Apollo 16 visor reflection at House Rock

[onebigmonkey]

I'm in the process of preparing a youtube thing on "things reflected in other things" in Apollo photos. OK so it's mostly Earth and it's mostly in visors.

Some are well known, some are ones I'm claiming ownership of (I believe found new examples in Apollo 17, Apollo 11 and 12 that I don't believe are recorded elsewhere).

Scouring through Apollo 16, both photos of John Young's jump salute seem to show Earth reflected in the visor, eg:



but what is intriguing me is what can be seen in Young's visor in AS16-106-17336, taken at Station 11, North Ray crater:

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a16/AS16-106-17336HR.jpg

It's in all the versions I've seen, and here is a close up of the one at 'March to the Moon':



The bit I'm querying is the bright spot to the right of Duke.

It appears to be above the horizon, doesn't resemble any of the types of blemishes/artifacts sometimes found in Apollo images, and isn't anything reflected off the LRV, as this is some distance off behind Young and to his left - here's its view of the image being taken:



Young's shadow, and the washed out nature of the photo, confirms he is facing roughly east into the sun, so whatever is reflected in the visor is roughly west. Here's something that's roughly west:



What mitigates against this is we know that Duke is adamant that he never saw stars on the surface (I've heard him say it myself, and yes, I know it's not a star). However we also know that Venus is in Apollo 16 surface photos, so it's possible. I'm also not entirely convinced that Jupiter would, bright as it is and much as I want it to, produce such a large and obvious spot in the reflection.

Any suggestions as to what else it could be, or can I be carried shoulder high to rapturous applause?

[Kiwi]

...we also know that Venus is in Apollo 16 surface photos...

Which ones? Please tell us more. I'm only aware of those Al Shepard took on Apollo 14 -- AS14-64-9189 to 9197.

We have an April 2007 thread here where fellow member Data Cable solved the claim that Venus wasn't visible in lunar photos in just his second post -- the 13th on page 1 of the following thread.
https://apollohoax.proboards.com/thread/995?page=1

I don't think we can give links to individual old posts any more, so just search for any of the words Actually, I might have located the "missing" planet (not planetoid) from the top of page 1 if you want to get there quickly.

And here's a short link to the marvellous GIF Data Cable made: http://photos.imageevent.com/datacable/apollo/A14_Earth-Venus.gif

The rest of the thread is probably worth a read for anyone who wants to see how some hoax-believers used to behave -- we haven't had any here for a long time. You'll need to click on the page links at the top.
Hoax-believer Showtime displays his brilliance and sense of humour at the top of page 3 as follows:

you data is still open for interpretation, after all a NASA employee might of wipe a booger or dropped a hair on it..

Back to AS16-106-17336, Onebigmonkey. Do you have any info that could prove that the little blob in/on Young's visor is Jupiter or Venus? It would be a great exercise in photogrammetry, but few of us have those skills.

The right software would state the elevation of the planet in degrees above the true horizon at that part of the moon, pus its azimuth, but that information then has to be related to the visual horizon reflected in Young's visor, and there were hills all around. To do that we would need large-scale topographic maps and to know exactly where Duke was and at what angle his camera was tilted from horizontal. I have the impression it's tilted down, but that can be hard to tell in lunar surface photos.

As far as the light-coloured blob goes, it seems to be about as big and bright as what you say is Earth in the jump-salute photo at top. So it's unlikely Jupiter would look like that. Both its visual diameter of about 30 to 50 arc-seconds, and its apparent stellar magnitude of -1.5 to -2.5 probably count it out. But Venus might show if everything else is right.

Speaking of Venus, it's now getting close to the highest part of the ecliptic for we southern hemisphere folk, so is high in the sky and also reaches maximum brightness this week, so should be an easy naked-eye sight in the daytime sky if you know exactly where to look and have clear blue skies.

I've shown it to many people over the last 30 years. On one occasion the moon was very close to Venus around noon, when I biked to our local beach. There was a bus load of school kids there, so I told most of them how to see Venus.

[Mag40]

http://www.mem-tek.com/apollo/ISD.html
It's detailed close to the bottom - search for "Venus"

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a16/AS16-117-18815HR.jpg
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a16/AS16-117-18816HR.jpg
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a16/AS16-117-18816HR.jpg

Based on how bright Venus shows up on the image itself, I can't imagine Jupiter being big enough to show up on the visor.