NASA photographic record of Manned Moonlanding:Is there evidence of fabrication?

[Luke Pemberton]

The worst thing was the sheer number of insults levied by this person and I applaud Jayutah for his totally professional responses in not rising to the bait.

Quite. As Jay explained to Gillianren, he most probably ignored her because Romulus was more interested in him. I found his 'Mr Windley' most condescending. I don't think it as a term he used out of reverence. It really is apparent that the focus on Jay is testament to his standing on this subject. It explains the obsessive behaviour he draws to some degree. They clearly feel threatened, and I believe Romulus more than most with his boasts of superior intellect.

[Bob B.]

I think that overall, and Jay in particular, the members of this forum conducted themselves pretty well considering Romulus' constant abuse.

[Luke Pemberton]

I think that overall, and Jay in particular, the members of this forum conducted themselves pretty well considering Romulus' constant abuse.

I was sarcastic on several occasions, but I do find my halo slips at such times.

[Northern Lurker]

I have mixed feelings on current hoaxies. It is good thing that moon hoax is dying except for the few die hards who are not very convincing. The good thing about hoaxies is that their claims spark interesting conversations and I hope that some people come here to find the truth about hoax claims and get inspired about space. I know I did.

I have had some interest in space all my life but searching the answer for David Percy's glinting wires brought me to Clavius and ApolloHoax on Proboards and I have been lurking ever since  To pat myself on back, I recognized PLSS antenna immediately but remained baffled about flashes near the top of the picture.

Romulus was really bad show. All those promises about evidence and scientific approach dwindled down to ad hominems, delusions of superiority and bad analogies not to mention the other blunders which were too technical for me to spot. I know there is Ektachrome and wondered about partially developing film. I had no idea that Ektachrome was positive film (I'm not much of a photographer...).

During the last few days I have been twice outside while it was raining and didn't get wet. First time I used underground access tunnel from my work place to parking garage and drove home. The second time it was snowing outside and my clothing was slippery enough that snow didn't cling.

Lurky

edit: added signature

[smartcooky]

Does Betteridge's Law of Headlines apply here then?

Well, yes, if you listen to what Ian Betteridge himslelf had to say about it....

"This story is a great demonstration of my maxim that any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no.' The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it"


... then it appears to apply perfectly to Romulus' threads.

[smartcooky]

Romulus was really bad show. All those promises about evidence and scientific approach dwindled down to ad hominems, delusions of superiority and bad analogies not to mention the other blunders which were too technical for me to spot. I know there is Ektachrome and wondered about partially developing film. I had no idea that Ektachrome was positive film (I'm not much of a photographer...)

The things is, you don't have to be a photographer to understand some of the basic aspects of photography. It isn't always easy to explain "technical blunders" in some of the sciences; physics, mathematics, chemistry etc. in simple terms that the layman can understand, but this issue of non-parallel shadows is simple and straight forward. Anyone can understand it.

To use Romulus' example, he claims that this photo is faked.



He claims that, because the LM shadow (in the distance) and the shadow of the rocks (in the foreground) are not parallel, that this is undebunkable proof-positive that the photo was faked. He claims that such non-parallel shadows are impossible. He cited some no-name batshit crazy Ukrainian physicist whom he said had proved this photo was faked because....

"we see shadows with angles with differences of at least  45 degrees. Notice that the shadow of the LEM is at right angles to the camera's field of view* . NO ONE can duplicate this anomaly with any type of camera, lens or film with the sun as the only source of light  because if one shadow is perpendicular to the cameras field of view in the foreground they all will be, and in this case on is an another is not."

I see many Apollo supporters go to the trouble of using the uneven or sloping ground to account for this, but it is not even that complicated. The fact is that even on perfectly flat ground, shadows cast (with the sun as the light source) by vertical objects in the background and foreground of any photo can never seen to be parallel. This is because the shadows are being cast in three dimensional space, but a photograph is a two-dimensional representation of that space.

So Romulus challenged...

"If you can debunk this mans work, do so."

