, who's up for this one:
(http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/data_a/AS16/png/AS16-127-20022_SML.png)
:D
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Well that was disappointingly easy!
The photo above is AS16-127-20022, which the report I linked to above says was part of a series looking towards the Gum nebula taken on the 21st.
The report gives limits for the photograph edges so I set a location somewhere in the middle at 07h00m00s and 25 degrees in Stellarium.
The bright star that appears to be cut off on the upper left hand margin is (I believe) Sirius, and diagonally upwards from it are two pairs of stars tha are recognisable in stellarium (the first pair actually has a 3rd fainter one just visible). To the right and slightly below Sirius is a small elongated triangle of stars that is also a match between the two.
(http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/8068/516w.jpg)
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You might want to go visit nova.astrometry.net (http://nova.astrometry.net/), where they do this kind of analysis for free.. Very easy to use, and quite tolerant of crappy images, star trails, and 'foreign' objects like planets and satellites.
I threw the AS16-127-20022 image at it anonymously just then, and got this (http://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/121752#annotated):
Center (RA, Dec): (114.007, -33.162)
Center (RA, hms): 07h 36m 01.756s
Center (Dec, dms): -33° 09' 44.716"
Size: 38.5 x 25.7 deg
Radius: 23.149 deg
Pixel scale: 226 arcsec/pixel
Orientation: Up is 73.2 degrees E of N
It also gives a nice little labelled map that shows it is pointed at the heart of Puppis, and a sky view showing the angle, etc - click the link above to see what a clever little system it is. I've had very few failures, and it has helped me bust a few "Omigod, it's Planet X" pretenders by proving that the contents of their images (often including Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Sirius, Canopus, Vega etc) are relatively easy to identify and verify.
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You might want to go visit nova.astrometry.net (http://nova.astrometry.net/), where they do this kind of analysis for free.. Very easy to use, and quite tolerant of crappy images, star trails, and 'foreign' objects like planets and satellites.
I threw the AS16-127-20022 image at it anonymously just then, and got this (http://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/121752#annotated):
Center (RA, Dec): (114.007, -33.162)
Center (RA, hms): 07h 36m 01.756s
Center (Dec, dms): -33° 09' 44.716"
Size: 38.5 x 25.7 deg
Radius: 23.149 deg
Pixel scale: 226 arcsec/pixel
Orientation: Up is 73.2 degrees E of N
It also gives a nice little labelled map that shows it is pointed at the heart of Puppis, and a sky view showing the angle, etc - click the link above to see what a clever little system it is. I've had very few failures, and it has helped me bust a few "Omigod, it's Planet X" pretenders by proving that the contents of their images (often including Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Sirius, Canopus, Vega etc) are relatively easy to identify and verify.
Where's the fun in that :D
That is clever stuff though - I may try it with some of the others, and it does look as though I was right about the one you submitted.
I think the only slight disappointment for me is that the conspiracy idiots will argue that these photographs could have been taken from Earth, as all the stars on view are visible. The only counter arguments I can think are the time it would have taken to take the images from a terrestrial telescope given atmospheric interference and "You're a moron".
Similarly I was hoping that these two earthshine images from magazine 127:
(http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/data_a/AS16/png/AS16-127-20019_SML.png)
(http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/data_a/AS16/png/AS16-127-20018_SML.png)
would be helpful, given that they show an oblique angle of lunar craters as opposed to vertical view form Earth. However, they are of Riccioli crater and some smaller ones near to it (see this image http://www.astronet.ru/db/varstars/msg/1200113 (http://www.astronet.ru/db/varstars/msg/1200113)). As Riccioli is close to the limb, the angle of the image is such that the deniers will just deny it.
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I set that site a challenge with this one;
(http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/data_a/AS16/png/AS16-127-20004_SML.png)
for which I'd already got a location (based on following the camera after an earlier blurred frame identified Venus):
(http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/6219/shxi.jpg)
Venus is out of shot to the right, Saturn is out of shot 'above'.
It failed - might be interesting to re-submit it with some white dots superimposed on the faint blobs.
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I'd try increasing the contrast carefully rather than painting on it - bear in mind that the algorithm takes into account relative brightnesses (or sizes, if the stars are exposed enough to have 'bloomed')..
I would have expected that one to work.... hang on .. the only reason must be - Apollo was hoaxed!!!!
