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Apollo Discussions => The Reality of Apollo => Topic started by: onebigmonkey on August 11, 2015, 11:40:44 AM

Title: Sun reflections in Apollo images
Post by: onebigmonkey on August 11, 2015, 11:40:44 AM

Some conspiracy loons have been making a fuss over the appearance of a light spot on the images of Earth in the transit of the moon gif taken by the DISCOVR satellite.

This set me thinking about things, and I've started on this:

http://onebigmonkey.com/apollo/subsolar/subsolar.html

I know there will be quibbles about my use of the term sub-solar point, but I hope I've addressed that.

The tl:dr version is that you can see the reflection of the sun in Apollo views of Earth just where it should be.

Does it all make sense?

Title: Re: Sun reflections in Apollo images
Post by: ka9q on August 11, 2015, 06:07:12 PM

Good writeup.

I was going to comment about the difference between the sub-solar point and the location of the reflection (what I'd call "sun glint") but then I see you discuss that near the end.

I'd drop the discussion of SSP altogether and just talk about the location of the sun glint, since that's what shows up in the pictures. Mention SSP only as part of calculating where the glint should appear.

Title: Re: Sun reflections in Apollo images
Post by: onebigmonkey on August 12, 2015, 12:12:57 AM

I think you're right - it evolved as I was writing it and found that the glint wasn't appearing where I thought it should, hence the experiment with the globe.

:)

Title: Re: Sun reflections in Apollo images
Post by: bknight on August 12, 2015, 07:54:16 AM

obm, I have a question concerning the set of three images from as08-15-2550.  The left image shows what I might guess to be Australia on the very left hand portion, hard to tell with the clouds.  The center, Celestia image, shows just a silver of land mass with portions of SE Asia in the upper right.  The right has Australia centered in the image. 
The rest of the images all appear to my untrained eye to be the same, but these three look out of whack.  I don't have either of the astronomical programs you have so I can't run a check.

Title: Re: Sun reflections in Apollo images
Post by: onebigmonkey on August 12, 2015, 04:06:30 PM

OK I've reworked the page a little :)

bknight: the difference in appearance is related to the perspective of the view. Stellarium is showing the view from the sun. Celestia is showing the view from the moon. The Apollo photo is showing a view from somewhere between the moon and Earth as it was taken about 21 hours after TEI.

Title: Re: Sun reflections in Apollo images
Post by: bknight on August 12, 2015, 04:14:46 PM

Ok, the rest if the sets looked fairly normal but that set looked odd to me.  Cloud cover made distinguishing some of the land masses difficult though.