Thanks Spanky.
SECOND LETTER TO RALPH RENE
Only my outward letters from that period are in my computer. Rene's letters are still on paper and I'll try to summarise his most informative replies. Will be unlikely to include anything that particularly shows him in a bad light as he's not here to defend himself so it's unethical to do so, and I believe he already did enough of that to himself with his book and later TV appearances.
[Kiwi]
XX XXXXXXX Street, XXXXXXXXXX, Manawatu 5450, New Zealand
Tel 0-6-324 XXXX
9 November 1995
Mr R Rene
31 Burgess Place
Passiac
NJ 07055
USA
Dear Rene
Thank you for your interesting letter of 13 September.
You and I are certainly similar, as I also suffered for years through having a fairly high IQ (only around XXX or XX% though, on the British Mensa scale). I came from a poor background too, and was not allowed to think or question as a child. I left school at age 15, used to think I wasn't very bright, found it hard to get on with lots of people because I was so analytical, and only thought to test my IQ in 1989. At school I was regularly bullied... [and at 18] had to set about learning a lot which my childhood and schooling didn't teach me.
I'm now 46, and partly disabled... [SNIP paragraphs about self and New Zealand]
Anyway, forgive the provocative style of my last letter -- at least you replied! Hope you don't mind me discussing a few points.
[Note in the following how I sometimes struggle because of the lack of something we now take for granted – the great mountain of information that is freely available on the internet. Plus, these two letters to Rene are my first attempts at debunking hoax theories.]
I did a couple of experiments. One was with a curved glass bowl, with background and reflected horizons as in the Conrad/Bean photo. To align the background with the reflected foreground, I had to have both horizons and my eye nearly on the same level. Raising my viewpoint raised the rear horizon in relation to the front centre of the bowl, and the reflected horizon stayed in the middle, or went DOWN, depending on the curvature of the bowl and distance of the reflected horizon. With a straight mirror, the reflected horizon always went UP. It was only a rough experiment, but indicated that the camera WAS down low, on Conrad's chest.
The other experiment was to ascertain the visibility of stars in a clear, dark sky when my eyes were accustomed to looking at something lit by "sunlight". Holding a blank sheet of this paper against a 200 watt lightbulb (we're on 240 volts here) and staring at it for a few minutes gave me the same effect as looking at an average-toned object in sunlight (1/125th at f16 at 125 ISO). On going outside, I could only see the very brightest stars and planets, Achernar, Formalhaut, Altair, Alpha and Beta Centauri, Jupiter, and Saturn. Had I not known from star maps what I was looking at, or not known which way I was facing, I wouldn't have had a clue which objects I was viewing. It took over three minutes before I could make out all of Crux (the Southern Cross), about six minutes to recognise the "square" of Pegasus, and 7-8 minutes before I could recognise Pisces. That was with the benefit of no sun or moon to stop down my iris.
So I feel the astronauts may have been able to see individual bright stars, particularly with a 26-power sextant, but without recognising the fainter ones too, they wouldn't have known what they were looking at. They could only see the faint stars well when neither sunshine, moonshine, earthshine nor artificial light prevented their eyes dark-adapting, which usually takes at least five minutes.
You mentioned the letter "C" on a rock. Is that the picture of which I enclose a photocopy? If so, I saw the "C" long ago and it never bothered me, because in my opinion it's there courtesy of Kodak, on the film. Mainly because it's almost perfectly aligned between the horizontal registration crosses, although not centered horizontally. It is also very much on the same plane as the film, but rotated about 10 degrees anticlockwise, whereas the plane of the rock it's "on" looks as if it's tilted backward and toward the right of the camera's axis. See my estimated grid pattern for the rock's planes. To have the "C" align between the crosses and appear to be on the same plane as the film would be a stunning coincidence, if it was painted on the rock.
I also have a shot captioned "Charles Duke near Flag Crater. Stone Mountain in the background, three miles away." Copy also enclosed. (Both of these photos came from astronomy magazines, so I don't know the NASA numbers.) On the very bottom, centered below one set of vertical crosses, is the number "39" in very similar type to the "C", like an old typewriter or a rubber stamp, and again, on the same plane as the film. It's definitely not painted on the moondust!
I have seen similar things happen to other films throughout my time in photography. I got caught once by a batch of Ilford film which had patterns like tractor tyre marks on them. They ruined my photos.
Is it the same photo, with the "C" on the rock, where the white piece on the Rover partly obscures the rangefinder cross? If so, again it doesn't surprise me. I don't know exactly how the crosses got on the film, because being transparency film they would be white if put there by a burst of light. So I guess they are some sort of physical object which partially prevented light reaching the emulsion, or otherwise stopped the developer and/or bleach working, but I most suspect the former. Anyway, what we're talking about is a highlight bleeding into a shadow, and that is quite common.
