Hey, I just DLed and saw the FOX documentary of the moon hoax. Not that it has to do with this but man, americans need to learn to make documentaries. X-files musik and movie-guy-who's-drank-to-much-wiskey-voice... com'on! #-o

I'm sorry if I'm dragging up stuff that has allready probably been discussed, but I read all the stuff on the badastronomy.com-anti-hoax page. And what I coulnd't find was anything describing how the objekts in the shadows could be as bright as they are.
Or did they?

http://www.redzero.demon.co.uk/moonh...he_Shadows.htm

got it =)

still hold my ground on the documentary-making part though.. :roll:

Hey you won't find much love for that show around here. Welcome to the board.

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hehe, ok... I dont think I'll hang out here too much. VBut forums rule! I'll come back whenever I have a doubt on anything :wink:

Americans can make very good documentaries, this just wasn't one of them. In fact, I wouldn't even call it a documentary. Garbage is a much better description.

I thought BA did cover this in his Web page but perhaps not. It is really no great mistery nor should it be too hard to understand. Objects in shadows are illuminated mainly by sunlight reflecting off the ground. If you need further explanation I or someone else here will be happy to elaborate.

EDIT: I see you already figured it out for yourself.

8) it makes sense that there things being found that look suspicious
After all if it was a hoax would everything have to look perfect.
People who could creat a hoax of such maginitude would not make such mistakes.

I read a review of "Bowling for Columbine" that calls this sort of thing a "mockumentary" in which the narrator is actually mocking the audience (perhaps not even intentionally). It fits here too.

The conspiracists gradually came to the conclusion that it was implausible for them to argue that their "many" inconsistencies were due to error.

Thus arose the "whistle-blower" theory by which it is argued that these "inconsistencies" are not errors but subtle clues left behind by those who wanted the truth eventually to be known. Not that there's any evidence any such whistle-blowers exist. It merely patches the perceived hole in the prior hypothesis. Normally such an evolution would be a step forward in an investigation. Except that it doesn't really improve matters.

Previously it was thought that NASA could not pull off the perfect hoax and that visible error was inevitable. This gave way to the realization that the number of errors they were proposing was preposterous. In order for their hypothesis to hold, NASA would have be improbably inept at creating a hoax. So if these inconsistencies previously attributed to error were instead re-evaluated as intentional, the sheer number of them does not immediately seem improbable.

As the story goes, the rank-and-file workers charged with creating false evidence for the landings were not pleased with what they had been asked to do. They sought to subvert the hoax. Simply exposing it directly (e.g., by going to the press) was not an option as they would be silenced before they could do so, presumably by fatal means. So the alleged whistle-blowers believed. And so they concocted clues that would be left behind, such that their efforts would go unnoticed by NASA inspectors "riding herd" on them, and would pass a cursory public inspection. But those clues would eventually point to a hoax and at least raise suspicion.

Here's why this argument too doesn't work.

Scale. Proposing hundreds of deliberate errors is no more plausible than proposing hundreds of unintentional errors. In the one case NASA is inept at creating a hoax. In the other case NASA is inept at supervising others in creating the hoax. By creating literally hundreds of points of impossibility, the whistle-blowers increase the likelihood that NASA inspectors will uncover their scheme. The whistle-blower hypothesis does not eliminate the presupposition of NASA's ineptitude; it just shifts it to a different form.

This cannot be resolved by appealing to apathy among NASA inspectors. These are people who, according to the whistle-blower hypothesis, can credibly instill in low-level workers the literal fear of death for disobedience. It is inconsistent to believe that such people would not diligently search for subversion in workers they felt would be kept in line only by threats, especially when there is historical precedent for such behavior.

Parsimony. In order to explain inconsistency by means of intentional whistle-blowing, it is advantageous to actually produce a whistle-blower. Although the principal authors of this hypothesis produce several people whom they label "whistle-blowers", none of these is a whistle-blower in the traditional sense of someone coming forward with certain inside knowledge. Their "whistle-blowers" are merely other conspiracy theorists whose arguments they borrow.

