Merged Discussion of the moon landing "hoax"

[MetalPig]

Shadows - The only source of light on the moon was the Sun but shadows were cast in multiple directions

This was covered by the Mythbusters episode that was mentioned earlier.
It's easily explained by the uneven surface of the moon, as they show by replicating the effect.

 

[Corsair 115]

The background is VERY far away, the horizon is a little closer, and there is no air distortion so you get a really clear view of distant objects.

That, combined with the lack of familiar reference points commonly found on Earth (i.e. houses, trees, cars, telephone poles, etc.), and the Moon's smaller size (meaning its horizon is closer than on Earth), resulted in the astronauts often having a hard time judging sizes and distances on the lunar surface.

There's a great example on Apollo 16, I think it was, when the astronauts spot an interesting rock in the distance and want to take a sample from it. So they start jogging off towards it. And they keep going. And going. And going. What they had at first thought was a good-sized rock a medium distance away turned out to be a house-sized boulder a long distance away.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

What exactly is ironosphere? I looked it up but I can't make heads or tails of it.

It's a spherical cloud of irony surrounding moon hoax threads. Sometimes it takes specialized techniques to cut through it and raise the signal-to-noise ratio. I use ramen.

 

[tsig]

I don't wish to be critical (well, I do, but in the hope of you thinking and learning, not just for the sake of putting you down), but don't you think that
and

cancel each other out?

Looks like we're going down a well worn path. "I'm a wide-eyed innocent and I've got a few questions".

 

[tsig]

Not trying to defend LGR here, but this is like...textbook ad hom.

Not always:

An ad hominem (Latin: "to the man"), also known as argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to link the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.[1] The ad hominem is a classic logical fallacy,[2] but it is not always fallacious; in some instances, questions of personal conduct, character, motives, etc., are legitimate and relevant to the issue.[3]

 

[Gypseagirl]

Looks like we're going down a well worn path. "I'm a wide-eyed innocent and I've got a few questions".

Well everyone has been really nice to answer my questions. Sorry if i'm not technical like everyone here but I was just trying to understand the truth and to understand why I thought the way I did. Also since i'm not technical I needed someone to break it down in simple terms so I could understand it.

 

[Sledge]

Not always:

An ad hominem (Latin: "to the man"), also known as argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to link the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.[1] The ad hominem is a classic logical fallacy,[2] but it is not always fallacious; in some instances, questions of personal conduct, character, motives, etc., are legitimate and relevant to the issue.[3]

Yeah, I don't think there's a fallacy here. The claim is that one shouldn't pay too much attention to what lgr says as he is a poor judge of evidence. The support for that claim is that he is a holocaust denier. I think it's quite reasonable to say that a holocaust denier is a poor judge of evidence, and that one can therefore safely ignore what they have to say.

 

[A Laughing Baby]

All right. I apologize and retract what I said.

 

[Shalamar]

You will have to take a long exposures for the stars and use a tripod and not too long of an exposure or the stars will become lines. But if you take the moon's picture the stars most likely will not show.

Paul

Here's a picture I took of the moon through my Telescope.. No stars.

 

[Magyar]

So I guess some aliens placed that laser target on the Moon we used after the Moon landings.

This article says it was designed to last about 10 years. But I was under the impression it was still being used. I think the only dust that would land on it would be from nearby impacts and it had no moving parts.

I found this article,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/21/mcdonald-observatory-space-laser-funding

but I thought that there was at least still one working in NM observatory. Can't recall the name of it that any one of these MO ONs could go to an look at it working.

But those folks are in on it too

 

[matt.tansy]

Apache Point Observatory.

 

[Gypseagirl]

Here's a picture I took of the moon through my Telescope.. No stars.

[qimg]http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh180/Shalamar01/Moon1-21-10.jpg[/qimg]

That is a good picture. I went and looked at a bunch of space pictures and it is indeed true about the no stars. I know this sounds crazy but I just never got into the space and science when I was younger then I hear about how the moon landing was faked and just went with it. Now I wish I had gotten in to science when I was younger.

 

[sts60]

Looks like we're going down a well worn path. "I'm a wide-eyed innocent and I've got a few questions".

I certainly have seen many trod down this well-worn path, but I don't think Gypseagirl is doing this, if that's what you're saying. She has been polite and receptive to evidence so far. In any case, she deserves the benefit of the doubt.

