Merged Apollo "hoax" discussion / Lick observatory laser saga

[Toke]

Patrick gets caught out again. This gets better and better.

I am not quite sure what dynamic range is, something to do with brightness?
Anyway, 15+ magnitude involves lots of zeroes, and the

HDRI images in WYSIWYG

is something about 96bit pixels.

Nice to see someone noticing and calling him on the BS.

 

[Patrick1000]

EEEEEE Gads Talk about a mountain out of a molehill!!!

Here you go: From Celestia, more or less an open-source competitor to Starry Night:
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/158784e57de3c27587.png[/qimg]

(Which is another reason Patrick's claim is absurd: Starry Night is not at all the only planetarium software available.)

ETA: Hmm, that image is too blurry; scaled down too much. Let me try again: [qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_158784e57df2453573.png[/qimg]

EEEEE Gads Talk about a mountain out of a molehill!!!


Not sure I see anything here or the point. Anyway will make mine one more time and move on. I have not made a claim of any sort. I pointed out that once one knows Apollo is bogus, one reads things differently, as I did reading the dark earth on my Starry Night screens. Once pointing this out, I speculated it may not be an innocent mistake. It may be intentional.

I pointed this out actually for others of my ilk, other HB types that may want to check this out, see what they think.

Now that I have, I will move on to more of what I do well, narrative analysis where I do not speculate, where I have proven Apollo's fraudulence. In this department, I have much more to say, and as time permits, I shall carry on.

I claim nothing about the Starry Night Dark Earth, except as a person who has proven Apollo bogus, I read that dark earth as possibly though by no means definitely, having been done intentionally.

And with that clarification which seems should not have been necessary as I have emphasized the point all along, I shall move on, back to Michael Collins in lunar orbit, the other two astronauts as well, and my favorite topic, coordinate confusion and "bird hiding"

 

[frenat]

Sadly he's not joking. There are still people on GLP that argue the world is flat and insist the Moon has never been seen in the daytime before.

 

[nomuse]

... Nuh-uh! You're joking!

I dunno if you are joking about it being joking, but it is about as literal as I can make it. I used to follow Apollo Hoax threads over there, and I couldn't help notice how often "The Moon is......!!!" threads got started.

Of course, there are also some dears there who think the Moon is disc-shaped, or who see gardens on the Moon (on full-disc images; aka for those "gardens" to be the size she thinks they are, the entire Moon would be no more than 500 meters in diameter.)

I dunno how much of it may be role-playing, but the net effect is.....scary.

 

[Loss Leader]

23 off topic and variously uncivil posts have been moved to AAH.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Loss Leader

 

[twinstead]

EEEEE Gads Talk about a mountain out of a molehill!!!


Not sure I see anything here or the point. Anyway will make mine one more time and move on. I have not made a claim of any sort. I pointed out that once one knows Apollo is bogus, one reads things differently, as I did reading the dark earth on my Starry Night screens. Once pointing this out, I speculated it may not be an innocent mistake. It may be intentional.

I pointed this out actually for others of my ilk, other HB types that may want to check this out, see what they think.

Now that I have, I will move on to more of what I do well, narrative analysis where I do not speculate, where I have proven Apollo's fraudulence. In this department, I have much more to say, and as time permits, I shall carry on.

I claim nothing about the Starry Night Dark Earth, except as a person who has proven Apollo bogus, I read that dark earth as possibly though by no means definitely, having been done intentionally.

And with that clarification which seems should not have been necessary as I have emphasized the point all along, I shall move on, back to Michael Collins in lunar orbit, the other two astronauts as well, and my favorite topic, coordinate confusion and "bird hiding"

Seriously? How exasperating! The preponderance of evidence that the Apollo missions occurred as advertised can ONLY Point to you being totally, horribly, incontrovertibly wrong. You do NOT get to ignore that evidence and concentrate on some pet "anomalies". It doesn't work that way.

End of discussion.

 

[nomuse]

EEEEE Gads Talk about a mountain out of a molehill!!!

Not sure I see anything here or the point. Anyway will make mine one more time and move on. I have not made a claim of any sort. I pointed out that once one knows Apollo is bogus, one reads things differently, as I did reading the dark earth on my Starry Night screens. Once pointing this out, I speculated it may not be an innocent mistake. It may be intentional.

"Once one has decided a pet theory must be true, even the most ridiculous supporting assumptions begin to seem rational."

Fixed it for you.

I pointed this out actually for others of my ilk, other HB types that may want to check this out, see what they think.