The contention that such whistle-blowers would be immediately suppressed (i.e., that the 40-year-old threats are still valid) and thus none will come forward is unsatisfying. It is simply an attempt at excusing the lack of evidence. Given that certain legitimate whistle-blowers such as Thomas Baron were able to thoroughly criticize the Apollo program with relative impunity, and that much adverse Congressional attention has been focused on NASA both then and now, it seems improbable that alleged NASA threats -- no matter how strong -- could completely ensure silence for decades. Death threats, for example, do not eliminate the possibility of post-mortem written confessions.

Secrecy. The whistle-blower hypothesis postulates a conspiracy within a conspiracy. This creates a hierarchy of secrecy that is inconsistent with the other premises of the hypothesis.

It cannot be presumed that all conspirators were also whistle-blowers. Therefore the whistle-blower movement within the NASA hoax machine had to have been clandestine, at least in order to keep it from the eyes of NASA inspectors in charge of enforcing the conformity threats. But the nature of some of the inconsistencies attributed to whistle-blowing (e.g., multiple shadows in photographs) cannot have been created without the cooperation of all those involved in that particular aspect of the fake evidence.

Stated abstractly, the hypothesis works only for individual whistle-blowers acting alone, with no connection to other people working on the hoax. It does not allow for, nor explain, activities such as studio photography that necessitate collaboration. One cannot hide from studio workers the fact that two or more lights are being used to light a scene, and thus one cannot hide the attempt to violate the single light source premise of lunar photography. This requires all present to be in collusion on the innermost whistle-blower conspiracy, and precludes the potential presence, say, of a NASA inspector at the studio.

Expertise. A premise of the whistle-blower hypothesis is that whistle-blowers tainted the fake evidence they were creating with clues that would signal outsiders at some unknown place and time that not all is right with the evidence. This presumably would elicit a more thorough investigation that would uncover the conspiracy. But in order to provide the necessary insulation and anonymity for their own actions, the evidence would have to pass inspection by NASA and by the public and so not be immediately discovered.

Presumably those most likely to discover the inconsistencies are those most familiar with how legitimate photography should appear. Thus we expect the revelation to come from eminent photographic analysts and be accompanied by analysis that appeals to the field at large. Instead the "revelation" of these inconsistencies comes from people who have no qualifications in image analysis. And the analysis they provide does not appeal to the field at large -- in fact, it is roundly and conclusively rejected by the field at large. Most of these analyses are woefully ignorant of the basics of photographic interpretation and analysis.

When confronted by this refutation, the conspiracists assert either that their expertise is sufficient, by means of false or inflated credentials, or that expertise is not needed and that the inconsistencies are visible to "common sense" alone. This violates the premise, since it is presumed that the inconsistencies are invisible to common sense (in order to achieve initial credibility) and become visible only with astute and expert analysis.

This exposes the fatal flaw in both the multitude-of-errors and whistle-blower hypotheses: the subversion of support. Both of these hypotheses presume that an inconsistency is, in fact, legitimately inconsistent. They do not generally accept the possibility that the "rules" against which the evidence is being measured are themselves incomplete or flawed, and that the inconsistencies are, in fact, marks of consistency with applicable physical laws. The ability of photographers to duplicate most of the "inconsistencies" using only natural photography speaks very eloquently to the point that none of these hypotheses is necessary because there are no "errors" to explain. What is perceived as an "error" or "anomaly" or "inconsistency" is most often determined to be a flaw or simplification in the conspiracist's understanding of the physical world.

When presented with a refutation at such a basic level in his argument, the conspiracist can do little but entrench himself. If the refutation is in the form of empirical disproof of his "rules", the conspiracist finds some inconsequential point on which the refutation can be considered inapplicable. If the refutation is in theoretical form, the conspiracist can dismiss it as sophistry intended to cloud the reader to the "clear" "common sense" explanation. Nevertheless the conspiracist cannot escape the burden of proof to establish that his allegations of inconsistency are well-founded.

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Clavius Moon Base

When thinking about the supposed threat of death for 'spilling the beans' on the hoax, given it is over 30 years since the events of Apollo, I always get this mental image of an ex-NASA technician in a hospital bed with his family around him. Peering around the corner of the screen, unseen by all except the ex-tech, is a shadowy figure in a trench coat with a Zimmer Frame and oxygen tank, mouthing the words, "I'm watching you, son..."

Monty Python has got nothing on these guys....