Will enclose a photo (No 854-2) I took of a friend against a window, with sunlit corrugated iron for a background. Note the "corrugations" in the window frame on the right, and also that the frame is straight at the top where there is foliage and sky of medium tone. The highlights actually bleed into the foreground shadows, partially "obscuring" them. They also bleed into the brown fencepost at bottom left, just as the white bit on the Rover bleeds into the cross.
There are plenty of moon photos where highlights bleed into the crosses, and it also happened to photos taken from Skylab, where sunlit patches or even clouds on earth obliterated parts of the crosses. For instance, in a shot of Jim Irwin tending the lunar rover with Mount Hadley in the background, five highlights on the Rover's aerial obliterate parts of one cross, and a specular highlight on another piece of the Rover wipes out one arm of another cross.
In the famous photo of Aldrin standing next to the LM with the landing probe in front of him, the large centre cross is just below his right knee and the edge of the picture just touches, or even cuts off, the top of his back pack. Armstrong nearly screwed up that photo. In one of my copies, the centre of the large cross is 147mm from the edge of the frame. Therefore the 56mm square Hasselblad slide has been enlarged 5.25 times to 294mm square. The centre cross is 22mm from point to point, the others half the size, and their arms are never thicker than half a millimetre. This means the centre cross is 4.19mm point to point, the smaller ones 2.095mm, and their arms less than one-tenth of a millimetre thick on the film, so it's no wonder that highlights can creep around them.
You said that you don't wish to defend "Moongate" and I respect that, but must make some comments. On first looking at it I went straight to the photos, and wondered why he printed so many that had in-camera flare because they were taken into the sunlight.
Another of my photos, 838-3, is the full moon over Lake Taupo, with Taupo township lit up at centre left, and the dot in the sky on the right is Jupiter. Note the flare pattern that is similar to photo No 3 in "Moongate". Nothing to do with any atmosphere at all -- simply an in-camera effect that almost anyone could produce, with or without an atmosphere. It even occurs inside my eyeballs now that I'm over 40! The flare produced by the over-exposed moon at the top bled right over into the film perforations, so the crosses being obliterated is no surprise to me.
Nearly all of William Brian's photos that he claims are evidence of atmosphere are simply examples of flare produced by either direct sunlight reaching the lens; overexposure; or chromatic aberration.
[SNIP technical stuff about lens flare and abberations]
Honestly, Rene, I was astounded at Brian's lack of knowledge of normal, everyday photographic principles, especially considering he's an engineer. He could so easily learn about them at many camera stores or clubs or public libraries. I'm not trying to deliberately destroy his work, but only arguing for a little common sense where it should be used. More realism and less fantasy. To me, it's idiotic to claim that flare is "proof" of an atmosphere.
Brian says that dust cannot exist in a vacuum, but what then are The Coalsack in Crux, the Horsehead Nebula in Orion, the Cone Nebula in Monoceros, and many other similar things out there? Great clouds of dust in a vacuum! What he possibly means is that dust will not float for long in a vacuum where there is gravity, and of course with no atmosphere it sticks together and compacts readily, which explains the footprints on the moon, without the need for moisture.
He makes some real nonsense statements, such as the one about Nansen sailing north for 15 days on page 139. This means he either sailed a very short distance each day, or there was no pack ice that year, or he sailed towards the magnetic pole but not the north pole. In fact, he drifted generally north-west and west, and at one stage got out of the "Fram" and walked toward the pole, so he couldn't have possibly sailed past it. The lone star overhead had to be Polaris, and if Nansen actually sank into an opening in the earth, then obviously Polaris would have started sinking behind him, not staying "straight above."
Brian's "hole in the earth" in photo 17 is positioned over Greenland. This can be checked on any globe, with your eye above the equator in Brazil. Isn't Greenland a solid island? The "hole" is merely an optical illusion.
Brian claims the moon has a dense atmosphere, so how does he account for grazing occultations, where stars blink off and on as they pass behind mountains and become exposed by valleys on the edge of the moon. If there was an atmosphere, there would be a measurable decrease in the star's brilliance as the moon's limb neared it, but I've never heard of one. Again, normal phenomena which he fails to explain. Will enclose a chart of grazing occultations visible from New Zealand in 1994, which shows how common they are. Track 3 on 4 March passed over us, but I missed it due to a cloudy sky.
I don't have the technical expertise to comment on everything in "Moongate", and it probably sounds quite plausible to many people, but from what I do understand the book seems to be either a hoax or to belong in the libraries of the flat earth folk.
There is a simple explanation for the extremely rounded hills and dust on the moon that I've never noticed in any books: temperature changes. Every gardener who has clayey soil knows to dig the garden in autumn and the winter frosts and sunshine will break up the clods. It happens in areas like ours, where the temperatures only vary from about -3 to +10 degrees centigrade in winter. So wouldn't the hundreds of degrees variation on the moon break down even rock? The stresses must be enormous.
