Post by JayUtah on Aug 3, 2005 16:06:51 GMT -4
The first thing was a programme I watched on British TV.
Everyone seems to think it was the Fox program, but you claim it was British-produced. Very well, I believe you. I don't know what it might have been either -- I don't watch British TV.
Well, they started off by pointing out the anomolies in the photos. They pointed out that a rear-lit figure would be in silhouette, and not brightly lit as they were.
This has been roundly disproven. I was privileged to do a program for British TV that discussed this very thing. (I don't watch British TV, but I appear on it -- it was done for Channel 5.) I demonstrated live on television that the "silhouette" theory just doesn't hold. Why? Because the light reflecting up from the lunar surface is actually quite bright. The areas just to the left and right of the astronaut's shadow throw up quite enough light to illuminate him.
The conspiracy theorists just deny that this is the case. That's because they don't understand photometry, the study of measuring light. They point to the supposedly low reflectivity of the lunar surface, but neglect to compute that even with the low reflectivity, the amount of reflected sunlight from the lunar surface is roughly equivalent to a 100-watt light bulb every square meter.
Further, the suits themselves are highly reflective: about 80%. That means it doesn't take as much light to make them visible, or even to appear bright. That's why you wear white clothing at night. You are more visible not because there is more light available, but because the bright color takes better advantage of the light that is visible.
According to physics there is no reason whatsoever why the astronauts should appear in silhouette as seen looking up-sun.
And as I said, we can demonstrate this empirically. It has been done many times by many people. I work with light all the time, and diffuse reflection is a necessary and important part of what I do. I can set up such reflection cases without even breathing hard.
So theoretically and computationally the conspiracists' expectations are wrong, and empirically they are wrong. There just isn't any way left for them to be right. All they have is their naked claim of what it "should" be -- one that is soundly shown not to be the case.
Photography does, however, change things. Specifically it adds another whole photometric variable -- camera exposure. Even under appropriate identical lighting conditions it is possible to take two pictures that differ only in their camera settings and one of which will show detail in shade and the other will not. Any photographer -- myself included -- can tell you how to "open up" shadows, or to selectively expose for certain parts of the image.
So it is possible for conspiracists to show you photos that have been exposed a certain way when taken, that seem to show a complete lack of detail. It is only when they imply that this is the only possible situation that they become dishonest. When photographers lie to laymen about photography, they cease to be respectable experts on photography.
They showed the pool of light in which the sad charade was artificially illuminated. They pointed out where it ended, and where the centre was.
I'm guessing that this was the famous photo of Aldrin -- the "classic" astronaut photo? If so there is an explanation. But I won't delve into it until you confirm which photo it was.
They showed an aerial photograph obtained by a Russian spy satellite which was taken a few dozen miles north of Las Vegas, and compared it with a photo of "the moon" taken from moon orbit. Blimey! It's the exact same place!
No.
Your program omitted to tell you that the crater pattern around the Apollo 11 landing site was reproduced in Nevada intentionally so as to allow the astronauts to fly over it from various directions and see what the craters would look like from different altitudes and angles, so they wouldn't be taken by surprise when they encountered the actual three-dimensional surface.
NASA proudly announced this, and it's part of the documented training. By failing to mention the well-known pedigree of the training site, your program conveyed to you the wrong impression that this was something NASA would have preferred to keep secret. Obtaining the picture from the Russians is a red herring; NASA would have provided the photographs themselves, if asked.
Well, whaddyaknow? Every single rock was in the exact same place. Every background hill was in the same place. It was the same place.
Parallax. We can do that on Earth too.
My guess it that you didn't match up every single rock. Since you saw this on a television program, you probably didn't have a lot of time in which to judge the coherence of the pictures. That is intentional. The conspiracists want to give you just a glimpse of the data so that only the apparent sameness -- which is perceived immediately -- is seen. Differences, which take careful examination and sometimes measurement to see, are ignored.
Then they showed another bit of footage, where every rock was in the same place, but the backdrop had been changed.
Parallax. We can do that on Earth too. I have a whole series of photographs taken from my office that exhibit just these properties.
Then they showed footage of the astronauts moving around, sped up by a factor of two, which makes it perfectly obvious where they are.
No.
They showed you a few seconds of the hours upon hours of Apollo video and made you think that it was all like that, and if you sped up any randomly-selected portion of it, that it would similarly seem "normal". In fact it is very easy to find Apollo footage that looks very comically accelerated when sped up 2X. Especially shots of astronauts falling down, where they fall slowly but flail their arms and legs at normal speed. If the footage was shot at normal rates and then slowed down, then all the motion would be slowed.
Further, we tested this in the other direction too. We got an Apollo space suit replica, put an actor in it, drove him out to the Mojave desert (well, actually we drove him out there and then made him put the suit on) and had him attempt to mimic Apollo astronaut movements, which we then slowed down 2X and showed on television. We couldn't get any of that footage to resemble Apollo movements. So the subjective determination only works in one direction, and only for a few trivial seconds of film.
I was wrong, and I'm man enough to admit it.
Not so far. You are very clearly wrong on a number of points, but have yet to even consider the substance of the objections.
For reference: The Truth about the Moon Landings, a.k.a., Conspiracy Moon Landing (U.S. title), 48 minutes, funded by U.K. Channel 5 and Discovery Canada, produced in 2003 by ZigZag Productions, London.
