Beginnings of my own processed Apollo photographs

[gonetoplaid]

Well, like the title of my post says, I have begun to process some of the raw scans of the original Apollo mission photos. Presently I have concentrated on the Apollo 11 photos. Cosmic ray hits on the negatives show up "galore" on the Apollo 11 images. The problem with many of these strong "hard" (alpha particle) cosmic ray hits is that they produce "star" images which appear to be real. You have to learn to ignore these cosmic ray strikes, especially since images from roll 40 numbered 5967 through 5970 contain numerous "star" images which are not present in the other 5967 - 5970 photos. Well, actually, one star image "may" actually be real, but I have not confirmed this. In any event, assume that any "stars" in the Apollo photos are false and are caused by hard cosmic ray strikes onto the film emulsion.

The point of my post: I spent over three days creating custom color correction and gamma profiles in order to compensate for the deterioration of the original Apollo films and the color imbalance of the scanner which NASA used to scan the Apollo films. I had to examine numerous photos in order to fully tweak my RGB color curves. Well, I will just put my results "out there" for all of you to examine:

www.mem-tek.com/apollo/ISD.html

I plan on cranking through far more of the Apollo images and posting them on my above web page. Needless to say, if I come across anything which is "suspicious", then I will let ya'all know. Another point is that I have tried to assure that the shown hues in my processed images are accurate. I had to compensate for the scanner irregularities as well as for the inherent response of the original film layers.

Anyway, the color correction curves which I created assume that the film's green response is the most linear. Red and blue were adjusted accordingly relative to the film's green response since green is closest to visual yellow. I figure that the film's green emulsion would be what Kodak would strive to most accurately get accurate with regards to color balance.

Let me know if you think that I need to apply further color tweaks to the images.

[Ginnie]

Wow, the results are just stunning. Good work.
Of course, don't show these to an HB - they'll say the pics are doctored...

[Kiwi]

Aug 1, 2009 18:27:06 GMT -4 gonetoplaid said:

...I will just put my results "out there" for all of you to examine:
www.mem-tek.com/apollo/ISD.html

Nice stuff there, gonetoplaid, though I haven't looked at many due to being on S-L-O-W rural dialup.

On your web page you have the wrong abbreviation for Lunar Module. It originally had "excursion" in its title but that was later dropped, though I've never found exactly when. Probably someone recognised that it wasn't going to do any excurging on the lunar surface.

The deletion got a mention in From the Earth to the Moon. From DVD 2, Part 5:
0:19:32 Tom Kelly: Okay, one more thing. It's no longer the Lunar Excursion Module any more. Everybody feels that excursion sounds like it's gonna go out on a school trip. From now on it's just the Lunar Module.

Have you seen the photos that show Earth, Venus and part of the LM from the lunar surface? Apollo 12 from memory, and in a thread either here or at BAUT.

I've seen a few discussions about cosmic ray strike on the lunar surface films, but don't recall any description of what they look like. There are tiny bright blue dots on some of the transparency scans -- are they the same thing? While looking for some without success -- there's one on the extreme right of a panorama shot on Roll 40 -- I noticed what looks like the trail of a small stone that has been flung out by the LM's descent engine. It's not on quite the right angle to have come directly from underneath the LM, but could have bounced off another rock. It leads away from the crater at bottom right in AS11-40-5910 and is on the left of 5911, which also has at the bottom a small rock that appears like it might be on a pedestal, a bit like Apollo 15's Genesis Rock.

Now, if only there was a way to clean up the scans from the black-and-white prints that acquired light fog when they were printed. A few can be seen in Michael Light's book, Full Moon. It shows as the blacks bleeding into lighter areas, such as on pages 74-76, particularly when the lunar sky bleeds into the horizon. Going by my experience in the '70s, I'd guess that that particular printer smoked in his darkroom, fogging his enlarger lens with tar. I say "his" deliberately. Most female printers had much more sense.

[BertL]

Very nice stuff indeed. What kind of "processing" are you planning to do, though? Is it just going to be color enhancing photographs, or things like panoramas as well?

[gonetoplaid]

Hi Kiwi,

I will add some medium resolution photo links to my web page since you are on dial-up. Funny that you mention Venus showing up in some of the Apollo images. I found the photos in question, AS16-117-18815 through 18817. I plan to process them and verify that it is indeed Venus just above the horizon. Can somebody same me some time and tell me the date and time these three photos were taken? Time accurate to within 6 hours is more than sufficient since the moon takes a month to make a full rotation.

For Apollo 11, Venus was high up above the sun at an altitude of roughly 57 degrees above the horizon. So I don't think that there are any AP11 photos which will have Venus in them. Mercury was really close to the sun, and Saturn was nearly directly overhead. Jupiter was below the horizon. There are a few stars which I might find in some of the AP11 photos if I do some serious looking. Here is my list of really bright stars to look for:

Sirius
Canopus
Achernar
Fomalhaut
Deneb (unlikely though since now I think that it would be too dim)

But siriusly, there are four star candidates which could be present in the AP11 photos. I gotta start looking at the B&W images even though at present the color photos have captivated my attention.

I should be able to clean up fogged photos pretty good, using a technique I developed for removing haze from aerial photos taken by some of my auction company clients. My technique should work even better on B&W photos since I don't have to deal with color shifts due to the haze as I would with color photos. You got mission and roll numbers for the fogged photos?

