Have you been reading what Jay has said? His field of work at the moment is supercomputers designed to calculate stuff related to radiant heat transfer, or something like that.

Let me clarify.

Our business is supercomputers. Radiant heat transfer in engineering requires our large supercomputers to compute. Our customers require our help to set up these computations on our particular systems.

Part of my job is to design and build the sensors that we put into these supercomputers to monitor their conditon and identify problems. In an odd coincidence, we have to know the radiant heat transfer between components of our computers. So we turn our computers loose on the problem of their own heat transfer via all modes.

Radiant heat transfer and illumination are essentially the same problem at their most basic. Heat transfer explains the diffuse reflection of light in a scene. (There are other aspects of lighting.) Both at college and in a few of my engineering jobs, I had to write rendering software for our CAD systems and models. I even taught those subjects as a graduate student.

The physically based models for illumination are based on -- you guessed it -- radiant heat transfer. The buzzord is "radiosity". The mathematics are essentially identical, and they should be because the underlying phenomenon is identical: photons bouncing hither and yon.

Theoretical knowledge is all well and good. But I also help out with the lighting at one of my local theaters. I also take photographs.

He may not have official qualifications, but you are constructing a straw man by saying he knows nothing about these things.

I carefully used the word "credential". A credential is some physical thing that establishes expertise. A driver's license is a credential for expertise in driving. If someone wants to know if you can drive, you can either whip out that license, or you can get in a car and demonstrate your ability. I don't have a credential like ARPS or WPA. But I have references and a portfolio. That's the equivalent of getting in the car and driving around.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Santa, or Dave, I have a question for you about photo 5942. We see the astronaut's right leg with its right side in deep shadow, like the PLSS and equipment packages. Why (in your opinion) isn't the same true of his left leg?

Santa wrote:

>>Can you provide evidence of Armstrong changing exposure settings between the time he shot Aldrin coming down the ladder and the picture I posted of Aldrin by the flag?<<

Can you provide evidence that he didn't? The astronauts are likely to have changed the exposure quite frequently to take appropriate pictures of various things under various lighting conditions, and it is quite likely also that they didn't bother to record every change of exposure, or report it to mission control.

With the greatest of respect, if you can't provide evidence that he did NOT change the exposure setting, then your argument is no more weighted in favour of than the suggestion that he did. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, after all.

If I may, I'd like to point out that there were checklists for Apollo 11 that listed the exposure settings for various camera postions:




Even you, Santa, can clearly see that this gives the astronauts different EXPOSURE settings for different directions in relation to the sun, AND separate settings for "crew in sun" and "full shadow".

Reading that, there can be no doubt that the exposure settings were indeed changed during the EVA.

I apologize for the size of the image, but I don't know how to change it in this BBCode. However, I felt there would be no way that Santa would actually look at the link. If anybody can let me know, I'll change it. [/url]

Man, I am not evena photographer, and I know how ridiculous that comment is.

Santa, are you being obtuse on purpose? Jay has proved that he has the qualifications, now it's your turn.

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Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

I have noticed that Santa may be trying to "turn the tables" on us once again with the argument that JayUtah has no qualifications (in photography).

I see that it can be contrued that we reject R Rene on the grounds that he has no qualifications. Witness our derision of his claims to be a "self-taught engineer."

Santa may be trying to draw a parallel between Rene and Jay's admitted lack of credentials. Santa may be trying to form Jay's statements into a form of "self-taught photographer", and hence discredit him.

If this is the case, Santa, let me be the first to prick that little fantasy bubble.

We do not reject Rene's claim to expertise because of his lack of credentials. We reject the claim because of his demonstrated lack of competence in the field.

Conversely, we do not accept Craig's (InfocusInc's) claims to expertise because he has credentials. He has demonstrated his skills, and so we accept the claim.

It's very simple. It goes for JRKeller, the BA and everyone else. Having credentials is a good start to showing that you know what you're talking about, but in the end it's going to be your demonstrated competence that will win us over.

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Jeff Schwarz
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Argh!! They booby-trapped their sun!!****--Invader ZIM

I have been watching this thread for days now, what a hoot. But once Jay mentioned my name I decided to get involved.

