Thursday, October 3, 2019

What is wrong with this picture?


        This is one of Robert Morningstar's collection of "lunar anomalies" by which he hopes to persuade us that the Moon is the cradle of some ancient civilization. He trotted this out on Richard Hoagland's blogtalk show, with this accompanying text:
"In this, and many other misapplications of Gestalt Psychology, NASA intentionally blinded public perception to hide PROOF of alien activity and construction on the Moon for more than half a century."
        Morningstar proclaims himself to be "a specialist in photo interpretation, geometric analysis and computer imaging." However, we know from previous articles on this blog that AM*'s photo interpretation skills are a joke (this one, too).

        In this case, he's excelled himself by misinterpreting jpg pixellation as the "serrated edges of a construction beam."

        His caption says that this is a detail from a Lunar Orbiter 4 image of the satellite crater Deluc L (The crater is named for the Swiss geologist Jean-AndrĂ© Deluc, and has 23 named satellites). However, I don't know where he got that image from, and (typically) he doesn't help us by giving its catalog number. The only Lunar Orbiter 4 image showing Deluc is Frame 4119, Sub-frame h1 (BUT SEE COMMENT #2 FROM ANONYMOUS, BELOW.). Here it is, with some of the satellites identified:


        Deluc Main is at 55° S, 2.8° W. Deluc L is at 60.8°S, 6.2° W, and it's just out of this frame to the west of Deluc E. Here's a view from Lunar Reconnaissnce Orbiter centered on Deluc L, with Deluc Main up at top and slightly right of center.note 1

        So I can't tell what the "construction beam" actually is (AGAIN SEE COMMENT #2), but it's certain to be one of the many, many imaging artifacts that are all over Lunar Orbiter photography. On that mission, flown in 1967, the photos were developed on board by a semi-wet process, then scanned for transmission. This image of crater Euctemon (76.4°N, 31.3°E), also from AM*'s collection, unquestionably shows a scanning dropout.


        In short, these images are not "PROOF of alien activity and construction on the Moon," but "PROOF of Robert Morningstar's incompetence. FURTHER PROOF, I should say.

Thanks to Astroguy for monitoring

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[1] Here's the raw image from the library. Note that a 17MB .tiff is available. If that's not good enough for you, the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project offers a 652 MB download (!)

6 comments:

astroguy said...

When asked during the program, Robert said the image was not obtained from any official source. But from an online forum. Rings bells of Mike Bara's lunar ziggurat begatted from a forum for the game, Call of Duty.

Anonymous said...

Deluc L is visible in at least three LO IV images: 4124 subframe h1 framelet 716, 4118 subframe h3 framelets 856 & 857, and 4106 subframe h3 framelet 283. The image in question, however, is apparently a low-resolution screenshot from the Lunar Orbiter Mosaic in Google Earth, at coordinates 61.023 S 7.415 W. The "beam" is a fluid stain at the boundary of framelets 856 & 857 in image 4118 subframe h3, and the angled cut-off at the top is where this image is mosaiced with image 4124 subframe h1. Deluc L is the mostly shaded crater at the top with the bright spot inside. That spot is in none of the three images mentioned above. Another interesting "fact" about this "beam" is that it is about 32 km long by 5 km wide, if we trust the Google Earth measuring tool.

expat said...

Thankyou very much, anon. Scholarly.

OneBigMonkey said...

If it's LOIV then the chances are it is in the original lunar orbiter atlas publication. Just because he didn't get it from an 'official'source doesn't mean it isn't available from numerous ones.

OneBigMonkey said...

...and just for completeness here's the image in my original 'Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the moon':

https://i.imgur.com/Zgl9uYo.jpg

This isn't the first time Morningstar has blethered on about this image:

https://www.theothersideofmidnight.com/20190107_morningstar/

Apparently NASA has been hiding this structure in plain sight. Which is weird because a decent telescope would also find it.

Trekker said...

"Apparently NASA has been hiding this structure in plain sight. Which is weird because a decent telescope would also find it."

Not to mention the multiple times the LRO has flown over it, photographed it, and put it into the public domain. Yet not a peep out of the usual anomaly hunting crowd over a bizarre new discovery. Weird, that!