To: mikebara33@gmail.com
From: (expat)
Subject: Blue flares in Apollo 14 Hasselblad Mag #66
==============================================
The frame you'll be most familiar with (and no doubt most tempted to include as an illustration) is this one, AS14-66-9301. As I'm sure you know, this is one frame from the third of three 360° pans shot by CDR Alan Shepard. This pan encompassed frames 9294 thru 9316. Frames either side of 9301, AS14-66-9300 and AS14-66-9302, do not show the flare although they both include the same portion of the sky as does AS14-66-9301. It follows that this is not a real object having persistence over the time it takes to swing a camera through a small angle and release the shutter -- say, about one second.
Flares in the sky are, however, seen in these three frames, which show completely different parts of the sky:
AS14-66-9286
AS14-66-9290
AS14-66-9295
It follows that, if this were a real object, it does have persistence and therefore should have been in 9300 and 9302.
No similar flares are seen on any film magazine other than #66. A catalog is available in the NASA Image Library for that magazine.
Are you beginning to suspect that what we have here is damage to that film roll? Suspicion turns to certainty when we notice the following additional flares:
AS14-66-9236. This is the very first frame of the first panorama, and here the flare is not in the sky but superimposed on the lunar surface.
AS14-66-9276. In this shot, the blue flare is splattered over the LM.
AS14-66-9345. This shot was part of a series taken after return to lunar orbit. The blue flare is clearly visible, removing all possible doubt that it does not represent anything real, suspended in the sky over the landing site.
AS14-66-9346. Ditto. The flare is reduced here, now appearing like a small scratch.
AS14-66-9348. Ditto. Only just visible in this frame.
I hope you will take account of these facts as you write your book.
Regards,
39 comments:
Nice work Expat. I doubt he will listen though. But at least it's on record that he was made aware of his hokum. Prior to penning his next crock of idiocy.
No, 'course he won't listen. Wonder if I should have cc'd the publisher, just so they know he turned down the opportunity to be honest.
Expat,
Bara just called me gay again in an email. Such class from a NY times best selling expert on spaceflight, consciousness, and the unified theory of .
Cheers
Derek
As for cc'ing Parfrey. Damn, I would have been sorely tempted.
Well, not Parfrey this time around. Adventures Unlimited Press.
Binary, when someone looks like a thug, and behaves like a thug, I think it's possible to draw a logical conclusion....
Most people these days who are homophobic tend to be savvy enough to angrily deny being homophobic. Not Bara. He can't be honest about, well, anything of a scientific nature, but by golly, he's honest about thinking the word "gay" is an insult.
This just gets better and better.
Expat,
Thanks for the correction. I wonder if Parfrey was approached. And if he was, would he have published it in it's current form. Given what he did with DM v2. Probably yes.
Flight,
I guess "gay" is a standard insult that he uses to look "net-cool." He must not give a shit about what his audience think of him.
Trekker,
I guess you nailed it mate. Bara's behaviour speaks volumes.
Binary: This is what you're missing by being banned from tweet-following this twit:
"I must have been on TV a lot lately, I'm getting attacked all over the place."
"For the record, quantum physics, dark matter and Darwinism are simply self-reinforcing delusions of the highest order."
"And if all these "genius" PhD's are supposedly so much smarter than I am, why aren't they on TV?"
Man, he's so proud of that TV stuff, he's just beside himself.
Genius PhD's who don't get to be on television are gay.
Expat,
As you say, he won't take the advice (he's smarter than you, he's on TV after all), but he's been told, so he has no excuse when he screws it up.
So Mike doesn't believe in quantum physics (how are the chips in his computer running again?), dark matter (well, there are real physicists who have their doubts about that too), and evolution (in his case, he may be right)? For the life of me, I can't see what "delusion" these very different ideas would be a part of, aside from a knowable and testable Universe. Perhaps he finds reality too frightening a concept.
FlightSuit,
The gay thing is a sure sign of Bara's arrested adolescence. Really, only junior high school kids talk that way. Grown men know better. As pointed out, even the ones who actually think being gay is a bad thing are smart enough to know how stupid it sounds. To Mike, nothing coming out of his mouth is stupid, ironically enough.
