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Post by gonetoplaid on Jul 31, 2009 15:35:41 GMT -4
Well, I finally figured it out. I thought that I was seeing stars in the sky in some of the Apollo 11 lunar surface pictures. These stars appear to have valid full width half max values when examined in MaxIm DL astronomical image processing software. My theory was that these were extremely faintly recorded stars since we all have heard that the night sky (stars) appear much brighter in space since there is no atmosphere to obscure the stars and make the stars look dimmer. The "stars" which I am "seeing" just above the background film grain in the processed images apparently are simply strong cosmic ray strikes onto the (at the time) undeveloped film. This makes sense since of course the Apollo spacecraft had to pass through the Van Allen belts twice while traveling to and from the moon, and since cosmic ray strikes will be much more prevalent once the Apollo spacecraft were beyond the protection of the earth's Van Allen belts. Anyway, sorry for my wild goose chase which I posted in my first post here where I was pretty sure that I was detecting stars in some of the Apollo images. Yet the cosmic ray strikes do kind of put another hole in the hoax theories. After all, who would have thunk of exposing the film to alpha particles in order to create very faint "simulated" cosmic ray strikes and tracks on the film? Soft radiation like X-rays wouldn't do it. It has to be hard radiation.  |
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Post by AtomicDog on Jul 31, 2009 15:51:54 GMT -4
Congratulations. If your discovery can be confirmed, you have provided one more piece of evidence that shows that apollo was indeed real.
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Post by gonetoplaid on Aug 1, 2009 17:54:31 GMT -4
Thanks. Yeah, I am brand new here on this really neat forum. My goal is to process and enhance every Apollo photo taken by the astronauts, and to provide related computer generated information supporting many of the photos. Anyway, I dare any hoax believer to have me tear into any Apollo photo in order to counter their "hoax" claims.
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Post by echnaton on Aug 3, 2009 10:56:36 GMT -4
Anyway, sorry for my wild goose chase
No need to be sorry about sharing your investigations while they are in progress, no matter what conclusion they lead to. Collaboration builds the knowledge of all.
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Post by kickitharder on Aug 8, 2009 16:45:20 GMT -4
Hi gonetoplaid
I too have checked some of the hi-res scans of the Apollo 11 mission photos using Maxim DL. I agree with you that the photos do not seem to contain stars - I looked at two similar images and stretched them to try and draw them out. I see what you mean by "stars" appearing when you do this, but they are not the same pattern of "stars" as seen in each image. (The images I looked at are AS11-40-5967HR.jpg and AS11-40-5968HR.jpg)
I am guessing that these "stars" are one, or some, or all of:
1. Cosmic ray hits on the film
2. Van Allen belt radiation
3. Artefacts on the film scanner used to produce these images from the original film (such as dust which may reflect the scanner beam to create "stars")
4. Original processing artefacts could have been occurred, such as scratches, dust
5. JPEG images (.jpg) are notorious for losing information about the picture in order to produce compressed images. These "stars" could be a data artefact in some cases.
6. They are actually stars and the exposure time is different on each image meaning some stars are on one photo and not on the other.
Are there any non-JPEG Apollo mission images on the net such as TIFF format, or (better still) FITS? These would emlinate the JPEG compression effects on the images.
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Post by gonetoplaid on Aug 8, 2009 17:42:16 GMT -4
...Are there any non-JPEG Apollo mission images on the net such as TIFF format, or (better still) FITS? These would emlinate the JPEG compression effects on the images. Thats what I want to know too! I would love to download and process TIFF format raw scans of the films. I bet Kipp Teague had access to TIFF format raw scans. How do we get access to the TIFF format raw scans? Anyone have a clue? Anyway, only recently did I learn that the ISD raw film scans which I am using actually are scans made from "contact printing" negatives made from the original Ektachrome slides. So now I have to consider one new possibility which might explain why nearly all of the "cosmic ray strikes" which I see in the images usually are colored a fairly deep blue. Lets see...You sandwich the original film against unexposed film to create a contact negative. Obviously a sheet of glass is overlaid atop the sandwich to keep the films flat. Then obviously the potential occurs for dust particles to create pinholes in the emulsion due to the weight of the overlying glass. Since blue light is shorter in wavelength, it will more easily penetrate through the pinholes, causing blue colored spot defects which are small and sharp and which could be interpreted as being cosmic ray strikes. Well, what do you all think of this hypothesis? |
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Post by gonetoplaid on Aug 8, 2009 17:45:17 GMT -4
Oh, on a follow-up, I have yet to come across true de-jpeg software which actually tries to reverse the JPEG encoding algorithms in order to do a really good job of restoring the original de-JPEGed block information. Anyone have any ideas? Currently I am using Topaz Labs DE-JPEG.
