Joined: Jun 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 1,183 Location: Dallas, Texas
The Smoking Gun of Bart's "Smoking Gun" Footage « Thread Started on Oct 19, 2006, 9:06am »
Bart Sibrel's video argues that this television footage was made in low Earth orbit, rather than on the way to the Moon. The images of Earth, he claims, are either black cardboard with a round hole cut out, or a transparency. Note right there that these are mutually exclusive - If he doesn't know, then he is just guessing without evidence. In fact, there is evidence, but it doesn't support either of Sibrel's conjectures.
Phantom Wolf has already pointed out that the behavior of the Earth images is in no way consistent with something attached to the window itself. I've been looking at the content of the Earth images.
As PW said, in the first day-and-a-half of the mission there were three live television transmissions from the Apollo 11 spacecraft, which showed the Earth out the window. At about the same time as each of these transmissions, the astronauts also photographed the Earth using a 70mm Hasselblad camera. These provide exceptionally high resolution images. Here are frame grabs from each of the three transmissions, with a photograph taken at about the same time for comparison.
(Image courtesy of Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center.)
As you can readily see, the photographs show the whole planet with spherical shading rather than just a portion. In the hi-res versions you can see features - most of North America appears in all three images. Were these images prepared in advance and hung out the window to stage a hoax? This is a testable question. If this was an authentic transmission, and the TV transmission was going out live, and the hi-res photographs match the TV images, then the weather patterns visible in the photographs must match the local weather measured across the country at the time the images were taken. So, do the weather patterns match?
Here is the precipitation map for the continental United States on July 17, 1969 (the date of the 2nd & 3rd transmissions):
Here is a cropped version of a hi-res scan of AS11-36-5373 showing North America:
The features I highlighted are: A.) Summer monsoons over Arizona B.) Rain over the Midwest C.) Rain over western Canada D.) A cold front moving down from Canada into the northcentral and northeastern US. E.) Summer thunderstorms over the southeastern states* F.) A separate storm cell over southern Florida G.) A separate storm system over the Texas gulf coast.
The features match. The photographs and the live video from the spacecraft were definitely taken on the afternoon of July 17, 1969 and both cameras were a long, long way from low Earth orbit.
*I experienced this storm personally. After viewing the launch, my family drove from Florida up to Savannah, Georgia (where we visited relatives) and then proceeded to Tennessee. I had lived on the west coast my whole life, and this was my first experience with a real thunderstorm. It was most impressive. By the time we got to Tennessee, the weather had cleared. I remember looking at the Moon and imagining I could see the spacecraft.
« Last Edit: Nov 13, 2011, 11:42pm by Count Zero »
'How shall a man judge what to do in such times?' 'As he ever has judged,' said Aragorn. 'Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves, and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.'
Joined: May 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 4,620 Location: Lost Deimos Moonbase
Re: The Smoking Gun of Bart's "Smoking Gun" Footag « Reply #7 on Oct 19, 2006, 8:06pm »
Count's given me permission to add it to my site, which I'm planning to do tonight, as well as trying to get various other parts finished over this long weekend.
It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. -- JayUtah
"On two occasions, I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
Joined: Feb 2006 Gender: Male Posts: 790 Location: Minneapolis MN / Houston TX
Re: The Smoking Gun of Bart's "Smoking Gun" Footag « Reply #8 on Oct 20, 2006, 3:51am »
Sounds great. The website looks to be coming along pretty well. Some of the wording at the beginning sounds a bit confusing but otherwise it is a great debunking site.
I saw on the msn boards that at least one person couldn't accept count zero's research. When asked to elaborate he essentially claimed that meteorologists are dorks and therefore he couldn't be bothered to describe what's wrong with the research because that would make him a dork too (as if posting on apollo hoax message boards isn't dorky enough). He made some vague claim that the cloud cover chart didn't match the actual cloud cover on the photograph of the earth but refused to point out what didn't line up. You could almost hear the gears in his brain grinding to a halt as he forced himself to not accept the research. I think he resorted to calling one of the members a "cheeky wanker" or something to that effect.
Anyways, it should be easy to do an overlay of the portion of the earth photograph with the cloud cover map to show the match. I suggest Count Zero try it out to help drive his point home to the more dense numbskulls out in internetland.
Joined: Jun 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 482 Location: Hull, England
Re: The Smoking Gun of Bart's "Smoking Gun" Footag « Reply #9 on Oct 20, 2006, 5:18am »
But my understanding of Count's research is that the map doesn't show the cloud cover, it shows the actual precipitation, so it is never going to match 100% with the cloud cover shown in the photographs. However, the areas of precipitation should match up with the more dense areas of cloud cover during the course of the day - presumably the precipitation map isn't meant to be a snapshot of a particular time of day in the way the photos are?
The stronger point for me (and the more relevant to BS's argument) is that the hi-res photos and the vidcaps match exactly, thus raising the following questions for the HBs to address ...
1. how could the astronauts possibly obtain these detailed hi-res photos clearly showing a distant earth if a cardboard mask was used on the window to make a LEO earth look distant. It simply could not be made to look like this - not to mention that obtaining a gradient shaded terminator such as that shown in the picture would be pretty well impossible using a cardboard mask.
2. why would NASA bother to make multpile transparencies showing slightly different cloud coverage in order to obtain these images more than once? If you were going to fake it, why do it multiple times? And does that mean that BS is claiming that, in fact, the astronauts went through the process of sticking transparencies to the windows and checking they looked OK (as supposedly shown in his "smoking gun" footage) multiple times in order to get the multiple shots? Ridiculous.
Count, they say a picture says a thousand words ... yours prove it. Brilliant work.
Joined: May 2005 Gender: Male Posts: 4,620 Location: Lost Deimos Moonbase
Re: The Smoking Gun of Bart's "Smoking Gun" Footag « Reply #11 on Oct 20, 2006, 8:49am »
There we are, add your reseach to my Apollo 11 TV rebutal, Count. Apparently it is having trouble with the background under Firefox, still trying to work that out, but should work under the other browsers I hope. It does work under IE
It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. -- JayUtah
"On two occasions, I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. -- JayUtah
"On two occasions, I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)