Chris,
Exactly. Take the homophobic remarks, mix with the obsession with getting drunk, strippers, and fast cars, and add a dash of peeing himself when he appears on a minor television show a couple of times, and you've got a recipe for what seems to be a stereotypical depiction of a frat-boy man-child on SNL.
It's hard to believe that Mike doesn't realize what a joke he is. I think he's too star-struck with what limited exposure he has achieved to moderate himself much; hell, he was apparently a pudgy peon for most of his working life, so no wonder. But he's not heading for a gentle come-down when the shine wears off his new career. I never thought anyone could be further from mainstream acceptance than Hoagland, but we have a winner.
Two bright points: First, Bara's TV-exposure-equals-someone-to-take-seriously comment was the most hilarious thing I've read this week. Secondly, I harbor a secret desire for someone to someday take Mike up on his offers for real-world fights. I know Mike's sheer masculinity is terrifying, but how else will his challenger achieve scientific legitimacy?
I would dearly love for Mike Bara to punch me in the face. It would be like a Buzz Aldrin punching Bart Sibrel moment, only kind of in reverse.
And then I would sue him in a civil court and that BMW would be mine, baby!
I have to laugh about the fact we both posted similar items today. I think Richard C Hoagland would call that serendipity. Awesome job!
When I made a mini-essay on the seven-minute Hoagland video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnyEN8cymkE , researched a lot on the web about these blue lights, and I found in the magazine you linked this one: http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a14/AS14-66-9276.jpg
I think Bara knows all this thing very well, and long ago
http://www.thelivingmoon.com/43ancients/02files/Moon_Images_A21.html
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread312623/pg43#pid3787795
Excellent job, Geo! , so the blue lights can be damages on the film roll or
lens abrasions playing with the sun , right? I have personally check in beach Holiday photos with digital camera…( litlle tiny vertical blue circles) so in AS17-134-20387 we can see a double RGB artifact due to …What kind of process exactly? In the version of the same image that I found to my mini-study, the artifact was empty, colorless, and was also an official photo ...
Geo: Synchronicity, yes.
Esteban: My thought was that a cosmic ray had zapped its way right through that film roll. I investigated and found it was not a plausible theory because:
1) The flares didn't appear with sufficient regularity.
2) They weren't all at the same height in the frame, as they would be if they all arose from the same eent.
Ahá ... I've always thought they were crystallized dust particles adhered to the camera viewfinder, playing with the sun and Light, as in my digital photos from the beach, but ... I just don´t know. And also don´t know why in the process of scanning and digitization of the frames by NASA, in the same picture where there is a tiny scratch: AS17-134-20431 for instance, 1500K resolution have the three RGB colors, but not 204K. Why? It ´s the first assembly Hoagland shows in the video that I link before, he plays both formats tortured their best to "conclude" that it´s a “prism”…
Updated. Found another one, AS14-66-9276.
You know, of all the web pages I visit. This is probably one of my favourites. After struggling long and hard thinking I was alone in my revulsion at Hoagland and Bara. What a refreshing feeling to find myself in such good company.
To my shame, I have to admit that at one time I thought Hoagland had some valid points. Then I stopped taking him at his word and did some digging.
I tried to get Hoagland to communicate with me on a technical level. Damn, I even designed some electronics to recreate his De Palma spinning ball experiment. Albeit in the knowledge that it was bollocks. I sent him the schematics, the explanation of how the electronics functioned and the basic outline of the design of experiment.
He didn't bite. He didn't even respond. But I am sure he was following the thread on his FB page diligently.
During this time I was in occasional contact with James Concannon via pm's in FB. James is no dunce. He understood exactly what I was doing and gave me some invaluable pointers. Not least of which was a link to this blog.
The final straw for me was being called a liar by Hoagland. In public, on his page, and in front of my children who were aware of what I was doing. That was unacceptable, since I was at the same time banned and afforded no avenue for rebuttal.
We all owe Expat a debt of gratitude for creating such an avenue.