Anyway, the majority of the cosmic ray strikes I have seen in the dark sky above the lunar surface have a distinctly bluish color. I guess that kind of makes sense since films of the era exhibit far less reciprocity failure in blue compared to red. Needless to say, reciprocity failure normally applies to longer exposure times and very low light levels. Yet I suspect that a similar principle applies to these old films with regards to cosmic ray strikes. I need to start looking in the deep LM shadows for cosmic ray strikes to confirm them and their general strike size and color.

I finally looked at the photo 5910 you provided. I gotta download the high-res scan of that one and process it since I "think" I see some evidence of the LM's engine blast path. Last night I also looked at the LRO image of the Apollo 11 landing site. You can see the boulder field to the right of the descent stage which Armstrong had to manually navigate over. Too bad he didn't decide to try for landing right next to that big crater on the right edge of the boulder field. That would have been some nice scenery for for first moon landing.

[gonetoplaid]

Hi Kiwi,

I just finished uploading medium res versions of the photos and updating my web page. Click on the link next to each photo (rather than the photo itself) in order to view medium res versions of the photos. The medium res photos are set to 1024 pixel width.

:-)

[gwiz]

Aug 2, 2009 7:56:43 GMT -4 Kiwi said:

Have you seen the photos that show Earth, Venus and part of the LM from the lunar surface? Apollo 12 from memory, and in a thread either here or at BAUT.

Here's the thread. It was actually Apollo 14.

[gonetoplaid]

Aug 2, 2009 12:55:40 GMT -4 BertL said:

Very nice stuff indeed. What kind of "processing" are you planning to do, though? Is it just going to be color enhancing photographs, or things like panoramas as well?

I will eventually work on creating panoramas and photo montages as well. In any event, I will document all of the photo processing steps which I use so that others can produce similar results.

[vq]

Aug 2, 2009 12:55:40 GMT -4 gonetoplaid said:

Can somebody same me some time and tell me the date and time these three photos were taken? Time accurate to within 6 hours is more than sufficient since the moon takes a month to make a full rotation...

But siriusly...

history.nasa.gov/alsj/a16/A16SurfacePhotoIndex_4.pdf

(Rolls eyes at star pun)

The ALSJ has pretty good timelines for the Apollo photography. It looks like the shots in question are given down to the second. FYI, takeoff was on 1972-4-16 02:23:35 UTC (assuming we can believe wikipedia).

[gonetoplaid]

I processed and uploaded photo 5910 to my web page. This photo is also interesting in that there are two strong blue colored cosmic ray strikes visible in shadow areas towards the bottom right of the photo. I assume that the bright swath in the photo was caused by the LM's descent engine.

[Data Cable]

Aug 2, 2009 14:36:00 GMT -4 gwiz said:

Here's the thread.

Ah, my 15 minutes of debunking fame... ;D

[vq]

Aug 2, 2009 14:36:00 GMT -4 gwiz said:

Here's the thread. It was actually Apollo 14.

Man, I love the part where the original poster turns the "I knew it all along" line... nice job, BTW.

[gonetoplaid]

Stuff which I recently added to my web page:

I added a Celestia screen capture showing exactly what Aldrin would have seen looking up through his visor when photo 5903 was taken. I also added a Celestia closeup view of the Earth as seen when photo 5924 was taken which has the Earth in it above the LM. Celestia is a dead on match. I haven't gotten around to posting photos AS16-117-18815 through 18817 which show Venus just above the horizon, but I have confirmed in Celestia and TheSky software that it is indeed Venus. Those photos are badly overexposed.

[Kiwi]

Aug 2, 2009 12:55:40 GMT -4 gonetoplaid said:

Here is my list of really bright stars to look for:
Sirius
Canopus
Achernar
Fomalhaut
Deneb

Apologies for the lack of replies. I've had computer problems for a few weeks and have been without one for the last 12 days. Fixed at last, I hope.


According to one of my books, the 12 brightest stars are (in order with apparent magnitudes):
Sirius -1.47
Canopus -0.71
Alpha Centauri -0.27
Arcturus 0.06
Vega 0.03
Capella 0.09
Rigel 0.15
Procyon 0.34
Achernar 0.49
Betelgeux Variable
Hadar 0.61
Altair 0.75

Do you know about this map which shows the directions in which the Apollo 11 Roll 40 photos were taken?
www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/a11photomap.gif

(From your web page) Station 3 was located north of the LM roughly 60 meters away from the center of the LM.

Nope. About 11.5 metres, according to the map.

I don't think the boulder field visible in the distance of AS11-40-5910 is the one Armstrong flew the LM over, nor that the light area is the blast path. The worst of the boulder field is much further back to the right, out of the picture, above the top of AS11-40-5912 and East Crater (the one Armstrong ran back to and photographed). West Crater isn't visible in the landing film, but the boulders on its northern side are, and the ones in 5910 are a much sparser extension of that patch.

[gonetoplaid]

Woops. I just fixed the distance for Station 3. I accidentally used the image scale associated with the Station 5 inset rather than the image scale for the main drawing. I calculate that Station 3 was approximately 17 meters away from the center of the LM or around 11.5 meters away from the north side of the LM as you mentioned.

Your list of the brightest stars is correct. I merely listed the brightest stars which were above yet very low to the horizon when Apollo 11 landed on the moon since those would be the candidates to try to find in any of the AP11 lunar surface photos.