Hey everyone!

I enjoy studying and finding images which (unlike some on here) feature very high quality images of the Moon and Mars. Especially some of the Lunar Orbiter photography. The high quality scans that are available right now are rather spectacular if people would take the time. Anyways, One of the more interesting image discussions I've had center over the image below.

Click Here #1.

What I saw in the image above, was "said to be a spaceship parked on the Moon" - Which I find very unlikely, but I did think it deserved some study because the shadow did look very unusual. So I simply went to find the name of this photo or the location and thank God I was able to locate a higher quality version of it. Which gave me the image below. These first 2 images are from the Lunar Orbiter 4 series.

Click Here #2.

Now in this higher quality image, that same area which features what I can only call a wall and shadow is replaced with an image artifact. So the question becomes, how can we resolve these two images? They are the exact same image, just of differing quality but produce such strikingly different results. I'm not done either. Click the image below.

Click Here #3.

Now this is of the same area shot from orbit during one of the apollo missions. There is no "shadow" in that location anymore.

I'm certainly no expert, but the first one seems to be a low-quality broadcast of the second (original) one.

Was this part of a film? The first could be what was broadcast back to Earth, while the second one was what was actually recorded. Obviously there are people here who know far more about the missions than I do, so they'll correct me if my guess is wrong.

Very interesting. The web page these images are from... www.nasafiles.com is "run" by an old friend of ours...Btimsah...

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Yeah, you could be right. This fuzzy old image is (I believe) from a book written by Fred Steckling. I also wonder if perhaps the fuzzy one isnt just the original, but because it's so degraded the image artifact looks much different. The "anomaly" appears different in size a bit. Also the edges appeared different. So I wasnt sure.

I suppose this could all be solved with some Photoshop work.

Yeah, I actually found this new board from you guys talking about me on the banned users list via Google. I thought - Damn I wonder what that board is like now?? I won't fight people on this stuff anymore. I will let people see and find what they want too.

I like the new digs, but I will always be a PHPBB fan! Anyways, nice to (sort of) see you R.A.F.

Please be sure to review the FAQ.

It looks like the triangular thing is not real. It would appear to be either an image artifact or an edited photo. Notice that the texture under the triangle exactly matches that of the ground around, only the darkness is different. Also, objects such as small craters seem to go underneath the edge of the triangle without being the lest bit altered, as you would expect if there is a giant trench around the edge of the triangle as the image suggets. Also, you would expect a concavity at the trench where it intersects a crater, or some in-fill into the crater. Neither of these occur. Also, where the reaised edge of the crater meets the edge of the trench it does not alter the shape of the wall of the trench, either.

Of course, if the triangular object doesn't really exist that would explain why it doesn't appear in that apollo picture.

The dotted line down the middle looks like a dotted line drawn in or some sort of image artifact. It does not have any depth, texture, size, or shape, and it is perfectly vertical in the image which would would not expect. It does not change when going over contours in the environment.

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I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

I read it, and what in there pertains to me?

Well, okay I did this comparison mockup and the image quality is causing more problems because everything is even sized differently. For instance in the image below:



The sizes of both don't really matchup, and also the angle of them. Hell, even the crater on the right doesnt match up well. But I am leaning toward the discrepency being caused by the degraded, older image.

All participants must abide by its guidelines. Something we all share.

Very well.. I can remove my signature if that link is too pseudoscience-like.

bingo, and if you look at the surrounding crater's, it's "crept up."

Either a very nervous alien or a total hoax.

I was thinking the same thing. Here it is zoomed in where you can see where the triangle goes right over the top of small craters.



The edge of the triangle appears, IMO, to have been pasted over top. And, IMO, the doctorer of this image either did not have the patience to use PhotoShop effectively, or he/she used a less-than-par image editor (e.g., Microsoft Paint and/or Microsoft Photo Editor). I've doctored many images with Paint and Photo Editor and the edge of the triangle reminds of the low-quality doctoring involved. As for the "old poor-quality broadcast" image; I can't imagine that it's too difficult to make it look like that.