Exactly, Expat! , Is the one I noted you today ... but look at this, on the LPI web:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/images/browse/AS14/66/9276.jpg
The same Photo, but in a high compression, full of blocks of pixels and very crappy: The flare just does not appear in the image due to low quality… Why the LPI post that terrible Pictures? That sort of things only feed the delusions of the conspiranoic-ufologic scene , I´m pretty sure that Hoagland and other people like him take advantage of this shit.
It´s a pleasure to walk this avenue with you, BS.
And where I can direct to know what those blue flares are with complete certainty? Or the ghostly apparitions -now you see,now you not- of these tiny RGB sticks ?
As much as I researched I have not found a satisfactory answer ...
Esteban, I had the same question about 6 months ago. I e-mailed the librarian at JSC about it. She replied that everyone who might know the answer had left NASA long ago, and most were certainly dead.
I tried LPI, too, and they just referred me back to JSC. So we're stuck. I sure would like an answer.
Geo, if you're paying attention, I don't think this is lens flare. Some sort of damage that didn't get through all 3 layers of emulsion, perhaps?
The film stock was 70mm Ektachrome E-3 color reversal. More info here:
http://www.clavius.org/bibwgreen.html
Expat, there are a couple of images of the blue flares that do, indeed, raise some questions. Though given that the Clavius link states that the lenses were wide-angle, I'd be inclined - at the moment at least - to stick with the idea of lens flare. Not for everything, of course. I think there are issues, too, with how the original slides were scanned. And I'm reasonably certain the Ektachrome 70mm was slide film. For some reason that sounds accurate.
I could be wrong.
It's hard to keep all that black area clean and contaminant free. Back when I used to develop my own black and white film - Agfapan 400 - I was always shocked and irritated at how often I'd get little specks in what appeared to be otherwise pristine black regions of photos. I'm sure some of the errant blue bits are not all lens flare. Some of the Apollo images have massive straight blue lines through them which, to me, look a good deal like problems with their scanner. If you've got light leak in a scanner, you'll get red or blue streaks from time to time -especially in contrast-filled images. It's not an exact science. Especially if these were scanned years ago. I had an old HP scanner which, after nothing but lines and streaks through everything I scanned, I fixed with the stringent application of a ball bat.
I looked through Apollo 14 images until I was teary-eyed a few years ago for my initial criticism of Dark Mission and was shocked at how RCH would point to something and call it an ancient dome when, in the adjoining photo, you could clearly see the angle of the sun was such that it was creating lens flares everywhere.
Some of the images of the LM just show these little tiny tell-tale signs of the sun angle being just right to cause lens flares even though the sun isn't necessarily in the frame. Like...
http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a14/AS14-66-9360HR.jpg
You can see the haze from the sun shining on the very top of the LM and about to scatter lens flare in all directions.
I'll take a look through some of these images again and report back. I might be way off the mark, but my guess is - for now - most of this is lens flare or scanner issues.
But not ancient glass-like domes!
Surely if NASA had something to hide, they would have blacked out all the blue flares in the photos with a paintbrush. Even with 1960s technology, that wouldn't have been difficult. It's not like they didn't have the funds to do so.
Disney did something similar to paint over wires in "Mary Poppins", which must have been more difficult since the backgrounds weren't flat black.
What you're forgetting, strahlungsamt, is that Hoagland has shown us that NASA employees are extremely arrogant and careless. Their contempt for the general public is such that they sometimes allow us to see unretouched photos clearly depicting Martian and lunar anomalies just so they can laugh at how dumb we are when we don't notice what is staring us in the face.
Well, I wouldn´t be so picky in that aspect, Flightsuit, but you have a point , undoubtedly. NASA hired Orberg, if I remember correctly, to remove the “moon hoax”,
´cause it was getting too big, but then left him, saying it seemed undignified to have to catch up morally and intellectually the devaluated level of conspiranoics . We all know of the few bond funds available to science and technology, unless they have a military use,but man! How can cost to hire a man with full access to all information to respond to insults and indignities towards persons working in the university and technology centers?
Do you know how much budget goes to scientific research and technical development in Spain?: 3%.
