Appearing for an hour on Far Out Radio yesterday, Robert Morningstar produced his best evidence that the Moon is occupied by aliens.
He plays the exact same game as Hoagland & Bara. Namely, show only forty-year-old images at low resolution, so that there's as much doubt as possible about what we're seeing. He produces this image, which he says is a Lunar Orbiter image of the Mare Imbrium, and he speculates that it also shows what are probably "hangars" -- indicating some civilized activity.
image credit: NASA/Morningstar
Just as with his story about the "crashed spacecraft", Morningstar has the wrong mission. This is not from Lunar Orbiter at all—it's Apollo 17 Frame #AS17-M-2444, from the mapping camera. So it's 42 years old, and its resolution is a couple of hundred meters per pixel.
The huge crater on the horizon is Copernicus. The view is looking almost due South. Morningstar says the crater in the center is Euler, but in fact it's Pytheas, at 20.6°W, 20.5°N. It apparently hasn't occurred to Morningstar to check the Narrow Angle Camera strips in the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image library, which tell us all about this region at a resolution of 0.5 m/px.
Here's a permalink to the region in the ACT-REACT quick map. Morningstar's "hangars" are the two knobby hills at 24.06°W, 19.87°N. Zoom in as far as you like, see if you think there are any UFOs in there. Ask yourself why hangar roofs would be cratered just like all the surrounding terrain (should that be "lunain", perhaps?) Ask yourself what kind of hangars would be 5 km wide.
Here's the complete set of Morningstar's "evidence." Astoundingly, he also includes what is very obviously a transmission fault in a Soviet Zond 3 image. That one dates from 1964, and its resolution must be many kilometers per pixel. To claim this shows a tower exposes him, I would have thought, to ridicule.
Update 1 (8 May)
I messaged Morningstar pointing out his errors and asking if he would retract. He refused, and added this:
"I used the names for the craters given on the Apollo site where I downloaded them. And for "0.5 m/px" photo, it is typical of their technique of degrading image to hide the evidence, like your image of the terrain purported debunking the crashed ship."I pointed out that he and I are getting imagery from the very same source --NASA. The difference is that he only looks at the ancient low-res pix and I prefer to use the better ones.
--JC
Update 2 (9 May)
Stand by for a good laugh, fans -- this is hilarious. Morningstar got a second hour on Far Out Radio last night, and dealt with my objections. After a fashion.
First, he said that he'd spent five hours studying this problem, and he'd noticed that "the astronaut taking the pictures" had kept the "hangars" in view for several frames, proving that he was interested in them. Right there he showed for sure that he doesn't understand that these shots are from the mapping camera, not the handheld Hasselblad. The mapping camera was fixed in the SIM Baynote 1 -- it was not under astronaut control but pointed wherever the spacecraft (the CSM) pointednote 2. Oh dear, Robert. But it got worse.
Then he said the result of his five hours was that he'd decided the view in that frame was not South, toward Copernicus on the horizon, but West. The huge crater on the horizon, he'd decided, was not Copernicus but Aristarchus. The crater in the foreground was not Euler, not Pytheas, but Krieger. He actually re-labeled his image, saying "NASA mislabels things." (He didn't cite any examples of that, natch)
Well, overnight he seems to have changed his mind again because he re-re-labeled the image, making it even more wrong.
image: NASA, fucked up beyond all recognition by Morningstar
Now the large crater up on the horizon, actually Copernicus, isn't called anything. The label Copernicus is used for Plato. The foreground crater, unmistakably Pytheas, is labeled Aristarchus. The satellite crater Pytheas A is called Krieger. The small crater Helicon is re-christened Pytheas. Draper and one of its satellites are given names I can't read.
Copernicus is one of the Great Rayed Craters of the Moon -- easily visible with an ordinary pair of binoculars when it's in sunlight. Slapping that label on a crater that in reality is one third the size, with only a very small ejecta blanket, is a major FAIL.
For some God-unknown reason he's stitched together three versions of this utter fuckup, and persists in calling them Lunar Orbiter imagery even though he knows perfectly well that the image is from Apollo 17. Here's the page he prepared for Far Out Radio.
He warned me at the start of the week that I'd have egg on my face after his Thursday night performance. Funny -- I sure can't feel it. I'm left with the conclusion that there's no hope for Robert Morningstar. He just doesn't know enough about lunar photography or lunar anything-else.
--JC
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[1] Scientific Instrument Module -- a panel in the Service Module containing spectrometers as well as cameras
[2] Here's the complete sequence from rev. 6. The "hangars" appear in frames 2443-8.
12 comments:
Common sense would tell any normal person that if we are seeing hangars on the surface then we should also be seeing additional infrastructure, eg nearby buildings, power, roads. But we do not. Common sense would also force one to ask "What benefit is a hangar - a structure designed to shield craft from the elements - on the moon?"
Since we can conclude that common sense does not apply here, that leaves imbecility or fraud. Take your pick.
I wonder if this is the same guy.
Area code 717 is south Pennsylvania. RM lives in NYC. It's possible.
Here's a comparison
Expat: "The difference is that he only looks at the ancient low-res pix and I prefer to use the better ones."
The idea appears to be that with the resolution and the technique also the techniques of degrading and masking has been advancing at NASA! So with the old technology way more slipped through and with the modern digital formats there's more automatic detection of stuff and tools for cloaking more efficiently. To go back and modify the older archives using this technique might be difficult to pull off with all the prints being out there.
Or at least that's how I would defend myself if I was Morningstar! It's a bit like using the Accutron model from the 60's, not any modern setup (by the way, Expat, here's someone who repeated the experiment of the Venus transit in 2012 (scroll down) but it turned out to be a non-event in this case. Didn't see this one before.
Dee.
That Accutron stuff was interesting. I hadn't seen it either.
Dee,
Thank you for the links. VERY interesting indeed.
I noticed on RCH's farcebook page that Greg Ahrens (Hoagland's facebook fluffer in chief) posting on behalf of the great man warning people not to give money to Gary Leggiere who apparently is attempting to raise money to expose Hoagland.
Also mentioned a couple of times at random spots on the page, was mention of RCH being denied access to his own facebook page because a "hacker" has locked him out.
All lies I would wager. Hoagland was burned badly by exposing himself to critics in public. He has not been hacked, he now knows better than to engage 1v1 directly.
Updated
@ Binaryspellbook
Exactly. He's afraid to put anything in writing where his critics can tear it apart. So he uses his sock puppet Greg to send any messages out to the cult members (if there are any left), while he remains safely tucked away in his living room. A tech support call to FB would solve any so called "hacking" issues in minutes.
Ask him to tell you where Herodotus is, if that crater is Aristarchus. Last time I looked, they were side by side.
Dead right, Trekker. About the same size -- Aristarchus's ejecta blanket sloshing over Herodotus.
I don't think Robert is speaking to me at the moment but the good news is that his article in UFOdigest seems to have been pulled.
That lunar tower/scratch looks like a "thingy".
(A Blackadder reference BTW)
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