Santa, I have been doing professional advertising photography for 25 years. I know a thing or two about setting exposure on a camera and the effects of those exposure changes on the procesed film. I am also very competent in the use of reversal film as I use it in almost exclusivily when not shooting on digital. I have shot cases upon cases of it.

Now do yourself a favor. Buy a cheap and fully manual 35mm camera on ebay or elsewhere. Buy a book on basic photography and then go out and shoot some reversal film. Learn for yourself why everyone here is correct about exposure and you are incorrect. This is not that hard to grasp.

And around and around the debate goes. Whats the point in continuing arguing this really? We arent going to agree so Ill stop right now and save myself the hassle.

Thankyou.

Another thing that Cosmic Dave used to do was to insist that debate was pointless because both sides would not reach an agreement.

But it is recorded, on the photographic film itself. See my post above.

Cloud cover, LM cover, rock cover, it's all the same. All reduce the amount of direct lighting on the subject of the photo, hence the need to change the exposure to compensate.

But the subject of the photograph is not.

But we do. Look at my post above.

Your welcome. The fiducials are still there, but they're hard do make out because of the particular content of this photograph. The two that are easiest to identify are on Aldrin. One is in the upper part of this backback, just behind his helmet. If you follow the level across to the left you may be able to make out another fiducial on left side of the flag, vertically centered on the bottom edge of the 3rd red stripe from the top. The others in this horizontal row (and the row above) are lost against the black sky.

The other fiducial on Aldrin is in the shaded portion of his thigh, just below the level of his fingertips. The fiducial to the left of this one is the large center fiducial, about a quarter of the way from the flagpole to Aldrin. It's almost completely enveloped by the LM's shadow, though the upper and lower "hairs" extend above and below the shadow. The fiducial to the right of Aldrin in this row also falls within the LM's shadow, but it's lower hair extends below it, on the right edge of the small spot shadow just over halfway between Aldrin and the edge of the image. The only other visible fiducial in this row is between the sets of cabes dangling from the LM's horizontal landing gear strut, just above the upper edge of it's shadow.

The lowest row of fiducials visible in this photograph are against the lunar surface below the level of Aldrin's feet. Follow the grid pettern established by the others indicated above and you me be able to locate them, but they are hard to make out in this low resolution version. If you get the high resolution version of the image from this page (it's a 2.8Mb file, so it may take a while if you're on dial-up), the fiducials should be clearly visible where indicated above.

It's not a question of tampering or doctoring as much as it is slight variations between one photographic print and another, or even more likely, between the scanners used to make digital versions of them. It's well known that no two models of sanner are going to produce the exact same digital image from the same photograph. Look at any magazine or website which reviews scanners and you'll see a wide range of variables in translating an image from colors on paper to RBG values in a computer.

On a related note, you have said that you could not make out any detail at all in the shadows of some photographs, when I and others apparently can. Perhaps your monitor isn't properly calibrated, resulting in images too dark to reveal such details. This page gives instructions on how to set the brightness and contrast levels of your monitor for optimum display of the entire tonal range.

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"Earth diameter is 7,900 miles, and Moon diameter is 2,160 miles. It takes on average 90 minutes to complete one Earth orbit, so one Moon orbit should take roughly 25 minutes." - Sam "NasaScam" Colby

Bearer of the highly coveted "I found Venus in nine Apollo photos" sweatsocks.

DataCable^2008 A+

Okay, now the similarity is just too eerie.

No. Don't go yet. I want you to address that checklist I took the trouble to post for you. Why would they bother to write down all those exposure settings for different positions and locations (up-sun, down-sun, side-sun, in shadow) if the never changed the settings?

There is no "around and around". That image proved you totally and completely wrong. At least be man enough to admit you were wrong.

I'm starting to get suspicious too, a post by Cosmic Dave also shows that he had some sort of problem with natural vs lamp light.

'Santa' has been busy in the PX forum as well promoting a Darkstar website, I think I'll let everyone there know my suspicions . . .

Just messing with the photos in Photosuite with the brightness should sort some of this out... If we take the origional ladder pic and darken it so that the lunar surface is approximately as bright as in the flag pic we get this...



If we take the flag picture and brighten the image until the surface brightness matches we get this...



