Good stuff, Dwight.

Any idea if all those Westinghouse cameras required the same RBG frame/disk assembly mechanism? Was that disk system on board the camera itself or was that something that needed to be done in real time back on Earth? I would expect the HS-100 or similar to be the usual 1960s big honkin' machine and thus unlikely to be in the camera itself. But I have no way to know for certain.

RBG

Yes, all the colour cameras operated on the same sequential system. The signal was sent in "raw" format to earth where the disc array was used to combine the seperate colour fields into one frame of NTSC colour compatible signal (using the buffer set-up). ASTP carried a video recorder, although I dont know the specs of it just yet. I presume it was a straight sequential recorder. The equipment to convert to colour was just too big to carry on board, and of course the signal needed to be of as low bandwidth as possible. If you do a google search on Ampex HS 100, you'll see a pamphlet from the day which shows just how large the setup was.

At the very least, the camera itself must have had the color wheel and whatever circuitry or mechanics were required to synchronize it to the field rate. Was there something in the signal (say, in the interframe interval) that told the ground equipment which color each field was? Or did they just sync it to each field in turn until it looked right?

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Or did they just sync it to each field in turn until it looked right?

In the Spacecraft Film's DVDs transferred from the JSC videotapes, you will sometimes spot the technician cycling through the color filters when a known color reference comes into the frame, typically a rover fender or the red stripe on the commander's suit. The moon, remarkably, looks about the same color regardless of the color filter synchronization.

Thanks! :-)

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"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

I finally got around to watching the Apollo 7 TV broadcasts. They are amazingly similar in quality to the Apollo 11 surface broadcasts. Since Apollo 7 was Earth Orbital and used the Saturn 1B booster, there would have been no need to fake it, so the TV broadcasts should be genuine even for a later hoax. It's then interesting to note the similar lack in quality of the the Apollo 11 and 7 broadcasts. I haven't seen the Apollo 8 ones yet, need to finish the Apollo 7 DAC footage first.

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Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

G'day PhantomWolf,

The record of Apollo 7 through 11 is on the format as follows:
Apollo 7 16mm kinescope transferred from video source.
Apollo 8 Scan converted 2" B&W NTSC videotape
Apollo 9 16mm kinescope transferred from video source.
Apollo 10 Apollo 7 16mm kinescope transferred from sequential colour video source.
Apollo 11 16mm kinescope transferred from video source. CM used the sequential colour camera, the Lunar EVA used the Westinghouse B&W camera which operated on the same specs (320 lines, 10fps, B&W) as the RCA cameras used on A7 & A8. The Westinghouse camera was flight rated for lunar surface operations (as would have been the A9 camera, though it was never put through the EVA paces).

G'day Joe. The sync pulse was sent along with the video feed which allowed technicians on the ground to lock the appropriate disc array sequence to the incoming feed. The colour cycling seen on the SCF material is actually the 3 array coming up to speed and locking to the sync rather than any type of manual colour filter cycling. The off-looking colours you see are due to either 1 or 2 of the filtered colours not yet being matrixed to form a full colour signal.

The off-looking colours you see are due to either 1 or 2 of the filtered colours not yet being matrixed to form a full colour signal.

If that were the case, Dwight, wouldn't the color of the moon itself change as more colors joined the matrix? What we see is that the landscape's color remains generally gray while the red stripe on the suit, say, changes from green to blue to red.

What about the Apollo 12 astronauts returning the television camera of the Surveyor 3 back to Earth and on display in the National Air and Space Museum?

Different colours can be successfully discerned with only two combinations Check out this entry for a very quick explanation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-color_system . It is a similar circumstance with the matrixing on Apollo. There is a noticeable difference between the way everything looks with only two colours, and then all three. Also the human eye and imaging processing part of the brain adapt quite well to making the perceived colour balance look normal. (I have often been jolted when I see the 3rd colour sync up on Apollo where I thought all three were merged!!)

Just to make sure we are talking about the same thing, when you get a chance, take a look at Apollo 16, Disc 3, EVA 2, Station 5 from the start. For the first two minutes or so, you will see that the rover's fenders are green as well as the elbow stripe on Young's suit. When the camera pans all the way around so a fender is in view again, at 2:43, the fender changes from green to blue to red.

Up until that point, what color was missing from the matrix? I seem to see all three in the quick-motion-based color separations, such as the one at 1:26 where the Hasselblad swings through the field of view.

I am not trying to be argumentative here, but making sure I understand something I might not have understood before.

The Apollo 16 tapes have a notable fault which throws a spanner into the works as well. When remastering the tapes from the raw sequential tapes the colour sequence was erroneously Red Green Blue, instead of Red Blue Green, thus making the material appear off-hue. When I get a chance, I'll have a look at the DVDs. And confirm what is happening.

Hoax believers can be very stubborn. They likely ignore this, and explain it away as simply a prop used to fool people.

One should expect as much from these guys, as they STILL use the "no stars" arguement.
And yet, they ignore videos and images from other space missions, such as the ISS and the Voyagers, that do not (normally anyway) show stars.

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- H.G Wells, The World Set Free

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The National Air and Space Museum is too good for HBs to even set foot in.

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

They either think the museum is a hoax, or look at it like we look at the Ripley's museum.

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My first words when I entered the ASM, not having visited since November '04: "OMG! SpaceShipOne!"

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

Have you been to the Udvar-Hazy Center?

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Who, me? Sadly, no. But you should have seen the facts I was flinging off under SS1. One guy asked "Do you work here, Ms?"

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

Joe, I had a quick peek, and the colours were fine from the start of station 5. (At least on my set) am I looking at the wrong bit? I saw a bit of colour wavering but I'd place that as hue drift.