 

[twinstead]

I certainly have seen many trod down this well-worn path, but I don't think Gypseagirl is doing this, if that's what you're saying. She has been polite and receptive to evidence so far. In any case, she deserves the benefit of the doubt.

I agree with this

 

[tsig]

Can someone explain these for me.

Still Photographs - Cameras were fitted to the Astronauts chest - there was no view finder and photographs could only be taken by movement of the body but 1000's of flawless photographs were taken.

Images show that Stars were missing from the black lunar sky

Grainy, Unclear images although technology at the time could have produced much clearer images - Did NASA intentionally make the images hard to see?

Shadows - The only source of light on the moon was the Sun but shadows were cast in multiple directions

I certainly have seen many trod down this well-worn path, but I don't think Gypseagirl is doing this, if that's what you're saying. She has been polite and receptive to evidence so far. In any case, she deserves the benefit of the doubt.

It's just that those questions come straight out of the moon hoaxers play book. It seems odd to ask questions that have been answered in the sources given.

Time will tell.

 

[Craig4]

Science is the opium of the masses.

That's pretty unlikely since world-wide the masses have a depressingly limited understanding of the hard sciences.

 

[little grey rabbit]

lgr is trying to make a joke by making a portmanteau of irony and ionosphere.

You seem surprisingly sure of your interpretation here, Mr Tansy?

Do you have specialised qualifications in mind-reading demented bunnies?

I should stipulated, I am used to the very best and not just any random member of the common herd trying to make sense of gnome bunny aphorisms

He vaguely recalls something about the ionosphere and radio waves but he has no idea what he's writing about.

LOL, you got that part right. Then again, I am just agent provocateur.

 

[sts60]

Can someone explain these for me.

Others have addressed these, but there are a few additional points that may be useful.

Still Photographs - Cameras were fitted to the Astronauts chest - there was no view finder and photographs could only be taken by movement of the body but 1000's of flawless photographs were taken.

The camera mount was not rigid and afforded some flexibility to move the camera. More importantly, the cameras could simply be lifted off and held in the gloved hands. They were modified for ease of use with the limited dexterity afforded by the gloves.

The astronauts themselves received extensive training in use of the cameras and took a lot of practice photos. Some, of course, were more proficient than others.

Images show that Stars were missing from the black lunar sky

The lack of atmosphere on the Moon only gives about 15% improvement in visible light transmission over a good dark, dry, high Earth observing site. The stars don't become magically brighter, and given the limits of what the Apollo missions could bring with them, any well-equipped amateur astronomer on Earth could have taken much better astrophotographs anyway.

They did bring and operate a small ultraviolet telescope on Apollo 16, because Earth's atmosphere attenuates that part of the UV spectrum rather strongly; this provided an experimental opportunity. But Apollo was about lunar science, not stellar astronomy.

Seeing the stars from the Moon, or photographing them, was hard because of the difficulty in obtaining a view of the sky without sunlit Moonscape or other objects in the field of view. IIRC, at least one astronaut with some difficulty was able to do this long enough to see some stars, but he didn't have time to properly dark adapt given their busy schedule.

Grainy, Unclear images although technology at the time could have produced much clearer images - Did NASA intentionally make the images hard to see?

I don't know where you read this, but the question doesn't make much sense, given how much effort was put into obtaining thousands of high-quality still images and hundreds of hours of high-quality film and video motion imagery. The video quality improved over the missions as the technology suitable for lunar use advanced.

Shadows - The only source of light on the moon was the Sun but shadows
were cast in multiple directions

Not much to add here, except that the same effects can be seen in Earthly photography.

 

[Paulhoff]

Hence my use of the words "flat surface".

I eagerly await your "D'oh!".

Which you didn't say that the moon's ground was anything but flat.

Paul

 

[PhantomWolf]

Can someone explain these for me.

Still Photographs - Cameras were fitted to the Astronauts chest - there was no view finder and photographs could only be taken by movement of the body but 1000's of flawless photographs were taken.

Images show that Stars were missing from the black lunar sky

Grainy, Unclear images although technology at the time could have produced much clearer images - Did NASA intentionally make the images hard to see?

Shadows - The only source of light on the moon was the Sun but shadows were cast in multiple directions

This page answers a lot of your questions and gives a good grounding in Apollo 12 as well. It's not finished currently, but it still should answer most of what you were asking.