Robert Morningstar in denial

James Concannon writes...

        Robert Morningstar describes himself as  "a specialist in photo interpretation, geometric analysis and computer imaging." Considering how many times he has blundered in the field of photo interpretation, that really is the joke of the decade.

        His latest exhibit is the exact same flim-flam as Mike Bara put on page 117 of Hidden Agenda and page 85 of AA & JFK. It's the LRO image of landslips down the rim of crater Marius, turned upside down and called a "crystal city on the Moon."

        In this case Morningstar adds to the dishonesty by a) Claiming to have discovered it (two years before LRO was in orbit), and b) Identifying it as an Apollo image. He showed this travesty on a recent edition of Richard Hoagland's OSOM blogtalk, and I understand Hoagland claimed he was the discoverer. Apparently they argued for some time over whose balderdash this was.

        Well, last week I asked AM* what the Apollo catalog number of this shot was, telling him that he was mistaken. His answer was to challenge me to provide the cat# of the LRO frame. I couldn't do that^{note 1}, but I referred him to the ASU release of the LRO strip.

His response:

"That's malarkey... There's no reemblance [sic] at all. No realtionship [sic]... Not the same place, not the same region not the same forms at all. Pure Balderdash! ... You crash. -> M*."

...and later...

"You are as "blind as a bat" ... Here is the phot I published... They share nothing in kind, complete opposite. Yuu show flats streams of lunar material running along the gorund. This photo of The Crystal City shows upright sprires and raised substructures supporting them. And he shadows cast by the structures prove that hey are upright spires lot lava streams spreading in flat rivulets inside Marius Crater. You are a bogus astronomer. -> M*"

        Well, he's right about the "bogus astronomer" part—I've never claimed astronomy credentials. However, I seem to be more talented at computer imaging than he is, so it took me just a few minutes to post a direct comparison:

        Since he showed no sign of being convinced by that, I went a step further, deriving the entire frame instead of just one section of it.

Reload the page or click on the image if the GIF animation cycle has stopped.

        Is that going to convince this "civilian intelligence analyst"? Probably not—just like Mike Bara, the words "I was wrong" are not in his vocabulary.

        There's one possible mitigating factor. AM*'s version of the dishonest flip is such horrible quality that it's likely he didn't actually do the flipping himself, just claimed credit for someone else's dishonesty.

Update 27 Sept:

        To nobody's surprise, Morningstar has been tongue-tied (keyboard-tied?) on this subject ever since I posted the GIF animation. Just cannot bring himself to type those magic words "OK, looks like I was wrong."

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[1] Thanks to OneBigMonkey for finding what I could not. It's part of Narrow Angle Camera strip M109569228L, acquired in October 2009.