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Post by Kiwi on Jul 23, 2009 14:17:34 GMT -4
Thanks, but not my finds. The first (which is computer-generated, which is why the rocks don't look realistic) was found by AJV and the second by Laurel.
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Ian Pearse
Mars
Apollo (and space) enthusiast
Posts: 308
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Post by Ian Pearse on Jul 23, 2009 14:17:51 GMT -4
LionkingThis photo shows the scale on the window that we're talking about: web.mit.edu/digitalapollo/DigitalApolloCover.jpgI'm not sure how it works, but it tells the Commander, Armstrong, where the computer is trying to land the lunar module. It looks as if it might have similar parts on each of two window panes, and to make it work properly he moves his viewpoint to line up the parts. The dots I mentioned in the view from outside would be the numbers on the right. And this photo: www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/AS11-37-5528.jpgshows a circuit-breaker chart taped to the wall with gray tape, below the rendezvous window in the cabin roof. That's most likely what we're seeing, that makes a shape roughly like a flag. Keep in mind that the angle of view here is entirely different to one through the window from the ground. As usual, Jack White doesn't know what he is talking about. Well-washed and sifted sand, of course... Probably best to explain that. Few of our new members would understand why you said it. As I recall reading elsewhere, the scale on the window was used in conjunction with the output of the guidance computer. The display would show an angle to the horizon, and the cdr used the scale to measure it, keeping the LM on the right path.
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Post by echnaton on Jul 23, 2009 14:40:41 GMT -4
I believe Kiwi is right. The there were scales on the inner and outer panes. After pitchover, the computer would display a number for the LMP to recite. The CMD would line the scale associated with the number to see projected LM landing point. The CMD would tweak the controls and the computer would adjust the heading and give a new number. There were probably other uses for the scales as well. You can here this process in the Apollo 17 landing video. 5 meg.
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Post by gonetoplaid on Aug 6, 2009 2:20:52 GMT -4
Pfft. I looked at the photo in question. The PLSS shadow is clearly visible on the ground on the back of the astronaut. Apparently Jack missed that obvious feature in the photo. I guess that he also doesn't have any concept of the wave nature of light or all electromagnetic radiation for that matter. The astronaut visors are far from optically perfectly smooth surfaces. The visor surfaces were vacuum coated with a gold film. Said visor surfaces and gold film was repeatedly cleaned with cloths before the actual Apollo missions. The result is countless microscopic scratches upon the visor surfaces which aren't readily visible to the eye yet do become obvious under intense light sources. Grab any one of your camera lenses, hold it up, and look through it. If you have taken care of your camera lenses, then you won't see any scratches or any internal dust particles. Now, take the same camera lens and look through it at a desk lamp in an otherwise dark room. Even better, step outside at night and shine a flashlight into your camera lens and look down into your camera lens. You won't be happy with what you see under these extremely contrasty lighting conditions. And yet that same camera lens looks just fine when you look through it in a normally lit room or when looking through it at the daytime sky.
The point is that all of the microscopic imperfections and dust particles which you did see under extremely the harsh and contrasty lighting conditions apply to any surface which behaves as a first surface mirror. The gold tinted visors, when reflecting surrounding images, behave as first surface mirrors. Now, here is the real rub. It has been well known for nearly three centuries that lenses (which transmit light through them to form a focus) merely need to have surfaces which are polished to 1/2 wave accuracy in order to produce a nearly perfect image. Yet at the same time it has been well known that any surface which creates a reflected image (first surface mirrors) must be polished to an accuracy of 1/8 wave. Thus mirrors require 4X better polishing tolerance. This fact, aside from the problem of coating glass mirrors with an adequately smooth and even layer of chemically applied silver, is why, until the late 1920's, astronomical refractor (lens) telescopes held sway over astronomical reflector (mirror) telescopes.