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Just out of curiosity, I went into the bathroom, closed the door, and turned out the lights. The only light source I had available was the light coming from the crack between the door and the floor.

In a very short time (a couple minutes), I was able to make out the outlines of the major items in the darkened space i.e. the tub, the toilet, the vanity, etc...

If I had a camera with film and I opened the shutter, how long would the shutter have to remain open for the film to capture what my eyes took a couple of minutes to see?

Try it! When you report the results here, be sure to tell us what camera, film, lens, aperture and length of exposure you used.

Apologies: If I had any of that stuff I would have tried it!

As it is, I was hoping more for a learned discourse on the difference between eye balls and film. More what the ALSJ photos show vs what the guy taking the picture actually saw.

There's no simple answer because it's going to depend a lot on the film and the aperture. ASA 1600 film might only take a few seconds to pick up the sort of shadowy images your eye picked up, while ASA 64 film (used for portrait photography when you can use bright lighting) might take over a minute.

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How about this then: I know that after 20 - 30 minutes or so, I'm not going to see anything more with my eyes than they can already see. Is the same thing true using film?

If I left ASA 1600 film exposed for longer than a few seconds, will the picture show more detail or will it be washed out?

Did the guy on the moon taking the pictures see more or less than the photos show?

ToSeek is correct. The answer to your question is, "It depends!" But I'll make an observation to think about.

When you are in that darkened room with the light coming in under the door, as you look about the room, your eyes will adjust to the varying light levels. As you look at the crack under the door, your iris will close down, and you won't be able to see detail in the dark areas as well as you will when you turn back away from the door and look into the depths of the room, and even then it may take several minutes to recover maximum sensitivity. This is a familiar effect to amateur astronomers, who avoid white light at night, because it can take up to 30 minutes to recover maximum sensitivity for viewing the faintest objects. It can take several minutes to recover even from a dim red flashlight used to read star charts.

But your eyes do eventually adapt. Film cannot. You'll find that an exposure that clearly shows the shaft of light coming under the door and, perhaps, the texture of the adjacent flooring, cannot capture detail of the interior of the room. And a good exposure for the interior will result in gross overexposure of the crack under the door. Photographic film cannot encompass the extreme contrast of this situation. You either shoot for the interior or for the crack under the door, not both. The degree of the problem depends upon, among other things, the type of film. Color transparency film has a considerably narrower contrast range than black-and-white film, and this would particularly apply to the films available in 1969-1972 (if I follow where all of this is leading). The old ASA 10 Kodachrome of the 1950s was a real challenge in this respect. With black-and-white film, it is possible to fiddle with types of developers, developing time and developer dilution to try to bring contrast under control, but you can only do so much. And this usually assumes that you are developing individual sheets of film from a view camera or that you have several magazines for, say, a Hasselblad, to be developed for various times, because not all of your negatives will have the same requirements.

One other point: reciprocity failure. Film responds linearly to varying intensities of light only within a fairly narrow range. Reciprocity assumes that if the light intensity falls by half, then you simply double the exposure time or open up the aperture one full stop to restore the correct density on the negative. But if the light becomes too dim, then this no longer works. Halving the light intensity requires much more than double the exposure time to produce the same negative density.

So, we get back to the first answer: "It depends!"

One other observation: There was no ASA 1600 film available at the time of Apollo. Tri-X at ASA 400 was a typical "high speed" black-and-white film of the time, and a photographer schooled in the "Zone System" would probably have used it at about ASA 200. Some developers for black-and-white film promised a speed increase, but they sacrificed shadow detail to achieve it, which is not a real speed increase.

I'll make yet another observation here. The way you've asked your question and your admission that you don't have the equipment to try it for yourself suggest to me that you are not experienced in photography -- correct? There's no shame in that. However, much of the pro-hoax "analysis" of Apollo photography comes from people who clearly have no more knowledge than you, and yet they claim to know enough to spot "anomalies" in the photos and to persist in pushing the "why aren't there any stars" question.

It will keeping getting further exposed. If "a few seconds" wasn't enough, it will show more and more, but eventually it will get washed out.

As far as the guy on the moon, not an expert, but I'd say generally he saw more than the photos show. The eyeball is generally a better optical instrument than a camera (see discussion about contrast).

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One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009