Now that I have, I will move on to more of what I do well, narrative analysis where I do not speculate, where I have proven Apollo's fraudulence. In this department, I have much more to say, and as time permits, I shall carry on.

Invest in the energy to make a clear and concise statement on what you think you have shown, first. You retreat, blather, add qualifications, change horses, and otherwise create such a snow-flurry of content-empty prose I don't think anyone here -- including you! -- has any idea what your case actually is.

I claim nothing about the Starry Night Dark Earth, except as a person who has proven Apollo bogus, I read that dark earth as possibly though by no means definitely, having been done intentionally.

And with that clarification which seems should not have been necessary as I have emphasized the point all along, I shall move on, back to Michael Collins in lunar orbit, the other two astronauts as well, and my favorite topic, coordinate confusion and "bird hiding"

Why? Why would the Earth be dark in Starry Night? How does ANY conspiracy benefit from making a claim that can be debunked by anyone with the time to walk outside and look up?

The Moon is bright in the sky. Everyone knows that (okay -- aside from a few Godlike Productions posters!) How could any software think they could get away with claiming a celestial object like Moon, Earth, or any other similarly large and nearby body would be dark?

No, I won't let you ooze away. This is the same thing you've done on two other boards. You aren't playing at science; you are playing to the jury. Throw **** at the wall, and even though none of it sticks the stench still remains in their minds. And, you hope, convinces them of your case when logic and actual proof remains impossible for you to achieve.

 

[Buckaroo]

Seriously? How exasperating! The preponderance of evidence that the Apollo missions occurred as advertised can ONLY Point to you being totally, horribly, incontrovertibly wrong. You do NOT get to ignore that evidence and concentrate on some pet "anomalies". It doesn't work that way.

End of discussion.

Evidence like the existence of LROC imagery from LRO of the remains of the Apollo missions, which I have personally seen almost at their source. Unless, of course, I'm a liar, my officemate is a liar, or the LRO team is a liar. Which is it, "Patrick?" Hell, maybe all of us are in on it. What do you think? Am I a NASA shill running some PSYOP?

 

[Patrick1000]

I vote to move on

"Once one has decided a pet theory must be true, even the most ridiculous supporting assumptions begin to seem rational."

Fixed it for you.



Invest in the energy to make a clear and concise statement on what you think you have shown, first. You retreat, blather, add qualifications, change horses, and otherwise create such a snow-flurry of content-empty prose I don't think anyone here -- including you! -- has any idea what your case actually is.



Why? Why would the Earth be dark in Starry Night? How does ANY conspiracy benefit from making a claim that can be debunked by anyone with the time to walk outside and look up?

The Moon is bright in the sky. Everyone knows that (okay -- aside from a few Godlike Productions posters!) How could any software think they could get away with claiming a celestial object like Moon, Earth, or any other similarly large and nearby body would be dark?

No, I won't let you ooze away. This is the same thing you've done on two other boards. You aren't playing at science; you are playing to the jury. Throw **** at the wall, and even though none of it sticks the stench still remains in their minds. And, you hope, convinces them of your case when logic and actual proof remains impossible for you to achieve.

Take a look at the 2 Armstrong shots where the earth appears in moonscapes and compare its appearance with the software representations. In the former it is blue and bright and in the latter dark. As I said, I'll move on. As I have made my points, I respectfully concede to all the excellent points you have made above with respect to the software and conditions at the time.

 

[dafydd]

Evidence like the existence of LROC imagery from LRO of the remains of the Apollo missions, which I have personally seen almost at their source. Unless, of course, I'm a liar, my officemate is a liar, or the LRO team is a liar. Which is it, "Patrick?" Hell, maybe all of us are in on it. What do you think? Am I a NASA shill running some PSYOP?

Answer the question please Patrick.

 

[Travis]

Patrick.....can you think of any other reason the Earth might be dark?

Any at all?

 

[tsig]

So Starry Night says of their pro 6 software;

"Starry Night Pro is a powerful program designed for those with a serious interest in astronomy. Increase your in-the-field observing success with features such as the Events Finder to choose targets, or customized Observing Lists for a specific night or object of interest. Print out three-view star hopping charts customized to your equipment to effortlessly guide you to challenging objects. With extensive data sets, advanced telescope control, and comprehensive observational tools you'll soon transform your computer into a sophisticated virtual observatory."

Certainly, the software is not perfect. I am not a professional astronomer, though some who are use this as a tool and like it. I use it to study the night sky.
What is important are Starry Night's numbers. At the time of Armstrong's exit from the LM, the apparent magnitude of Sirius , the brightest star in the sky was -1.47, so to your favor I will call that -2.0 to make the calculation easier. I will make Sirius more bright, to your advantage. The Earth is apparent magnitude -16.28 and I will again adjust to your advantage to make my calculation easier.