(Sorry.. )
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I'd try increasing the contrast carefully rather than painting on it - bear in mind that the algorithm takes into account relative brightnesses (or sizes, if the stars are exposed enough to have 'bloomed')..
I would have expected that one to work.... hang on .. the only reason must be - Apollo was hoaxed!!!!
(Sorry.. )
:D
I think it found a few matches in the process but not enough - I'm guessing the grain in the image isn't helping.
One of the things they did during these experiments was to minimise the rotation of the CSM - this little movie I made from some of the frames in mag 127 show where it didn't always work! The bright object that flashes by top right is Venus.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdOLegJDnqE&feature=share&list=UUwVfgCZMszq1V6l4rytWQww (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdOLegJDnqE&feature=share&list=UUwVfgCZMszq1V6l4rytWQww)
(I did try embedding it, but it gave an error).
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OK so here was a challenge. Apollo 15's low light photography on 35mm film is hard to track down, and there isn't much available on the web - the most commonly available ones being 4 zodiacal light photos..
What I did manage to find was this report ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19750021316_1975021316.pdf (http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19750021316_1975021316.pdf) that discusses the image processing techniques they used on the photographs.
One of the targets for Apollo 15 was the L4 Lagrange point, which they took on July 31st 1971 at around 13:35 GMT.
Here's one of the Apollo 15 images, taken of the L4 Lagrange point, AS15-101-13566:
(http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/9196/y7al.jpg)
Here's the same image inverted, rotated cleaned up a little:
(http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/5535/ht6z.jpg)
Why rotated? Because here's what Stellarium says the view looking towards L4 on the date in question looks like:
(http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/8512/ylag.jpg)
I like this game :)
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OK so here was a challenge. Apollo 15's low light photography on 35mm film is hard to track down, and there isn't much available on the web - the most commonly available ones being 4 zodiacal light photos..
What I did manage to find was this report ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19750021316_1975021316.pdf (http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19750021316_1975021316.pdf) that discusses the image processing techniques they used on the photographs.
One of the targets for Apollo 15 was the L4 Lagrange point, which they took on July 31st 1971 at around 13:35 GMT.
Here's one of the Apollo 15 images, taken of the L4 Lagrange point, AS15-101-13566:
(http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/9196/y7al.jpg)
Here's the same image inverted, rotated cleaned up a little:
(http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/5535/ht6z.jpg)
Why rotated? Because here's what Stellarium says the view looking towards L4 on the date in question looks like:
(http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/8512/ylag.jpg)
I like this game :)
I don't think the HB community even knows about these pictures, they're still stuck on the idiotic claim stars should show up in short exposures.
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Well, the next time anyone mentions the lack of stars, you can point them towards my website where I've added a section on them:
http://onebigmonkey.comoj.com/obm/starskyhtml.html (http://onebigmonkey.comoj.com/obm/starskyhtml.html)
I particularly like the zodiacal light photography from Apollo 17, which was taken over 3 sessions in 51 hours, and in which Jupiter can be seen to move exactly as Stellarium predicts it should and in exactly the right place.
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I've now completed this little side project by adding a study of the UV images taken by Apollo 16.
I've also (I think) found Venus in some more images from Apollo 14, this time colour ones taken after EVA-2. The ALSJ suggests they were intended as comparisons for the black and white ones taken at the LM ladder, but there is nothing to corroborate that in the transcripts. I think Venus is visible in a position consistent with the photographs being taken a couple of hours after the end of the EVA, before the debriefing session.
That particular page is here:
http://onebigmonkey.comoj.com/obm/as14venus.html (http://onebigmonkey.comoj.com/obm/as14venus.html)
This is where I find out it's already been done I guess!
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Wow, I initially thought that was my animated GIF of 9189-9197, but wondered why Venus was barely visible.
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Wow, I initially thought that was my animated GIF of 9189-9197, but wondered why Venus was barely visible.
The ALSJ cite you as the original source and that one is based on yours :)
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Have any of the "no star'ers" EVER attempted to address the Apollo 14 Venus photos?
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Have any of the "no star'ers" EVER attempted to address the Apollo 14 Venus photos?
Jarrah did (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOy-3wSewhQ), by trying to show that objects was in the wrong position for that time and place.
The link is to Astrobrant's rebuttal.
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The ALSJ cite you as the original source and that one is based on yours :)
Yeah, caught that after re-reading it a few times. ;)
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Just added an additional bit to the Apollo 15 section.