This is just an approximation because the Photosuite brightness tool is not doing the same job as setting the exposure on the camera but you get the gist...

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Things are only impossible until they're not!-Captain Jean-Luc Picard

Admin of the new and very much improved Apollohoax forum

And around and around the debate goes. Whats the point in continuing arguing this really?

You tell us. You're the one asking the same questions that have been answered exhaustively.

We arent going to agree so Ill stop right now and save myself the hassle.

Just for the record: is that a concession or a retreat?

Let me guess. Soon "Cosmic" Dave will write another web page or article about how the Bad Astronomy crowd "can't agree" or "doesn't have photographic expertise." Just for the record, add that David Percy runs and hides every time this subject is brought up.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

If Photosuite has a function to adjust the highlight/midtone/shadow (as well as Gamma) values, you can more closely approximate photographic over/under exposure. Usually a digital "brightness" adjustment just adds or subtracts the given amout to/from every pixel's RGB values, typically resuling in unwanted greys at one end of the range or the other (hence the washed-out shadows and sky in your "flag" image.)

I use Corel PhotoPaint, was able to bring out quite a bit of detail on Charlie Duke in the supposed "total shadow" of the LM in 18439. (Not the one from JSC referenced by Santa, since that's a rather poor scan with excessive JPEG corruption. I used the one found Here.)

I was going to post them here as rebuttal, but I don't have any webspace account from which to reference it (I'd forgotten that the free Yahoo! briefcase has limited access rights).

__________________
"Earth diameter is 7,900 miles, and Moon diameter is 2,160 miles. It takes on average 90 minutes to complete one Earth orbit, so one Moon orbit should take roughly 25 minutes." - Sam "NasaScam" Colby

Bearer of the highly coveted "I found Venus in nine Apollo photos" sweatsocks.

DataCable^2008 A+

And this is one of the reasons why Im am not going to bother to continue this thread. Are you trying to take the P*** or what?

I don't have the faintest clue as to what you mean by this (or, for that matter, what the word you've self-censored might be). I was simply trying to ensure that we are all seeing (approximately) the same images so that we can discuss them within a common frame of reference.

For example, you cited the following images, and asked "Can you see detail in the rock where the astronauts shadow falls? Because I certainly can’t."





Now, without making any adjustments to my monitor settings, I can clearly make out detail on the rock in the astronaut's shadow of both images. If I turn the brightness on my monitor down, however, the sadowed area becomes completely blacked out, or at least so dark that the details no longer have enough contrast to be discernible to my eyes.

I am suggesting that perhaps your monitor may be similarly dark, without you realizing it, so you may not be seing what others of us do. My apologies if any offence was taken, but certainly none was intended.

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"Earth diameter is 7,900 miles, and Moon diameter is 2,160 miles. It takes on average 90 minutes to complete one Earth orbit, so one Moon orbit should take roughly 25 minutes." - Sam "NasaScam" Colby

Bearer of the highly coveted "I found Venus in nine Apollo photos" sweatsocks.

DataCable^2008 A+

Looks more like "And since I am getting my b-tt kicked I am not going to bother to continue this thread" . Do yourself a favor Santa and actually listen to the facts these people have been so patient to explain to you. Then take those facts, get a camare and try it yourself. There can be no greater evidence that can be presented to you than giving you the means to actually test it for yourself. Since you present yourself as someone seeking the truth about Apollo, this would be a pretty good place to start since you can easily test this here on earth with nothing more than a $25 used camera and a $10 roll of film and processing.

Santa: Think about this number: 16.

Armstrong gave the Aldrin egress photos 16 times more exposure than he would have given a down-sun subject in full sun. He changed the shutter speed and aperture setting to give the pictures of Aldrin 16 times more exposure, because the Moon's surface was estimated to be reflecting 1/16th of the sun's light into the shadow of the Lunar Module. In fact, it may have been reflecting a little less than 1/16th, because, as far as I can tell from scans on the internet, the originals look a little underexposed.

Isn't 16 times of anything quite a significant change? How would it be if you had 16 times as much money as you have now? In photographic terms, a 16-times exposure change is very significant.