... and it took me all of two minutes to find a few photographs by Google Image searching "fencepost" and  "shadows" to find images that totally debunks this claim. One of these images was this one...



and the rest are in this post...

http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=767.msg26346#msg26346

The degree to which these shadows are non-parallel is also affected by the height above the ground that the photo was taken from, i.e, the Angle of View. In the Apollo photo, the AoV of the LM is low while the AoV of the rocks is high, we are looking down at them at a steep angle. Same applies to the distant and neat fenceposts.

Importantly, the people who took those photos were not trying to debunk an Apollo hoax claim. They will have had no idea whatsoever that someone might use them that way.

Of course, as is true to form for hoax believers, Romulus failed to even acknowledge my post., and I'm sure that if he had, I would have been subject to the usual torrent of abuse for being a paid lackey of NASA and one of "Evil Jay's" minions.




NOTE:
* Actually this makes no sense; but I know what he means. He's saying that the LM shadow is parallel to the photographic horizon (i.e. the X-axis).  The only thing that can be "at right angles to the camera's field of view" is the Z axis; the direction the camera is pointing in.

[gillianren]

Quite. As Jay explained to Gillianren, he most probably ignored her because Romulus was more interested in him.

Mmm.  That was certainly part of it, but he responded a lot more to a lot of other people.  It's also worth noting that his responses to me dropped entirely once I was definitively established to be female.

As for genealogy, my family is from everywhere!  England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Denmark, German, and a town that, when my great-grandmother was born, was the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  We're not actually sure what country it's in now, since Czechoslovakia split in two.

[Sus_pilot]

@Dr. Acula (and Jay):  I work for the railroad that moved the Olympic flame on a special car upwards 70MPH.  My buddies in the Safety Department had fun demonstrating to the FRA that we could do it safely.

[dwight]

One VERY interesting point which Jay queried Romulus on: if the lens distortion explains unparalleled shadows on earth based photos, why can it not also explain lunar based photos. An interesting precedence that Romulus has created for us.

[onebigmonkey]

I think that overall, and Jay in particular, the members of this forum conducted themselves pretty well considering Romulus' constant abuse.

I confess to not being polite to him once it became obvious what kind of poster we were dealing with, and while I haven't read the entirety of responses I gather a term I used did not meet with universal approval.

I did start to compose a long and qualified apology over that, but while I did not want to offend anyone for whom I have respect I certainly did not want to give Romulus the impression that I was apologising to him: he got what he gave.

I simply have no time for him or people like him and I don't see why he should feel he has such a solid position on the moral high ground that he can dish out abuse and not get it straight back. Logical arguments and reasoned discussion are a waste of time for him - he never came here with any intention other than to troll and admitted as much.

I have been abused and banned on too many conspiracy forums for expressing my support for and supplying evidence in favour of Apollo to feel inclined to treat people like Romulus with anything but the contempt I feel for them once they have raised their true colours.

[onebigmonkey]

One VERY interesting point which Jay queried Romulus on: if the lens distortion explains unparalleled shadows on earth based photos, why can it not also explain lunar based photos. An interesting precedence that Romulus has created for us.

An well but you see the thing is it wasn't the right camera, or the right lens, or it was taken on a Wednesday, or standing on one leg, and so on and so on....

[smartcooky]

One VERY interesting point which Jay queried Romulus on: if the lens distortion explains unparalleled shadows on earth based photos, why can it not also explain lunar based photos. An interesting precedence that Romulus has created for us.

Lens distortion (also called "barrel distortion") is not what causes parallel lines in reality to appear non-parallel in a photograph

Barrel distortion causes straight lines near the edges of the field of view to appear bent...



... and it really only applies to wide angle lenses. I would not consider the 53° field of view of the Apollo lunar surface cameras to be "wide angle"

[Luke Pemberton]

One VERY interesting point which Jay queried Romulus on: if the lens distortion explains unparalleled shadows on earth based photos, why can it not also explain lunar based photos. An interesting precedence that Romulus has created for us.