Initially I didn't bother with the final solar corona session, but then I realised a couple of things. AS15-98-13377 shows Mercury and a couple of bright stars - a planet is always good for pinpointing a moment in time!
It also shows Mercury in exactly the right position in relation to the sunrise given the orbital path it was following, which is pretty damned cool! Any other position on the lunar terminator and the position of the three objects visible in the image in relation to the solar corona just would not have been the same. Any other time and the position of Mercury would have been different.
I love it when accidental discoveries like this still completely support (and re-enforce) the Apollo narrative :)
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Thanks for this Monkey, It has been invaluable.
The thread should be pinned for future reference :)
For that matter there has been a lot of good info in a lot of threads which have been lost in the archives having a section where they can be pinned for future reference would be handy.
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Thank you trebor - nice to know it's actually been read lol.
As a little side project to add on to this part of my site I am collecting Apollo astronaut quotes describing stars, planets, constellations and so on. I'm not bothering with navigation stuff, just ones that describe the view.
I'm going through the mission transcript and only have Apollo 16 and 17 to do.
If anyone knows any good ones I'd be happy to add them (I already have Michael Collins' well known ones).
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Are there really that many? We know they never saw them in the daytime except through the optics, and even at night the cabin lights and lack of dark adaptation made it rather difficult to see much.
Even through the optics it was often difficult to see stars on Apollo, and even though the stars in the navigation catalog were almost all 2nd magnitude or brighter (Polaris is an example of a 2nd magnitude star).
Alpha Centauri (Rigel Kent), though quite bright, was omitted probably because it's a binary.
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Even discounting the ones that are obviously related to navigation (which I'm not using unless they have a nice turn of phrase) there are a fair few, mostly from cislunar space.
There are a few stubborn idiots who take the Apollo 11 press conference as a blanket statement of absolute truth: no astronaut ever saw stars. I'm demonstrating otherwise.
I may or may not use this one from Apollo 16:
08 11 14 07 LMP You know, Pete, if you took this view that y'all just saw of the Moon and put in a movie, everybody would say you're faking it. It doesn't look like that. And it's just - you can't see any stars, just pure blackness
:D
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So because they couldn't see any stars they created all these maps so they couldn't use them to navigate on them? ;)
https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/alsj-AOTNavStarsDetents.html
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There are a few stubborn idiots who take the Apollo 11 press conference as a blanket statement of absolute truth: no astronaut ever saw stars. I'm demonstrating otherwise.
I've always liked the quote from Armstrong when entering lunar orbit, that answers all the questions..
071:59:20 Armstrong: Houston, it's been a real change for us. Now we're able to see stars again and recognize constellations for the first time on the trip. It's - the sky is full of stars. Just like the night side of Earth. But all the way here, we've only been able to see stars occasionally and perhaps through the monocular, but not recognize any star patterns.
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So because they couldn't see any stars they created all these maps so they couldn't use them to navigate on them? ;)
https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/alsj-AOTNavStarsDetents.html
I've already anticipated the response:
"Yeah well, they had to mention them every so often otherwise people would think they were faking it..."
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So because they couldn't see any stars they created all these maps so they couldn't use them to navigate on them? ;)
It's not clear they could actually see many constellations through the optics; a lot of them complained that the view was quite dim.
When periodically realigning the platform to compensate for the inevitable drift, a procedure called "P52", they'd have the computer slew the spacecraft and/or telescope to what it though was the right position for the catalog star being used. Since the drift was small, this would invariably put the star within the field of view so the astronaut only had to make a minor correction to center it. He didn't have to go searching for the star in the constellations.
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The CM sextant had a 1X finder scope. You were supposed to use that to block out extraneous light to see constellations, patterns, etc. from the LEB. They practiced this on the roof at MIT, with the actual guidance-system mockup and astronomers confirming their constellation identification. (The system was an integrated assembly, the IMU and computer down below and the optics above, in a massively robust frame.)
The CM optics were slewed by the computer, and you were supposed to use the 20X sextant in any of various modes to "mark" the actual position of the star, whereupon the computer can pick off the actual sextant slew angles for the star and update the REFSMMAT.
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OK, for better or worse:
http://onebigmonkey.comoj.com/obm/staquotes.html (http://onebigmonkey.comoj.com/obm/staquotes.html)
And thanks Miss Vocalcord for that link to the ALSJ page, I hadn't seen it and it was a useful addition.
Any typos are mostly errors in copying from badly scanned pdfs.