I was a professional photographer for 25 years, taught photography and particularly exposure to hundreds of people (ever heard of the Ansel Adams Zone System?), and was also a sought-after judge of competitions involving both amateur and professional photographers. I have followed the space programme since seeing one of the Sputniks pass overhead in 1957, I listened on the radio to powered descent and the first touch-down on the Moon shortly after 8am on Monday 21 July 1969 NZST and took the afternoon off work because what I was hearing was too exciting for me to be capable of working. Also, since Halley's Comet last visited our vicinity in 1986 I have developed an interest in astronomy and the Moon. To me, there are no anomalies in the above photos that would make me think there is something odd about them or that they weren't taken on the Moon with natural light as claimed by Nasa and the other posters on this thread. I agree wholeheartedly with the fantastic education and advice that people have tried to give you here, and am disappointed that you behave like so many other hoax-believers, ignoring what they say and forcing them to repeat and repeat what they or others have said.

You have adequately demonstrated that you know very little about photography, particularly lighting, fill-in, and exposure, so your criticising of these photos is about the same as me criticising how members of the local spinning club spin wool, or claiming that the bread I buy is made strangely, or saying that someone playing American football isn't doing things properly. That is because I know very little about these subjects.

I wonder if you wish to give up this discussion because your original aim was not to learn something and understand what you were taught, but to instead try to convince people on this bulletin board that the moon-landings were hoaxed.

Last Wednesday, before reading this thread, I posted the following on a New Zealand bulletin Board because of the re-showing, the night before, of the Fox Special "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?":

"Got questions? Anyone who has genuine questions regarding last night's programme is welcome to ask the experts on the Bad Astronomy Bulletin Board - http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/index.php - go to the Lunar Conspiracies section. But don't just bumble in there and behave like most hoax believers, who are usually only experts at exhibiting how brainless they are. They don't do their homework, they come up with a whole raft of questions and never thrash out one single issue, they don't listen to explanations, and they never admit defeat."

It would be good if you could show that you are not a typical hoax-believer.

And this is one of the reasons why Im am not going to bother to continue this thread.

And perhaps one of the reasons why you shouldn't. Digital imaging is fraught with exactly this type of peril. It's already bad enough in analogue imaging (i.e., photography). The lab I used to use prided itself on getting the optimal color timing and optical density in the resulting prints. That's, of course, why they charged exorbitant fees. The ability to change the optical properties of a photograph results in many versions of a photograph which appeal to different customers' aesthetics.

Now let's take a single print and scan it with two different scanners. You get two different digital versions because each scanner is sensitive in different ways. (Film is even this way.) Some scanners bring out subtle differences in bright tones; some bring out the difference between subtle blues or greens or reds. They all have scientists on their staff who are expert in human perception and how to make machines cope with it.

Then you have software on the computer which interprets the scanner image in terms of one of the popular file storage and compression formats such as TIFF or JPEG. JPEG is popular, but it erases detail and subtle color differences in favor of saving space on your disk.

In my cubicle at work I have three computer monitors. I have a rather cheap ViewSonic 17GS, a very expensive Sony 21-inch, and a modestly priced LCD flat panel. I can pull the same JPEG up on each of those monitors and see three very different photos. That's because each of the monitors has a different "gamut", the technical term for the ability to reproduce color completely and faithfully.

So when it's suggested that you try to adjust your monitor, that suggestion comes from someone who is very carefully and methodically thinking of all the different ways that optical density in a (digital) photograph might be affected. Your argument relies on characterizing optical density. The fact that you are scoffing at factors that affect it leads me to believe you haven't thought very much about your argument. Which is likely to be correct: a theory which considers all possible effects, or a theory which holds desperately to the one effect it is hoped turns out to be the cause?