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If only closed minds came with closed mouths!

it looks like a slice of pizza next to a pepsi sign

Yes, and with no deformity of the adjoining crater wall, it's clear it's not real - not for that big of a crater.

Well, it's important to understand that this image..



Is from The Lunar and Planetary Research Center: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/lunar_orbiter/

Here is the full page with detail:http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/lu...info.shtml?448

I really doubt they would in any way alter an image? There is another "image defect" in the entire image, but it's smaller. Also, this one is not of the quality of the capture I have on here. See I originally thought that the image did look like a bad fake, but from NASA's end in order to "hide that anomaly in the old, "smuggled out version? lol It almost looked like someone tried to emboss over that anomaly in the old photo. However I'm (at this point) just not sure about either image.

Is it just me or does this get really confusing?

Maybe it's my imagination, but it looks like a drop of fluid got onto the print. Note how you can see a crater within the triangle that matches the shading of those outside it.

What region of the moon is this?

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"Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures - in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together." St. Exupery

Oceanus Procellarum. I believe that crater is Herodotus A or B?

Here is the best image of that location, which has that "artifact" as well as another one to it's (presumed east)

This Is A Large File and needs to be decompressed.

The different resolution images appear to really change the appearance of the artifact. But nothing else in the image seems so greatly altered.

Thats a good observation, it does remind me of air bubbles under a microscpe slide. The interior of the triangle is opaque, the sides seem to be walled as in surface tension of water. You can make out Lunar Texture through the triangle. Moisture on a lens does sound feasible.

Why don't you write the LPI and ask someone?

Done; just waiting for a reply now.

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If only closed minds came with closed mouths!

Here's a nice write up of the Lunar Orbiter camera system. All film processing was done on orbit.

If you look at the full version of the photograph, you'll will another one of these smaller "things" to the right large one. Due south of the F in Freud. If you notice, it is on the same strip in the larger one. If suspect something got on the processing roller.

Here is the reply I received.

Quoting Stephen Tellier, RPIF / Library, Lunar & Planetary Institute:

We have the full-size prints (approximately 16x20 inches) of the Lunar Orbiter frames in our collection. I pulled the LO4-157-H3 print and examined it with an 8X loupe. There are two triangular shaped blemishes in the lower third portion of the print which, to my admittedly untrained eye, do not appear to be part of the image but rather overlaid on it. As you probably know, the Lunar Orbiter film was developed onboard the spacecraft by pressing a strip of film, coated with chemicals, against the exposed film to develop the image. The two pieces of film were then pealed apart to allow the developed image to be scanned and transmitted back to Earth. Sometimes bits of chemical remained stuck to the developed film and were scanned - resulting in the artifacts.

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If only closed minds came with closed mouths!

Wow, thanks for getting that information. I wish I could have their collection! Tellier believes it's an artifact, and the woo-woo believes it's an intentional artifact. So I doubt we'd ever find the un-blemished version?

If what he says is correct, the unblemished print is still on the Lunar Orbiter wherever that may be.

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I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

lol That's kind of a depressing thought for some reason. Oh well, I'm willing to say it's a drop of some sort of liquid creating an artifact. Case Closed.

From someone old enough to remember the Lunar Orbiter missions as they happened, if you look at a lot of the photos, you'll find they're riddled with this sort of processing blemish. There is no unblemished version because the damage happened during the on-board processing.

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"The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head" Terry Pratchett

Yes, you are correct. I have hundreds of lunar orbiter images on my hardrive (don't ask why) and there are quite a bit with some damage going straight across the entire image. Looks almost like water spots or white circles everywhere. What got me about this image is how isolated the artifact is.

Nicely done. It's always prudent to go to the source to obtain the facts rather than unduly speculate about alleged anomalies in imagery.

I must ask though, did you obtain permission to repost Tellier's reply? As noted in the FAQ:

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