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OK, for better or worse:
http://onebigmonkey.comoj.com/obm/staquotes.html (http://onebigmonkey.comoj.com/obm/staquotes.html)
And thanks Miss Vocalcord for that link to the ALSJ page, I hadn't seen it and it was a useful addition.
Any typos are mostly errors in copying from badly scanned pdfs.
Hey, thanks for that link. I'm bookmarking it. And I appreciate how much work you must have had to do to get those.
Edit: I just went back and browsed your web page. You have some very cool and unique stuff on there!
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OK, for better or worse:
http://onebigmonkey.comoj.com/obm/staquotes.html (http://onebigmonkey.comoj.com/obm/staquotes.html)
And thanks Miss Vocalcord for that link to the ALSJ page, I hadn't seen it and it was a useful addition.
Any typos are mostly errors in copying from badly scanned pdfs.
Hey, thanks for that link. I'm bookmarking it. And I appreciate how much work you must have had to do to get those.
ctrl+f, next, next, next :D
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OK, so I was
obsessing re-examining some photos for stars and stuff and came across this from Apollo 12: AS12-51-7588
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/images/print/AS12/51/7588.jpg (http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/images/print/AS12/51/7588.jpg)
It is referred to in the photo index as a 'Star shot'.
The preceding images in the magazine are labelled as from the Solar Eclipse, but they clearly aren't as you can see lens flares, but it's possible they were taken close that event.
I can find no references to a 'star shot' anywhere in missions transcripts and reports.
What sparked my curiosity is that along with the usual blue dots that mark image blemishes are several lighter dots in the top half of the image. I've increased the dpi and cropped it for this version:
(http://i58.tinypic.com/33cbtkx.jpg)
The obvious candidates for one of the dots is likely to be either Venus, Mercury or Jupiter. I think Mercury is only likely if the Earth is actually occluding the sun. Unfortunately my only software is Stellarium, which I can use to place the viewpoint on either the Moon or Earth, but not in between (unless someone can tell me otherwise).
The image was taken after TEI. and probably much later in the ride home given how thin the sliver of Earth is in AS12-51-7587.
Venus at about 15:00 on the 24th of November 1969 looks promising, but pareidolia is a terrible curse.
So, anyone care to have a go? Are they just image blemishes? Beautifully lit urine crystals? Reflected panel lights? Or are they planets/stars?
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Celestia will do the job for you (another fantastic free download).
I gave it a quick try. Since 7587 was stated to be taken at 60 nm above the moon I arbitrarily put myself at 170 km altitude and zapped the FOV as high as it would go while limiting the star field to the brightest objects only. From that Muphrid-Arcturus-Izra in Bootes looks a good candidate for the three stars in 7588, but that's from a very cursory look.
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Thanks for the tip :)
Where did you read about 7587? I haven't seen that information in any of the photographic indices at that AFJ/ALSJ.
7581 is definitely Earth, and its configuration is consistent with a post-TEI view. 7582-3 are labelled as Earth but it is difficult to tell, although the size of the body masked by the lens flare and the lit crescent are consistent with that being correct based on 7581. That same crescent is visible in 7584-7 images labelled as 'Solar Eclipse', but we know that the Solar Eclipse wasn't observed until the 24th. Besides that they'd also run out of colour film by then, which is why they resorted to using the 16mm DAC.
Ill definitely check out Celestia though :)
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Thanks for the tip :)
Where did you read about 7587? I haven't seen that information in any of the photographic indices at that AFJ/ALSJ.
7581 is definitely Earth, and its configuration is consistent with a post-TEI view. 7582-3 are labelled as Earth but it is difficult to tell, although the size of the body masked by the lens flare and the lit crescent are consistent with that being correct based on 7581. That same crescent is visible in 7584-7 images labelled as 'Solar Eclipse', but we know that the Solar Eclipse wasn't observed until the 24th. Besides that they'd also run out of colour film by then, which is why they resorted to using the 16mm DAC.
Ill definitely check out Celestia though :)
I picked that up here. https://archive.org/details/AS12-51-7587. Can't speak to it's accuracy though, I just used it as a first guess. Out of curiosity, I pinged the question to Eric Jones who responded with his own Celestia screen shot suggesting Zubelgenubi-Venus-Zubeneschamali. This fits, but requires earth to be in frame. In support, Eric provides this quote from the transcript...