Now, I challenge you to find a data base, academic or commercial that is at variance from these numbers by any meaningful degree. Look at the numbers used by academics on THAT VERY DAY and you will find Sirius to be about -1.47 and the earth from the moon -16.28. Starry night may not be perfect, but these numbers here are quite accurate, produce others if you can. I would welcome your challenge in this regard.

-2.0 to -16.0 is a difference of 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 (2.51 x itself 14 times). That gives 984,854. I did the math to your favor. The Earth was roughly one million times as bright as Sirius that evening and Starry Night software, though listing the magnitudes accurately, does not seem to do their usually good job of conveying this difference in some qualitative sense by showing the earth to be fairly bright.

As a matter of fact, you cannot see it and one would think it was not even in the lunar sky that night judging by the software's visual.

Do I think this is proof of a hoax, absolutely not. But knowing Apollo fraudulent, when i see this stuff it makes me wonder. And I love Starry night software and will continue to use it. It's a great tool as long as one has others.

I'd think you might want to go out at night and look at the sky.

 

[nomuse]

I finally found the reference I was looking for (should have searched the NASA archives first!)

First bit of data that pops out:

"Measurements on the wavelength sensitivity of the vidicon
surface were conducted in November 1967 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL) and indicated a decrease from the peak sensitivity by a factor 1/300
for the ruby laser wavelength of 6443 A, making detection marginal for
existing and planned ruby laser systems. However, the availability of
argon-ion lasers operating in the blue-green (main wavelengths at 4880
and 5345 A), within the peak of the vidicon sensitivity..."

Which is to say, according to calculations at JPL at the time, the Lick laser (the most powerful of the bunch) would likely not be visible to astronauts or on video.

The paper goes on to estimate that the visual magnitude from the Moon of a 10W argon-ion laser lasing in the blue-green range would be something like -1. Estimate was that the effective power of the 10W Goddard laser was about 1 watt after atmospheric losses and coupling inefficiencies within the telescope. The vidicon was opened up until the dark areas of the crescent Earth were at half-saturation value (meaning the camera was utterly incapable of seeing anything but blow-out for any illuminated object on the Moon, should it have been pointed that way at those settings).

In conclusion; yes: a practical visible-light laser can be as bright as a first-magnitude star. And at 10W, these lasers could be operated continuously for fairly long intervals.

So I withdraw part of my objection. It WOULD be possible to aim a laser at the Moon that an astronaut could see if he chose to look for it.

 

[matt.tansy]

The magnitude quoted in the planetarium program is the Earth's total magnitude. "Surface brightness" is the brightness of an area of an object, normally measured in square arcseconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_brightness

 

[Patrick1000]

Jia Ping at a Shanghai Caffe'

Sitting in a Shanghai Caffe' yesterday, my friend Jia Ping, a Chinese highly skilled nurse practitioner with expertise in infectious diseases, and also a woman with an awareness of my rather new interest in Apollo 11 fraudulence, asked me if I had come across anything new with respect to my personal investigation. Her husband is a physicist, age 52. He works primarily as a programmer now, but had done a great deal of aerospace work at one time. Years back, when I first met him, he and another Chinese man were going on and on about how Apollo just could not be legitimate. Their point at the time was that one would have anticipated continued progress with respect to manned space exploration, if in no other arena, than simply in the arena of continued lunar exploration, had the Apollo program been authentic. At the time, I thought the discussion was interesting, but off target, and admittedly, the details were lost given my poor command of Mandarin at the time. Even now, having studied the language better than ten years with some dedication, I would not be able to follow such a discussion very well at all.

The nurse Jia Ping, I met here in Shanghai years back doing some work and we have stayed good friends. She's found it amusing that I have come over to her husband's way of thinking. We had a good laugh. That actually would be an understatement.

During the caffe' chat, I showed Jia Ping a copy of the Mission Control flight officers' book, FROM THE TRENCHES OF MISSION CONTROL TO THE CRATERS OF THE MOON. She does not read English, but as she asked, I informed her that based on H. David Reed's testimony in chapter three, testimony backed up and fully supported by the astronauts' own accounts(scripted of course) of events, astronaut accounts in which they themselves claim not to know where the Eagle was(see my previous well referenced posts related to astronaut statements of coordinate/landing site unawareness), one could then examine the Apollo 11 Mission Report, as well as other NASA primary materials and demonstrate without any ambiguity whatsoever that the Mission Report had to have been forged/fraudulent, given it was at odds with the astronauts' own scripted accounts. She asked me to bring the book by her house to show to her husband.