While not identical to the point Jay raises, as that is specific to lens distortion, my question with many of the photographic anomaly claims has been 'why can't the 'anomaly' be on the lunar surface?'

My own summary would be that the three stock arguments were parallel shadows, fill lighting and secondary light sources, but it would appear that every photograph is subject to some sort of Earth only anomaly now. The whole argument is tediously boring, particulary when the debunking of these three stock arguments has been ignored and the 'entire' photographic record is questioned. It makes their position even more ludicrous as they extend their theory beyond the original claims.

I also get slightly annoyed when the one piece of evidence that they were shot in a vacuum is ignored, and that is the sharpness of the shadows.

[Luke Pemberton]

Mmm.  That was certainly part of it, but he responded a lot more to a lot of other people.  It's also worth noting that his responses to me dropped entirely once I was definitively established to be female.

I am more than happy to add misogynist to a list of his -isms and -ists.

[Kiwi]

I have had some interest in space all my life but searching the answer for David Percy's glinting wires brought me to Clavius and ApolloHoax on Proboards and I have been lurking ever since  To pat myself on back, I recognized PLSS antenna immediately but remained baffled about flashes near the top of the picture.

Hi Northern Lurker.  You don't say whether you figured out the flashes at the top of the picture, but if not, here's an old post of mine at the previous incarnation of this board.

Notice I talk about "frames," which probably horrifies those who know more about copying film and video onto DVDs than I do, but even so, it shows that in this example from the area near the Apollo 17 flag, one or two of the flashes are simply coincidental artifacts of the copying process - kinescope to video or vice versa - and are not related and therefore not wires.

Anyone who has the Apollo 17 DVD set can check what I wrote.

Kiwi
Post 41
Suspended by wires.
Reply #39 on 28 Jul, 2005, 12:47am
http://apollohoax.proboards21.com/index.cgi?board=theories&action=display&thread=1122302912&page=3#1122468469

Apollo 17 "wire"

For the record, the link provided by Margamatix
http://www.ufos-aliens.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/apollofilm.rm
does indeed claim that there are wires holding up the astronauts, and shows a scene of the Apollo 17 flag and an antenna reflecting the sunlight with a similar flare at the top. This is, of course, "a wire," as far as the hoax-promoters are concerned.

However, close examination of the Spacecraft Films DVDs, disc 2, "EVA 1," "First Television," with the image filling a TV screen, reveals some interesting points.

First of all the film continuously shows the astronauts from 0:8:35 until 0:14:56, a total of 6 minutes 21 seconds, both out beyond the flag and very close to the TV camera on the rover. Never at any time during their different activities is there evidence of wires holding them up. Their antennas can be seen regularly when they are side-on to the TV camera, sometimes dark, sometimes light, and sometimes brightly reflecting the sun.

At 0:10:56 the image changes to a darker one, with the lunar surface going from medium grey to dark brown. It changes back again at 0:16:02. From the booklet that comes with the DVDs, I guess that this is a changeover from videotape to kinescope or vice versa. It's not unusual and happens at other times during the flag-raising and, for one instance of a few, between 1:02:36 and 1:04:36 during the ALSEP deployment.

During these darker phases, the overall image quality is much lower and there is a type of audio tape print-through, when dialogue can be heard faintly four or five seconds before it actually occurs. Additionally, and of importance regarding "wires," there are many artefacts that appear briefly on the screen -- colour banding, random white spots, dark spots and sometimes a number of white spots that can all be seen at once. Most of these last for one to three frames.

The particular flash in Margamatix's link occurs at 12 minutes 10 seconds during "First Television." In fact, there are two flashes from the antenna, both lasting for three frames. Neither of these two flashes are responsible for the flash at the top of the screen, which lasts for two frames and begins four frames after the beginning of the second antenna flash, just as it fades completely away.

About one second later another similar flash can be seen at the bottom of the screen and also lasts for two frames. It is unrelated to anything happening on screen, so I believe that the flash at the top of the screen is just another random artefact and just coincidentally occurs above the antenna, but is not in any way evidence of a wire. If it was, it should also have occurred during the first antenna flash.