(2.4 % with further cuts of "austerity" dictates from Brussels since yesterday ).cuts in education (I´ve been a professor for ten years and now I´m “officialy unemployed “at least I practice as freelance cartoonist… ), Medicines, M.doctors, public hospitals, pensions of all kind, including the disabled, care for dependents, Alzheimer, etc…
And how much have cut the budget to the police and the army? Not an euro.Zero.Nothing. Still taking almost 30%. from total Budget.
Spain is part of NATO missions and "support" the U.S. marines in Afghanistan. How much money the government has given banks to "rescue" them? more than 50 thousand million euros ( $ 62 billion dollars).
The Conspiracy theorists have a point of why our governments are guilty of serving an absurd system, cannibal and inhumane; they are wrong to blame NASA or ESA or University in general. The guilty one is the system for over 30 years and more. Excluding Finland , of course. Sorry for the speech.;)
I have referred the economic system and its maneuvers "de facto", not the metric system or the solar system. When the "occupyes" refer the "system" in general make me me nervous .Sorry again...;)
Geo, thanks for the comments.
""And I'm reasonably certain the Ektachrome 70mm was slide film. ""
Yes, as stated, color reversal. There is a darkroom process for deriving paper positives from Ekta, and this was undoubtedly how the release prints for distro were made.
Now, when it comes to scanning for online versions, who knows? That was presumably done at a later date since nobody would have wanted digitals in 1970 (not to mention the fact that the jpg format would not be invented for 25 years). However, I can't really imagine a scanning fault that would place the flare at such varying positions in both x and y axes.
So all we've agreed on so far is that it isn't an alien ship or a glass dome.
Ladies and Gents. Below is the Bara correspondence.
Dear Mr Bara,
Given the multitude of errors in "The Choice" - not least of which is your inability to grasp the meaning of centrifugal force. Will you perhaps be getting your next book edited by someone who actually understands physics ? The editing in "The Choice" is pitiful. In fact it is an utter disgrace that it actually found a publisher. You do of course realise that chapter 12 is complete hokum. Your mathematics are as disgracefully applied as anyone could imagine. You mentioned on Twitter, before banning me for pointing out your embarrassing failure in grasping concepts in physics that are taught in grade school....."Let the name-calling begin" Here is your chance Mike. Call me names AND point out anything I have stated that is wrong. "Former card carrying member of the military industrial complex," what an utter joke.
What are you going to do Mike when 2012 has passed and nothing has changed. Try to make a living from "past glories." After all. You being recognised for your appearances on Ancient Aliens must be worth a penny or two. And to be recognised because of those appearances really stoked you up didn't it Mike. Since you refer to being recognised as "mission accomplished." Nice sentiments for one who is so acutely aware of spirituality and the power of consciousness.
Regards
Derek Eunson
Bara replied....
The point is, you don't point out anything. You try to get me to
defend things I never said. You are not only a complete idiot, you're
also a petty, small and unimportant person. If you think you are
jealous now of my appearances on TV, just wait until next year.
Meanwhile, John Travolta is still looking for a "man" of your qualifications.
Mike,
Come ON man.
(p.32) "Without the Moon's calming influence, the Earth would spin so fast that the centrifugal force would most likely flatten us all like pancakes."
The above is exactly as written in your book. And it is simply utterly and completely incorrect. How is it possible for you to deny saying that ?
Cheers
Derek
I guess he won't respond to this any further. Since he's been caught lying like a Clinton.
And the rest......
Mike,
I didn't expect a response from my last nuke. It was a nuke Mike wasn't it. It was something to which you have no defence. I reiterate below.
"Mike,
Come ON man.
(p.32) "Without the Moon's calming influence, the Earth would spin so fast that the centrifugal force would most likely flatten us all like pancakes."
The above is exactly as written in your book. And it is simply utterly and completely incorrect. How is it possible for you to deny saying that ?
Cheers
Derek"
Mike, seriously. You have to admit that either it's a typo containing an entire sentence. Or it's a blatant misunderstanding of basic physics. Although you banned me from your Twitter feed I believe you made the following comments;
"I must have been on TV a lot lately, I'm getting attacked all over the place."