And so I did, leaving it with him for the balance of my stay in Asia. His English is quite good and he was of course fascinated to say the least. Just before we parted, I flipped through the electronic version of the same book I have on my computer and showed Jia Ping the nurse this, from the long opening essay in the book by Fight Director Glynn S. Lunney. Lunney's Chapter One, THE FLIGHT DYNAMICS STORY, was Copyrighted in 2010 and the book's first edition was copyrighted 2011;

"On the tape, the crew reported the first motion type sickness in one of our astronauts, Frank Borman. This event made for much conversation with management and the flight surgeons, but in the end the crew had a three day coast period out to the moon withlight housekeeping duties. Before arrival at the moon, the symptoms had sufficiently abated."

Maurice Kennedy; Charles Deiterich III; William Stoval; William Boone III; Glynn S. Lunney; H. David Reed; Jerry C. Bostick (2011-05-13). From The Trench of Mission Control to the Craters of The Moon (ebook Locations 3977-3981).


Jia Ping's husband did the honors of translating Lunney's English to be sure she understood well. She said, "Patrick, how could they tell so fast it was not an infectious gastroenteritis. There would be no way to tell and the bacteria would be floating all over the space ship. They could even breath the bacteria in. That does not seem right to me. I do not believe that."

This is a woman who has never before voiced an opinion on Apollo authenticity before, one way or the other.

As I was just stepping out the door, Jia Ping's husband said, "Patrick, you know that you are really on to something, examining their words carefully as you do. Why didn't someone think of this before?"

I said, "I do not know. Please keep the book. i need all of the help I can get."

I leave my friends here in Shanghai in a few days, finally to arrive in Delhi at the middle of the week I imagine. Until then, I'll answer as many of your questions as I possibly can and summarize my own thoughts. Looks like I have found a couple of allies here in Shanghai. Brought a smile to my face.

 

[Patrick1000]

Without housekeeping duties!

Note above, Lunney specifically states, "without housekeeping duties". the diarrhea story cannot be true. If it were, the flight surgeons would have the astronauts scrub the cabin, with whatever they had at their disposal, or at least discuss what they had at their disposal. Jia Ping there is a very smart gal. But then again, she deals with genuine infections all of the time.

 

[Patrick1000]

Space sickness an unknown

Note above, Lunney specifically states, "without housekeeping duties". the diarrhea story cannot be true. If it were, the flight surgeons would have the astronauts scrub the cabin, with whatever they had at their disposal, or at least discuss what they had at their disposal. Jia Ping there is a very smart gal. But then again, she deals with genuine infections all of the time.

The final point being, in December of 1968, space sickness was poorly understood, if one could even say that. to chalk this up to "space sickness", "motion sickness", especially given diarrhea as a prominent clinical feature, is obviously a sign of a bogus medical evaluation. Motion sickness may cause nausea and vomiting, but to have an astronaut in outer space with bad diarrhea and not consider he has an infectious decease problem that is threatening not only himself, but his crew mates as well, is obvious jive.

The whole thing blows over quickly and without incident because it is not real. And it is a feature of the script which is added for realism's sake. Ironically, it is so patently phony, it works the other way and helps to expose this journey as a fraud.

 

[frenat]

Inventing fictional people to back up your poorly thought out ideas doesn't really help your case much. You still have no proof they didn't clean things and wash their hands. Adults usually don't have to be told to do simple things like that. Maybe you'll understand when you get older.

 

[Buckaroo]

Evasion noted.

 

[mercatormac]

Sitting in a Shanghai Caffe' yesterday, my friend Jia Ping, a Chinese highly skilled nurse practitioner with expertise in infectious diseases, and also a woman with an awareness of my rather new interest in Apollo 11 fraudulence, asked me if I had come across anything new with respect to my personal investigation. Her husband is a physicist, age 52. He works primarily as a programmer now, but had done a great deal of aerospace work at one time. Years back, when I first met him, he and another Chinese man were going on and on about how Apollo just could not be legitimate. Their point at the time was that one would have anticipated continued progress with respect to manned space exploration, if in no other arena, than simply in the arena of continued lunar exploration, had the Apollo program been authentic. At the time, I thought the discussion was interesting, but off target, and admittedly, the details were lost given my poor command of Mandarin at the time. Even now, having studied the language better than ten years with some dedication, I would not be able to follow such a discussion very well at all.

Weren't you supposed to be going to India. Do you ever feel any guilt over your obvious and continuous stream of lies?