The examination of Apollo Moon photographs is an endeavor undertaken by certain people engaged in the debate as to the merits of Moon landing conspiracy theories, despite the abundance of third-party evidence for Apollo Moon landings. A number of allegations and refutations with a variable degree of notability are put forward due to this examination.
Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
Allegations and refutations
Absence of stars
Conspiracy theorists (henceforth conspiracists) frequently point out that there are no stars in the Apollo photographs. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to travel in outer space in 1961, commented that the stars seen from his Vostok spacecraft were "bright and clear cut." Conspiracists contend that NASA chose not to put the stars into the photos because astronomers would have been able to use them to determine whether the photos were taken from the Earth or the Moon, by means of identifying them and comparing their celestial position and parallax to what would be expected for either observation site.
Inconsistent color and angle of shadows and light
The shadows should be absolutely black and run parallel to each other.
The photographer's shadow should point to his position which is straight below the centre of the bottom edge of the photo.
Apparent "hot spots" in some photographs
Conspiracists claim that the classic photo of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Moon (AS11-40-5903) looks as if a huge spotlight was used at a close distance. Jan Lundberg, an engineer at Hasselblad responsible for producing the photographic cameras used for the Apollo missions, stated: "Yes, it seems like he is standing in a spotlight and I can't explain that. Umm, that escapes me why. So maybe you have to find Armstrong and ask him!"
In an Apollo 12 voice recording during the mission's first EVA, astronaut Pete Conrad said: "Boy, that Sun is bright. That's just like somebody shining a spotlight in your hand." [...] "I'll tell you...You know, this Sun...It really is...It's just like somebody's got a super-bright spotlight."
Issues with crosshairs in photographs
There are some issues with the appearance of crosshairs in the photographs; these are present in the image as a result of a Réseau plate incorporated into the cameras.
Apparently identical backgrounds in Apollo 15 photographs taken at different locations
There are issues with Apollo 15 photos having identical backgrounds.
High number of photographs
When the number of photographs taken by astronauts during the EVAs of all Apollo missions is divided by the duration of all of the EVAs, one arrives at a figure of 1.19 photos per minute. That is one photo per 50 seconds. Discounting time spent on other activities results in one photo per 15 seconds for Apollo 11. This is even more remarkable because many places in the photographs are miles apart and would have taken considerable travel time to reach, especially in bulky pressure suits. Moreover, the cameras were equipped with neither a viewfinder nor automatic exposure control, which means that taking good pictures would take considerably longer.
Quality of the photographs
Given the lack of time and viewfinders, the photos look much better than would be expected, with perfect focus and exposure, a charge made by Ralph René.
Photographs containing artifacts
There are artifacts in the photos such as the two seemingly matching 'C's on a rock and on the ground (the rock is seen in NASA photos AS16-107-17445 and 17446). They could be "prop continuity markers." Conspiracists say that the first copies of the photos released do show these marks, and that later releases may have been doctored, and that attempts to debunk this problem focus exclusively on one example on the rock, ignoring the second on the ground and the coincidence of two, allegedly identical artifacts on the same photo.
Artifacts in the film
A resident of Perth, Australia, a woman named Una Ronald (a pseudonym created by the authors of the source), said that for two or three seconds she saw a Coca-Cola bottle roll across the lower right quadrant of her television screen that was displaying the live broadcast of the Apollo 11 EVA, and believed the rolling bottle was edited out of later playbacks of the footage. She also said that several letters appeared in The West Australian discussing the Coca-Cola bottle incident within ten days of the lunar landing. Western Australia was the only place in the world that received their feed live without delay.
Publication of a clearly altered photograph
The 1994 hardcover version of Moon Shot by Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Shepard and Apollo-Soyuz Test Project crewmember Deke Slayton contains a photograph of Shepard playing golf on the Moon with another astronaut. The picture is an obvious fake, there being no one else to take the shot of the two, and the artwork was poor (such as the grapefruit sized "golf ball"), and yet it was presented as if it were a real photo.
Shepard duffed the first ball and hit the second one fairly cleanly. From Houston, Mission Control's CAPCOM, astronaut Fred Haise, joked to Shepard, "That looked like a slice to me, Al," yet a slice is caused by uneven airflow on the ball. This is inconsequential with an atmosphere as thin as that of the Moon.
Apparent air resistance
With no air resistance, the trajectory of a projectile is a parabola. Apparent deviation of the dust particles from the ideal parabolic trajectory on the footage of the Apollo 16 lunar rover was attributed to the influence of air resistance, implying that the footage is fake. The argument would be plausible were the dust particles ejected with a constant velocity by a source moving with a constant speed. However, the wheels were ejecting the particles with a greatly varying speed, when the rover was moving over deep dust pockets.
Golf Ball Photos Video
National Geographic examination
In 2009, the National Geographic Society examined eight conspiracists based on photographs. Their analysis is titled Photos: 8 Moon-Landing Hoax Myths - Busted.
- Flags waving
- No photographers
- No stars
- No landing crater
- Lighting varies
- Footprints too clear
- No leftovers visible
- Strange lights
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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