"For the record, quantum physics, dark matter and Darwinism are simply self-reinforcing delusions of the highest order."
"And if all these "genius" PhD's are supposedly so much smarter than I am, why aren't they on TV?"
I tell you what Mike. I'll drop the letters after my name to make things even, and challenge you to a live debate. Online, anywhere, anytime. Decent and fair moderation of course would be a prerequisite. After all it would hardly be fair for you to be given an advantage by having George Noory moderate. Since it was Noory who cut off Expat when he intellectually raped you with a question on Coast to Coast AM. Hardly fair because Noory was an official endorser of your book "The Choice." His blatant and unprofessional shielding was amplified when Noory then dismissed a caller who questioned why Expat was not allowed to respond.
If it wasn't for quantum physics Mike you would not be reading this on your computer. I guess we "blithering idiots" must fluke a result now and then. So what say you sir. sabres or pistols on air. At dawn or at a time and place of your choosing ?
Cheers
Derek
Esteban, you're a cartoonist? I'd love to see samples of your work, if they're online somewhere!
Yes , Flightsuit, is this blog :http://estebannavarrogalan.blogspot.com.es/ ,you can dive into the labels (etiquetas), particularly this:http://estebannavarrogalan.blogspot.com.es/2011/04/hoagland.html
;)
Great work, Esteban!
I'm sure we've moved beyond this discussion to some extent, but...
I finally had some time to look at many of the images mentioned in this post and I stand by my former assertion they are lens flare.
As I mentioned to Esteban earlier, when, back in 2008, I first did my Frankenstein's monster of a 'review' of Dark Mission, I used a few of these very images. You can find them here, if you're so inclined, about the middle of the page...
http://misanthropaea.typepad.com/misanthropaea/2008/08/is-that-lipst-4.html
I'm not a physicist and have no deeper education on the science of applied optics. I've been a photographer - though not professionally nor as a livelihood - for more than 30 years and I am basing my argument on what I see, what I know, and what I've experienced. And I'm perfectly willing to accept I'm wrong. But I think I'm mostly right on this.
If you put together 9303, 9302, 9301 and 9300 you can see the progression of the camera angle and its position to the glaring sun. 9300 is turned away just enough to not catch a flare but shows the ghosting of bounced light. And you can see the astronaut's shadow on the bottom right just coming into view. 9301 catches the lens flare - on the left, because the sun is coming from the right and would shine into the left side of the lens first - and you see the ghosting or halation still extant. That would be the bit Hoagland thinks is a glass dome. 9302 catches not only the halation but you can see the light reflecting the pentagram of the iris. 9303 is full on very nearly entirely up-sun and completely washed out with blue and white light. Again, I'm not a physicist, but if the light is mostly blue and white, it stands to reason - in my view - that the lens flare would be consistent primarily with those colours. Lens flare isn't going to show exactly the same in every photo and with the light bouncing crazily inside against the multiple layers of the lens, the mirror, the film gate and so on, it will show up differently each time. There will be a consistent set of colours, but not always in the same place - unless the camera is locked down.
9290 shows the flare on the right, as the sunlight is crossing from the left. In fact 9284-9303 show a complete pan from sun to sun. Depending on how the camera was being held, the degree of lens flare will be different as will the halation. Even those wee tiny blue dots here and there - some even showing up in the bottom of craters - is reflected/refracted light to some degree.
Some Apollo photos show streaks and scratches which show up as lines, but even the line on the right of AS15-88-11896 could be a sliver of light reflecting off the inner housing.
Those are my thoughts anyway. I'd love to set up an experiment to try to replicate these. Maybe it's time to call in Mythbusters!
Mike Bara scoffs at "Baltic UFO" skeptics:
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j223/flightsuit/Screenshot2012-07-15at31907PM.jpg
It would appear Bara may be ready to put the strippers behind him and settle down. And he apparently believes in numerology:
"Many years ago today I got married. Remember girls, my numerology says I'm in a good place to get married again between October 1 and January 25th. Let's get those resume's polished up and hope we can make a better wedding pic than I did the last time."
Thanks again, Geo, call the Mythbusters could be a good idea!
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