Everyone seems to think it was the Fox program, but you claim it was British-produced. Very well, I believe you. I don't know what it might have been either -- I don't watch British TV.
Well, they started off by pointing out the anomolies in the photos. They pointed out that a rear-lit figure would be in silhouette, and not brightly lit as they were.
This has been roundly disproven. I was privileged to do a program for British TV that discussed this very thing. (I don't watch British TV, but I appear on it -- it was done for Channel 5.) I demonstrated live on television that the "silhouette" theory just doesn't hold. Why? Because the light reflecting up from the lunar surface is actually quite bright. The areas just to the left and right of the astronaut's shadow throw up quite enough light to illuminate him.
The conspiracy theorists just deny that this is the case. That's because they don't understand photometry, the study of measuring light. They point to the supposedly low reflectivity of the lunar surface, but neglect to compute that even with the low reflectivity, the amount of reflected sunlight from the lunar surface is roughly equivalent to a 100-watt light bulb every square meter.
Further, the suits themselves are highly reflective: about 80%. That means it doesn't take as much light to make them visible, or even to appear bright. That's why you wear white clothing at night. You are more visible not because there is more light available, but because the bright color takes better advantage of the light that is visible.
According to physics there is no reason whatsoever why the astronauts should appear in silhouette as seen looking up-sun.
And as I said, we can demonstrate this empirically. It has been done many times by many people. I work with light all the time, and diffuse reflection is a necessary and important part of what I do. I can set up such reflection cases without even breathing hard.
So theoretically and computationally the conspiracists' expectations are wrong, and empirically they are wrong. There just isn't any way left for them to be right. All they have is their naked claim of what it "should" be -- one that is soundly shown not to be the case.
Photography does, however, change things. Specifically it adds another whole photometric variable -- camera exposure. Even under appropriate identical lighting conditions it is possible to take two pictures that differ only in their camera settings and one of which will show detail in shade and the other will not. Any photographer -- myself included -- can tell you how to "open up" shadows, or to selectively expose for certain parts of the image.
So it is possible for conspiracists to show you photos that have been exposed a certain way when taken, that seem to show a complete lack of detail. It is only when they imply that this is the only possible situation that they become dishonest. When photographers lie to laymen about photography, they cease to be respectable experts on photography.
They showed the pool of light in which the sad charade was artificially illuminated. They pointed out where it ended, and where the centre was.
I'm guessing that this was the famous photo of Aldrin -- the "classic" astronaut photo? If so there is an explanation. But I won't delve into it until you confirm which photo it was.
They showed an aerial photograph obtained by a Russian spy satellite which was taken a few dozen miles north of Las Vegas, and compared it with a photo of "the moon" taken from moon orbit. Blimey! It's the exact same place!
No.
Your program omitted to tell you that the crater pattern around the Apollo 11 landing site was reproduced in Nevada intentionally so as to allow the astronauts to fly over it from various directions and see what the craters would look like from different altitudes and angles, so they wouldn't be taken by surprise when they encountered the actual three-dimensional surface.
NASA proudly announced this, and it's part of the documented training. By failing to mention the well-known pedigree of the training site, your program conveyed to you the wrong impression that this was something NASA would have preferred to keep secret. Obtaining the picture from the Russians is a red herring; NASA would have provided the photographs themselves, if asked.
Well, whaddyaknow? Every single rock was in the exact same place. Every background hill was in the same place. It was the same place.
Parallax. We can do that on Earth too.
My guess it that you didn't match up every single rock. Since you saw this on a television program, you probably didn't have a lot of time in which to judge the coherence of the pictures. That is intentional. The conspiracists want to give you just a glimpse of the data so that only the apparent sameness -- which is perceived immediately -- is seen. Differences, which take careful examination and sometimes measurement to see, are ignored.
Then they showed another bit of footage, where every rock was in the same place, but the backdrop had been changed.
Parallax. We can do that on Earth too. I have a whole series of photographs taken from my office that exhibit just these properties.
Then they showed footage of the astronauts moving around, sped up by a factor of two, which makes it perfectly obvious where they are.
No.
They showed you a few seconds of the hours upon hours of Apollo video and made you think that it was all like that, and if you sped up any randomly-selected portion of it, that it would similarly seem "normal". In fact it is very easy to find Apollo footage that looks very comically accelerated when sped up 2X. Especially shots of astronauts falling down, where they fall slowly but flail their arms and legs at normal speed. If the footage was shot at normal rates and then slowed down, then all the motion would be slowed.
Further, we tested this in the other direction too. We got an Apollo space suit replica, put an actor in it, drove him out to the Mojave desert (well, actually we drove him out there and then made him put the suit on) and had him attempt to mimic Apollo astronaut movements, which we then slowed down 2X and showed on television. We couldn't get any of that footage to resemble Apollo movements. So the subjective determination only works in one direction, and only for a few trivial seconds of film.
I was wrong, and I'm man enough to admit it.
Not so far. You are very clearly wrong on a number of points, but have yet to even consider the substance of the objections.
For reference: The Truth about the Moon Landings, a.k.a., Conspiracy Moon Landing (U.S. title), 48 minutes, funded by U.K. Channel 5 and Discovery Canada, produced in 2003 by ZigZag Productions, London.