Reflection of Sun in Visor is Too Big

[david]

The main thing that convinced me that Apollo was a hoax was the size of the reflection of the sun in the Apollo astronaut's visor. It was much bigger than the reflection of the sun in the shuttle astronaut's visor. This was presented in the video "What Happened on the Moon" which is off-line now.

I did some looking around. I couldn't find the exact footage that I saw on "What Happened on the Moon" which showed both the shuttle and Apollo astronauts a little closer to the camera so you could see what was glare and what was the actual reflection. This isn't as good but it will have to do. The glare in the shuttle astronaut's visor obscures the actual size of the reflection of the sun. The reflection itself is smaller. I wish I had the footage from the video. It was closer so the actual size of the reflection of the light source in the Apollo astronaut's visor was plainer. This one isn't as clear as it is a bit further away.

Stop the video at the 50 second mark and compare the size of the reflection of the sun to the size in the pictures.

www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/a15v.1653238.rm
50 sec. mark

a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/ig_65.13_sts51i_ox.jpg

www.todaysthv.com/assetpool/images/061130113836_astronaut_earth_space.jpg

If the reflection in the Apollo astronaut's helmet is overexposed, why doesn't the rest of the picture look overexposed too?

[frenat]

Do both visors have the same amount of curve? Were they taken with the same type of camera with the same size lense? What about scratches on the visor? Are both of them completely unscratched?

[gwiz]

david said:

If the reflection in the Apollo astronaut's helmet is overexposed, why doesn't the rest of the picture look overexposed too?

Because the reflection of the sun is much brighter than anything else in the picture, and photographic systems have a limited exposure range. Anything too bright is a featureless white, anything too dark is a featureless black.

The point you don't seem to get is that light is scattered by the glass of the lens and also by any dust that is present on the lens surfaces. This scattered light falls on the film outside the true image of the object. If an object is very bright, eg the sun, the scattered light can saturate the film emulsion to white over a large area. The size of this area has more to do with the lens and the exposure than with the size of the true image of the object. Reflection in a convex surface makes an object look smaller, and the true size of the sun's reflection in a helmet photo is actually very small indeed, to the extent that an object the same size without the sun's brightness would be invisible except in a close-up of the helmet. Any helmet/sun picture is giving you an overexposed area hundreds of times greater than the true sun image size.

[Jason Thompson]

The 'What Happened On The Moon' video is a great example of invalid comparison. They compare a frame of video with a still image taken on film, which have very different properties. Most notably, the vidicon tube when overfed with a bright light 'blooms', making the bright spot appear much bigger on the screen than it actually is. This is a well-known effect, and one the author of 'What Happened On The Moon' should know about, being a photographer and documentary film producer, suposedly.

The real comparison will be a still 70mm Hasselblad image from Apollo showing the sun reflecting in the visor. Oddly enough, with all this research they claim to have done, in all the 20,000+ still photos from Apollo the authors can't seem to find one and fall back on a video capture instead. However, within ten seconds of looking at the Project Apollo Archive (linked at the bottom of this page) I found a picture of Dave Scott from Apollo 15 with a reflection of the sun in his visor. Check out AS15-82-11168 and compare that with the images linked in the first post.

[david]

Do both visors have the same amount of curve? Were they taken with the same type of camera with the same size lense? What about scratches on the visor? Are both of them completely unscratched?

I don't have the same footage that was on "What Happened on the Moon". It showed a closer look at the Apollo astronaut's visor. It was the actual reflection and not glare. For scratches to cause that much distortion the visor would have to be very scratched. Wouldn't those scratches be discernable. In order to get that many scratches wouldn't the astronaut have to fall down about ten times and land on the visor each time.
The difference in curvature between the two visors is not significant enough to cause that much difference in the size of the reflections in the visors. I've seen enough convex mirrors on trucks and in department stores to have an idea of how much difference would be needed to cause that much of a difference in size.

The real comparison will be a still 70mm Hasselblad image from Apollo showing the sun reflecting in the visor. Oddly enough, with all this research they claim to have done, in all the 20,000+ still photos from Apollo the authors can't seem to find one and fall back on a video capture instead.

According to the hoax theory some of the footage was taken in the Nevada desert and some of it was taken in a studio. I just googled arond and found this right away.
www.hasselbladfoundation.org/images/centenary_4.jpg


It says it's from Apollo 12. The other pictures are from apollo 15. It's quite plausible that most of Apollo 12 was taken in a studio with lights and Apollo 12 was taken in a desert area.

Any helmet/sun picture is giving you an overexposed area hundreds of times greater than the true sun image size.

I wish WHOTM were still on-line; the picture was much clearer and it was only the reflection without any glare. What you said about the sun is probably true. Maybe the reason the reflection I'm referring to was clear was that it wasn't of the sun.

The point you don't seem to get is that light is scattered by the glass of the lens and also by any dust that is present on the lens surfaces. This scattered light falls on the film outside the true image of the object. If an object is very bright, eg the sun, the scattered light can saturate the film emulsion to white over a large area. The size of this area has more to do with the lens and the exposure than with the size of the true image of the objec

I've seen lots of pictures taken in areas where there was a lot of dust and I've never seen that phenomenon in any picture.