Conrad: It's - Venus is just below the Earth, and we can see Venus quite clearly, well, you can see all kinds of stars, but Venus is just below the Earth. This is - This is really a sight to behold, to see it at night time like this.
241:30:52 GET
Your mileage may vary, but I discarded this on the basis that Earth would appear in frame, and in attempting to photograph stars, they would have pointed the camera at the darkest spot, maybe? But TBH we are seeking a needle in a stack of needles.
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Thanks for the tip :)
Where did you read about 7587? I haven't seen that information in any of the photographic indices at that AFJ/ALSJ.
7581 is definitely Earth, and its configuration is consistent with a post-TEI view. 7582-3 are labelled as Earth but it is difficult to tell, although the size of the body masked by the lens flare and the lit crescent are consistent with that being correct based on 7581. That same crescent is visible in 7584-7 images labelled as 'Solar Eclipse', but we know that the Solar Eclipse wasn't observed until the 24th. Besides that they'd also run out of colour film by then, which is why they resorted to using the 16mm DAC.
Ill definitely check out Celestia though :)
I picked that up here. https://archive.org/details/AS12-51-7587. Can't speak to it's accuracy though, I just used it as a first guess. Out of curiosity, I pinged the question to Eric Jones who responded with his own Celestia screen shot suggesting Zubelgenubi-Venus-Zubeneschamali. This fits, but requires earth to be in frame. In support, Eric provides this quote from the transcript...
Conrad: It's - Venus is just below the Earth, and we can see Venus quite clearly, well, you can see all kinds of stars, but Venus is just below the Earth. This is - This is really a sight to behold, to see it at night time like this.
241:30:52 GET
Your mileage may vary, but I discarded this on the basis that Earth would appear in frame, and in attempting to photograph stars, they would have pointed the camera at the darkest spot, maybe? But TBH we are seeking a needle in a stack of needles.
Finding a needle in a stack of needles is my speciality :D
Conrad's quote is relating to their observation of the eclipse, so Earth may well have been the darkest spot at that point!
If it's a trio of stars (and it's still open to question whether they are celestial bodies!) then it shouldn't really matter where the observer is in the Earth-Moon plane, or (up to a point) when the observer is - unless an inconvenient home planet is in the way.
It's much more useful for our purposes if at least one of them is a planet, as that position fixes it with much more certainty in the timeline of the mission. I would have thought that if they were genuinely trying to take an image of stellar objects they'd have picked the brightest they could see, ie one of the planets.
All that said, it's just as likely that someone cataloguing the images looked at this one, saw a few dots and said "uuummm....yeah, stars, must be." :D
Thanks for the help though :)
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Conrad's quote is relating to their observation of the eclipse, so Earth may well have been the darkest spot at that point!
Did you see the lunar eclipse the other night? The moon is never completely dark because of all the sunlight refracting around the earth due to its atmosphere. If Apollo 12 was still far enough away at that time, they too should have seen a ring of light around the dark side of the earth.
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Conrad's quote is relating to their observation of the eclipse, so Earth may well have been the darkest spot at that point!
Did you see the lunar eclipse the other night? The moon is never completely dark because of all the sunlight refracting around the earth due to its atmosphere. If Apollo 12 was still far enough away at that time, they too should have seen a ring of light around the dark side of the earth.
I didn't, but I've seen plenty, and it's not quite the same event as a lunar eclipse is the moon passing into the Earth's shadow, as opposed to this solar eclipse where the Earth blocked out the sun - something only 3 people have witnessed!
The photographic & 16mm evidence suggests that there wasn't complete coverage of the sun by the Earth, with a thin sliver of light all around the Earh (airglow?). They were also able to describe events on the Earth's night side that they could see , such as thunderstorms, so agreed it wasn't as completely black as the moon is when unlit :)
It's a shame we can't see those features in the photographs, as it would be even more ammunition to aim at the HB camp.
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I didn't, but I've seen plenty, and it's not quite the same event as a lunar eclipse is the moon passing into the Earth's shadow, as opposed to this solar eclipse where the Earth blocked out the sun - something only 3 people have witnessed!
Actually, nearly all 7 billion of us see that every night...
(Runs quickly)
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I didn't, but I've seen plenty, and it's not quite the same event as a lunar eclipse is the moon passing into the Earth's shadow, as opposed to this solar eclipse where the Earth blocked out the sun - something only 3 people have witnessed!
Actually, nearly all 7 billion of us see that every night...
(Runs quickly)
:D