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Post by grashtel on Aug 8, 2009 20:00:24 GMT -4
Oh, on a follow-up, I have yet to come across true de-jpeg software which actually tries to reverse the JPEG encoding algorithms in order to do a really good job of restoring the original de-JPEGed block information. Anyone have any ideas? Currently I am using Topaz Labs DE-JPEG. Unfortunately JPEG uses lossy compression so actually reversing it is impossible (short of really major breakthroughs in mathematics anyway), once the data is gone its gone for good. The best way to get hold of uncompressed versions of the Apollo images would be to contact NASA directly, though you would probably have to pay. |
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Post by drewid on Aug 9, 2009 9:26:59 GMT -4
Paint shop pro had a de-jpg filter. Basically a kind of intelligent blur, with some added low level noise, not bad, but not really reversing the process. You could probably get a free trial to try it out.
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vq
Earth
What time is it again?
Posts: 129
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Post by vq on Aug 9, 2009 14:04:43 GMT -4
I agree that you definitely want to try to find the films in an uncompressed format rather than try to regress the JPG artifacts out. I actually thought the JSC (link below for reference) had their photos available in TIFF, but I must have been mistaken. Have you tried emailing JSC about TIFF format pictures? They could probably at least point you in the right direction. eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/mrf.htmgonetoplaid, to you think you could add the link to your web site to your signature? |
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Post by Mr Gorsky on Aug 9, 2009 14:19:21 GMT -4
Oh, on a follow-up, I have yet to come across true de-jpeg software which actually tries to reverse the JPEG encoding algorithms in order to do a really good job of restoring the original de-JPEGed block information. Anyone have any ideas? Currently I am using Topaz Labs DE-JPEG. As far as I am aware the JPEG format uses the same basic principle as the mp3 format does when compressing audio files ... i.e. it discards the less important data to reduce the size of the files without storing an algorithm to recreate the same data and uncompress the file. That essentially means that, whilst it is possible to unJPEG a file into another format, and even in some ways improve the quality of the image, you can never re-create the original. The problem is, without an uncompression algorithm De-JPEG software can never know what data was discarded in the first place. |
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Post by drewid on Aug 9, 2009 14:31:26 GMT -4
Yeah. It's more artifact minimising rather than reversion.
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Post by gonetoplaid on Aug 10, 2009 20:08:03 GMT -4
Yet JPEG uses specific algorithms to create the JPEG blocks within any JPEG image. Theoretically those algorithms could be reversed to reproduce the content of the original scanned blocks, minus brightness or contrast extremes which the algorithm "may" initially decide to clip. I dunno since I don't know how the JPEG algorithm works.
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Post by homobibiens on Aug 10, 2009 22:31:14 GMT -4
Yet JPEG uses specific algorithms to create the JPEG blocks within any JPEG image. Theoretically those algorithms could be reversed to reproduce the content of the original scanned blocks, minus brightness or contrast extremes which the algorithm "may" initially decide to clip. I dunno since I don't know how the JPEG algorithm works. In effect, the algorithm is reversed every time we view a JPEG image. But as you note, it's an imperfect reversal - some detail is lost. |
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Post by Data Cable on Aug 11, 2009 0:55:55 GMT -4
Theoretically those algorithms could be reversed to reproduce the content of the original scanned blocks... Not necessarily. Take a simple example: Reduce the width and height of a given image to half by averaging the values of every 2x2 block of pixels. Given only the reduced image, it is impossible to reliably reconstitute the original since each pixel cannot be "un-averaged" to determine the 4 values from which it was derived. Data is irretrievably lost using this simple algorithm, as with JPEG. |
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