In the Nexus article there were two comments I feel are easily answered. "The camera that recorded the blast-off [of the Apollo 16 ascent stage] panned upward to track the capsule. Who operated the camera?" Probably Ed Fendall back at Mission Control, who was responsible for the remote control of the Rover's TV camera. See "A Man on the Moon", Andrew Chaikin, 1994, pages 487 & 522. Fendall's camera movements were often about three seconds behind the action on the screen, because of the time it took for the signals to travel to earth then back to the moon, plus his reaction time.
"Many photographers point out the similarity to painted backdrops [in lunar photos]." There is one photo that is definitely airbrushed and that is the panoramic one that includes Schmitt next to the split boulder ("Moongate", photo 15) plus the Lunar Rover on the right. The two separate frames required airbrushing to make up a single, composite picture. But there are also reasons for the effect in unpainted photos. With no recognisable reference points (cars, trees, houses), it's very hard to estimate the distance to the background in two-dimensional photographs. Apparently Armstrong, Aldrin and others had the same problem, even with the benefit of viewing the real thing with stereoscopic vision. Therefore, on a distant horizon, fine details such as small craters completely disappear, giving a much smoother "painted" look to the background. Then there is the same bleeding problem mentioned above, where sunlit moon meets black sky, an in-camera effect which further confuses the eye. Both of these effects produce many optical illusions where there are distant hills.
To illustrate, how far away is the township in my photo 838-3? Probably a few miles, but without benefit of prior knowledge or a map, it's extremely hard to tell. And how far away and how big is the mountain in 839-2? That's Mount Ruapehu, the one that erupted recently, photographed under the same full moon on a beautiful late-summer evening. The top is 13.5 km (8.3 miles) from the camera, and at least 1800 metres (5,900 feet) above it. The left and right snowcapped peaks are about 4.8 km (3 miles) apart. It looks much bigger in real life, due to my use of a 24mm wideangle lens. Note the belt and sword of Orion (with the red Orion Nebula in the sword -- dust in a vacuum!) just above the snow, Sirius near top centre, and Procyon top right -- upside down compared with how you see them.
Your arguments about Apollo 13 are interesting. My understanding of the free-return trajectory is that it was also called the "slingshot maneuver" because it was a fast and furious action carried out close to the moon's surface. You say in your pamphlet that "...they would have run past the moon tens of thousands of miles before being pulled back." I've never understood that to be the case. The ICE craft did five loops around the moon before it went off to investigate Halley's comet, and each lunar flyby increased its velocity and changed its direction. The last loop, on 23 December 1983, brought ICE within 62 miles of the Moon's surface.
Just before the explosion, Apollo 13 was not on the free-return trajectory but on the hybrid trajectory, because of intending to land in the west of the moon and away from the equator. It set off from Earth on free return, but changed to hybrid during an early burn. Much of this is explained on page 298 of "A Man on the Moon", but briefly, they had to do a burn after the explosion to get back onto free return, and therefore back to Earth, but DIDN'T HAVE TO DO A BURN BEHIND THE MOON. It was called free return because a burn wasn't required. Your pamphlet implies Apollo 13 had to do a burn to brake into Moon orbit, but it didn't. According to all the texts I've read, the Moon alone flung it quickly back towards Earth.
In GOTCHA No. 4 you say NASA lied about doing a burn behind the Moon. Surely they must do a burn BEHIND the Moon because of the craft doing about 5,200 miles per hour in one direction and the Moon doing 2,200 MPH in the opposite direction, otherwise the craft wouldn't be captured by the Moon's gravity and pulled into orbit because of the low escape velocity. That's why free return is free. No burn. If they did a burn well away from the Moon where it would be visible from earth, they might simply crash onto the leading edge of the Moon. The craft must be travelling nearly perpendicular to the Earth-Moon axis when it meets the Moon, because of their relative speeds in space, therefore it becomes tangential to the Moon BEHIND it along our line of sight.
Anyway, enough for now. I'd probably buy your book if I was on an income, but about NZ$45 is out of reach right now. I have to save for the operation to extract the amalgam.
Will also enclose a bit about how it's apparently easy to get NASA photos from Bara Studios in Bladensburg, MD, as long as you know the numbers. Unfortunately, I've no idea where the article came from -- it was given to me my by a friend who now can't find his source.
Finally, will enclose the names of the craters in photo AS11-37-5437. It's interesting to know that it's about 150km (93 miles) between Maskelyne on the right and Toricelli C on the left. Tranquility Base is about 170km (105 miles) from Maskelyne. Very hard to tell without any frame of reference.
Kind regards
[Kiwi]
Enclosures:
Article about Boron for treating arthritis
Copies of letters to newspapers
Photocopy of photo with "C"
Closeup of "C"
Photo with "39", Charles Duke near Flag Crater
Chart of grazing occultations visible from New Zealand in 1994
Article about NASA photos from Bara Studios
Names of craters in photo AS11-37-5437
Photo 838-3
Photo 839-2
Photo 854-2