I hate to say this, but you're simply out of your league here. You are the audience Bennett and Percy were aiming squarely for: the people who neither understand the issues nor have the wherewithal to seriously question the authors' understanding and explanation. That's fine; you seem to be very happy believing as you do. Just don't confuse that with science or legitimate investigation.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

It's a perfectly reasonable statement: my monitor here at the office is adjusted much darker than the one at home. Photos that look fine on my LCD monitor at home look too dark here, while photos that look fine here are too bright at home.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

I think a point that has been overlooked (I think; I may have missed it) is that in-fill by reflected light can make significant differences to the appearance of an object. One of the things I do is take photographs of ships (in particular the electronic antennas on ships). Over the years I've noticed how the difference in reflected light can make a dramatic difference to the appearance of a ship. In one case, I have a picture of the superstructure of the USS Normandy which appears to show a very unusual two-tone camouflage scheme. In fact, she's painted overall Haze Grey (a sort of medium grey) like every other US warship. Yet she appears to have pale grey topsides (almost white) and dark grey/blue lower surfaces. The reason is simple; the top section of the ship is illuminated by reflection from the sea surface (and so is significantly over-exposed) while the lower section is illuminated by reflection from the wharf. In addition to the changes due to variable lighting, the colors are also distorted because reflection from the sea surface gives a blue tinge to a Haze Grey paint job (one of the reasons, by the way, why ships are painted grey).

Focus the camera on the upper surfaces of the Normandy and the lower sections were so dark as to be unusable; focus on the lower secctions and the upperworks washed out completely. It took a lot of jiggling to get a usable picture. Looking at the pictures that have illustrated this thread, it seems to me that we're seeing similar effects . It seems fairly obvious that the "discrepancies" Santa refers to are simple lighting effects caused by reflections. They're very similar to one's I've had onboard ship.

Santa agrees that reflection occurs. And so does David Percy. They argue that it's simply not enough to explain what we see in the photos.

To a small extent they're right. What we see in this photo

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/as11-40-5869HR.jpg

is a combination of reflected light and darkroom post-processing. What we see in this photo

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/research/apo...11/40/5869.jpg

is a different combination of reflected light and darkroom post-processing. And in this photo

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/20130711.jpg

is yet a third combination. That the photos are post-processed shouldn't bother anyone. The goal was to see Aldrin descending the ladder. Armstrong did his part by adjusting the camera to admit sufficient light. The folks on the ground did their part by carefully "pushing" the prints to reveal the detail in the latent image that wouldn't otherwise appear.

Neither Santa nor Percy knows what to do with albedo. They simply wave their hands. Santa is still fumbling with how exposure settings (both pre- and post-exposure) affect the apparent brightness of a photograph. That's fine; it's not something everyone is expected to know. But it is something that David Percy is expected to know, given his claims to expertise. He handwaves throught that too. Santa should be directing his anger toward David Percy for having given him only sketchy and incomplete information, not at us for discussing what Percy doesn't want discussed.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Santa,

I hope you're still out there.

Anyway, I did a simple study to determine the amount of solar energy that is absorbed and scattered by the atmosphere. The calculations include absorption and scattering by not just the air, but by water vapor, dust, aerosols, ozone and all the components that make up Earth's atmosphere. The method I used is called fenestration and can be found in the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Fundamentals Handbook. This method was developed in 1940 and as you can see well before any Apollo mission to the moon or even the first rocket flight outside the atmosphere. This method is based on both experimental test data and analytical methods. It's been used in the US to size the heating and cooling loads for all building types.

The results of my study are for the Northern Hemisphere and vary month to month. This accounts for seasonal changes. Specifically, the results show that during January 76.5% of the incoming solar energy (taken at the edge of the atmosphere) is unaffected by the atmosphere, 4.5% is scattered diffusely and the remaining 19% is absorbed. In July 67.5% of the incoming solar energy is unaffected by the atmosphere, 9.0% is scattered diffusely and the remaining 24.5% is absorbed. Looking at these results shows that the amount of sunlight that is scattered diffusely is quite small.

If I were to used Jay's value of solar reflectivity of black asphalt of 0.12, I get that this surface reflects about 9% of the incoming solar energy (Again taken at the edge of the atmosphere) for July. If I use January I get that the surface reflects almost 10% of the incoming solar energy and that more than double the amount that the sky produces.

So in other words, surface reflections from even the blackest surface of Earth reflect more energy that than that obtained from diffuse scattering by the atmosphere.

One last thing to note, I did assume a clear sky. The effect of clouds and their scattering can be included in this modeling method, but since we are talking about Jay photographs, which show blue sky, that's what I used.

Santa's gone. What a waste of our time.

It wasn't a total waste of time. I've now got numbers next time some moon hoaxer comes by.