[gwiz]

Could you tidy up that second link so that it i) works ii) doesn't mess up the thread formatting?

As I keep explaining, if you take a picture that includes the sun/its reflection and expose for a normal scene, the apparent image is much too big. I don't care whether you say "without any glare" or not, this is a photographic fact.

If you wan't a true image of the sun you have to use a much shorter exposure, and if you do that, everything else in the picture comes out black. A normal camera wont give you a short enough exposure, you have to use a neutral density filter. You can tell it's a true image if you can see sunspots when you enlarge it. If not, it's just overexposed scattered light.

The extra scattering from dust on the lens is only really obvious if you have a bright object like the sun in the image and compare pictures taken dusty and clean.

[Jason Thompson]

According to the hoax theory some of the footage was taken in the Nevada desert and some of it was taken in a studio.

How convenient....

[gwiz]

David, if you're saying that the large reflection is somehow proof of the use of a large floodlight, you have to explain this one away:

The shadows are sharp edged, as they would be with a small light source. A large light source, and one that corresponded to what you claim is a true reflection in the helmet would be enormous, would give soft-edge shadows, the umbra/penumbra effect.

[james]

The main thing that convinced me that Apollo was a hoax was the size of the reflection of the sun in the Apollo astronaut's visor.

Oh my... Never mind all the irrefutable evidence that shows Apollo went to the Moon. The fact that the glare of the Sun off the visor on two different space suits with different visors, taken at different times, with different cameras and different exposures looks different and this some how is a sign that it's all a hoax?! And it's the main thing that convinces you?! My God man...

What if I took a picture of the Sun reflecting off my '91 VW Jetta, and then took picture of a newer model Jetta (or any other car for that matter) and the Sun's reflection looked different. Does this make one of the cars a fake/hoax? Of course not. So why should the Suns refection off two different space helmets be exactly the same?

[Mr Gorsky]

Why would the difference in the two pictures be evidence of Apollo being hoaxed rather than the shuttle?

[Jason Thompson]

David, there are Hasselblad images from every single Apollo mission, most of which can be found online at, for example, the Apollo Image Atlas. See if you can find any that have the astronaut taking up a similar amount of frame as in that video and show a sun reflection as large as in the video, or any with the visor taking up the same amount of the frame as in the shuttle pictures that have a sun reflection larger than the one in those shuttle pictures. I'd be willing to bet you can't.

[tofu]

james said:

What if I took a picture of the Sun reflecting off my '91 VW Jetta

if you try to claim that a 91 Jetta is still running then yes, I would say that was a hoax. ;D

[JayUtah]

In this case distance from the camera is also a factor. Hot spots expand with distance, and if you use a zoom lens to apparently close the distance, you'll end up with a legitimate difference. This is because hot spots incorporate scatter. Whether the reflector is clean or dirty, scratched or smooth, all reflection includes some scatter. Scattered light is a "pencil" (cone) of rays that expand with distance. The farther the vantage point from the reflector, the more that pencil of rays will have expanded and the larger the apparent hot spot.

Stand 10 feet away from your Jetta and photograph the hot spot. Now go 100 feet away and photograph the same Jetta with a zoom lens that makes the car fill the frame the way it did when you were close. The hot spot in the 100-foot picture will look bigger -- take up a bigger fraction of the windshield. I can post some examples of this later, although I don't think the car I used was a Jetta.

This expansion of highlights happens all the time, but because your eye doesn't have a zoom lens, you incorporate the proportionally larger hot spot on a distant object into your overall perception of the scene. It appears normal to you because your eye has a fixed focal length and because you're used to seeing distant objects a certain way. The zoom lens creates a perception that you're not used to processing.

Percy here has simply used a zoomed-in television image. In addition to the vidicon blooming and the scatter surface finish principles already discussed, the hot spot looks bigger because it's seen from farther away, and Percy has neglected to reveal that fact and to discuss the effects of zoom lenses on perception. As a photographer Percy is expected to know those effects, but as a conspiracy theorist he chooses what to reveal and what to conceal.

In short, Percy's argument is based on the premise that in true photography all the hot spots from putatively the same kind of reflector should all appear the same size. Thus if two hot spots appear different, the photography is not real. Unfortunately Percy just pulled that "rule" out of some orifice. It's not true from a theoretical physics standpoint, and it's not true in empirical demonstration.

The moral is not to take a conspiracy theorist at face value when he tries to explain the rules by which the universe works. Chances are he's giving you some oversimplified guess that only holds in a few circumstances, allowing him to claim that some certain condition is "anomalous" by comparison.

[james]

tofu said:

james said:

What if I took a picture of the Sun reflecting off my '91 VW Jetta

if you try to claim that a 91 Jetta is still running then yes, I would say that was a hoax. ;D

It may have its issues, but it does run!... sort of... I can provide video evidence if that's what it takes

[Bob B.]

Welcome back, Jay.