Now, as mentioned, the astronaut visors were nowhere close to accepted 1/2 wave lens optical quality. Why? First, even in 1969 dollars, producing a visor with 1/2 wave accurate surface curvatures as well as being consistent in thickness to 1/2 wave tolerance as well, would have easily cost at least $1,000,000 per visor and would have taken at least 5 years to produce -- assuming that the technology existed at the time -- which it didn't. Second, the human eye under dimmer daylight conditions has a pupil diameter of around 3mm. Thus, for the visors to produce acceptable visually sharp and undistorted views, the essentially zero optical power visor surface curvatures and smoothness would only need to be accurate to 5 waves over a range of 3mm. So, in other words, the visors serving as accurate optically reflecting surfaces is both absurd and impossible. Yet on the other hand they do perform a barely acceptable job of reflecting the surrounding scenes off of their more or less spherical surfaces.
In other words, think of the visor surfaces as being quite "bumpy" on small scales across the visor surfaces. This is why the reflected image quality off of the visor surfaces rapidly deteriorates the more you view off-axis in the visor from from the visor's central visor reflection.
Well, that is the long and the short of it. And then on top of all of this you have to throw in the effects of the wave nature of light when you consider the interactions and phase cancellations which are present along the edges of extremely bright and dark illumination boundaries. Plus all of those microscopic cleaning scratches add up to create an unholy optical mess anywhere around extremely bright visor reflections. The inherent lack of true optical reflection qualities of the visor gold plated surfaces greatly exacerbate these phase interaction effects to create a bloody mess for off-axis visor reflections.
Altogether, these are the reasons why it is impossible to determine the phase of the Earth when trying to examine the Earth's extreme off-axis reflection in Aldrin's visor within the famous "Man On The Moon" photo AS11-40-5903 as an example.
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Post by Jason Thompson on Aug 6, 2009 4:08:17 GMT -4
Apparently Jack missed that obvious feature in the photo. I guess that he also doesn't have any concept of the wave nature of light or all electromagnetic radiation for that matter. Jack White can't tell the front of the LM from the back, so I doubt he has any understanding of any real science. This is the man, let us not forget, who admitted under oath while presenting a photographic analysis in court that he did not know what photogrammetry was.... Nice post, BTW.
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Post by ineluki on Aug 6, 2009 6:51:45 GMT -4
This is the man, let us not forget, who admitted under oath while presenting a photographic analysis in court that he did not know what photogrammetry was.... And even worse, he has learned nothing since then...
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Post by echnaton on Aug 6, 2009 9:37:01 GMT -4
Very informative, gonetoplaid. Thanks
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Post by gonetoplaid on Oct 8, 2009 22:26:01 GMT -4
I know that this is an older thread, but fairly recently I had a lot of fun debunking Jack White's claim that "The Flag Flew Too Soon":
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Post by ka9q on Feb 23, 2010 8:56:14 GMT -4
Ah, I've encountered these two "Jack White Specials" courtesy of one of his loyal disciples. I agree with the interpretation of the so-called flag reflection in that the "staff" is definitely the landing point designator inscription on the commander's window, but I think the "flag" could be either the cover for the rendezvous window, the checklist taped over the commander's circuit breaker panel as seen in a post-EVA picture of Armstrong, or perhaps the rendezvous window itself. The one thing it cannot be is the actual US flag.
Regarding the supposed reflection of the guy without his PLSS in Gene Cernan's visor, I noticed a few more things. First, Cernan is in the extreme upper left corner of a wide angle image, meaning that the camera had to be pointed well away from him. That's why Schmitt's reflection is turned away even though the camera was mounted on his chest, pointing forward.
Second, Cernan's visor has a series of smudges and scratches that match those in an earlier series of him taken as he saluted the flag. In fact, one of the salute photos has him touching his visor with his right hand with his fingers in the exact position of the smudges - so we even have a pretty good idea of how those marks got there.
Now it may not even be necessary to invoke these smudges to explain Schmitt's reflection. Postbaguk took a direct view of Schmitt with a similar orientation, flipped it, squeezed it to account for the foreshortening of the spherical visor, and shrank it down to size, showing that it pretty well matched the low resolution reflection we see in that picture. But the presence of those scratches and smudges (which both astronauts complained about quite a bit as impairing their visibility) certainly adds to the argument that one should not jump to rather drastic conclusions on the basis of what one perceives in such a small number of pixels.
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Post by Grand Lunar on Feb 25, 2010 16:10:50 GMT -4
This is probably the biggest irony, since the hoax believers accuse NASA of using Photoshop to alter LRO photos to put in the views of Apollo artifacts.
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