Examination of Apollo Moon photographs

This is a sub-article to Objections to the standard Apollo Moon landing narrative and Moon landing conspiracy theories

The examination of Apollo Moon photographs is an endeavor undertaken by a variety of professional and amateur photographers engaged in the debate as to the merits of the moon landing narrative. Several of them have pointed out the difficulties in operating a manual film camera while wearing a spacesuit, odd or physically impossible POVs, the improbably-high rate of photographs taken over the course of the six missions, the evidence of a line between the stage and the backdrop seen in the majority of the shots, evidence of artificial studio lighting, evidence of a Scotchlite retroreflective backdrop, fill lights, spotlights, as well as image tampering. In addition, numerous photographs show unexplained anomalies, such as the lack of Moon buggy tracks where there should be some, artifacts that shouldn't be on the moon, dust-free Apollo Lunar Module landing pads, the lack of craters underneath the LM, the lack of cooling radiators on the spacesuits, and numerous other problems with the idea that men have walked on the Moon.

Overview

A wide variety of investigators have analyzed the photographic and video-graphic records of the alleged Apollo Moon landings. Some of them have independently reached the same conclusions regarding the veracity of the photographic record. Among these are:

Photographically-recorded anomalies

• Lines where the stage floor meets the backdrop, seen in every relevant shot
• Extensive use of adhesive tape on the CM and LM. https://www.aulis.com/jackstudies_9.htm
• No tracks where the Moon Buggy sits
• Photographer’s shadow in the wrong place. https://www.aulis.com/jackstudies_4.htm
• Serial shots too consistent to have been shot without using a tripod.
• Implausible POV angles
• Several examples of the LM and the flag rotated into different orientations.
• Reuse of background images for completely different settings. https://www.aulis.com/jackstudies_6.htm
• Lens flares when the camera wasn't pointing toward the Sun, indicating another light source.
• Inexplicable alterations of the foreground https://www.aulis.com/jackstudies_8.htm
• Inconsistencies of terrain between the Apollo shots and later satellite imagery
• Numerous artifacts in the space-black background https://www.aulis.com/jackstudies_5.htm
• Violations of the rules of perspective https://www.aulis.com/jackstudies_9.htm https://www.aulis.com/jackstudies_4.htm
• Shadows inconsistent with single-source lighting
• Pictures of the “Sun” which appear to be large light bulbs.
• Numerous examples of studio lights and other anomalous objects reflected in the spherical visors of the astronauts.
• Gray-scale objects together with full-color objects in the same image.
• There is no dust on the LM landing pads. The decent rocket should have stirred up dust.
• The photographs are too-well focused, exposed, and composed to have been made under the stated conditions.
• There are too many photos to have been take in the allotted time. https://www.aulis.com/skeleton.htm
• A strange excess of B&W photos over color photos

Allegations and answers

Absence of stars

Investigators 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." Sceptics 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.

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  STS088-719-59: 70 mm Hasselblad photograph of Zarya from the Space Shuttle Endeavour during STS-88 (December 6, 1998). No stars visible.

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  STS091-711-028: No stars visible in a 70 mm Hasselblad photograph of the Moon and Mir from the Space Shuttle Discovery during STS-91 (June 8, 1998)

AS16-123-19657: Long-exposure UV photo taken from the surface of the Moon by Apollo 16 using the Far Ultraviolet Camera/Spectrograph. It shows the Earth with the correct background of stars.

File:Apollo16EarthID.png

AS16-123-19657: UV photo with some stars labeled

• Stars are also never seen in Space Shuttle, Mir, International Space Station Earth observation photos, or even sporting events that take place at night. The light from the Sun in outer space in the Earth-Moon system is at least as bright as the sunlight that reaches the Earth's surface on a clear day at noon, so cameras used for imaging subjects illuminated by sunlight are set for a daylight exposure. The dim light of the stars simply do not provide enough exposure to record visible images. (This effect can be demonstrated on Earth by attempting to view stars from a brightly lit parking lot at night. Only a few of the brightest stars are visible, and shielding the eye with one's hands only marginally improves the view. Science fiction films and television shows do confuse this issue by depicting stars as visible in space under all lighting conditions. A photographic demonstration of how aperture and shutter speed can turn a lit background ink-black is here. The eye's visual response is much the same.) Stars were seen by every Apollo mission crew except for Apollo 13. (An oxygen tank explosion in the Apollo 13 Service Module two days after launch prevented the crew from clearly seeing stars due to a haze of oxygen and water vapor surrounding the spacecraft.) Stars were used for navigation purposes and were occasionally also seen through cabin windows when the conditions allowed. To see stars, nothing lit by sunlight could be in the viewer's field of view.

• Payload restrictions made the transport of telescope facilities to the Moon unfeasible, and without these ordinary stellar photography would have served no (scientific) purpose. However, even without such facilities, the Moon does offer several advantages as an observation platform. The near-absence of a lunar atmosphere means that stellar imaging is possible at many wavelengths which are not visible from Earth. Long-exposure photos were taken with a special far ultraviolet camera, the Far Ultraviolet Camera/Spectrograph, by Apollo 16 astronauts from the surface of the Moon, and operated in the shadow of the Apollo Lunar Module (LM). (The second photo on the lower right has some stars labeled.) Some of these photos show the Earth with stars from the Capricornus and Aquarius constellations in the background. The European Space Research Organisation's TD-1A satellite later scanned the sky for stars that are bright in ultraviolet light. The TD-1A data obtained with the shortest passband is a close match for the Apollo 16 photographs.

• The ability to determine parallax is limited by the angular resolution of the instrument used. The most advanced dedicated experiment carried out to date—the Hipparcos satellite—achieved resolutions in the milliarcsecond range. Using as baseline the diameter of the Earth's orbit about the Sun (by comparing images taken six months apart), this allowed parallax measurements for stars out to a distance of approximately 1,000 parsecs. However, the distance from Earth to Moon is about a thousand times smaller than that baseline, which means that the detection limit is reduced to about 1 parsec. This is less than the distance to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. Considering further that the resolution of an image taken with a conventional camera is many times lower than Hipparcos's, any such determination is entirely ruled out.

• The planet Venus (which is much brighter than any of the stars) was actually recorded on film by astronaut Alan Shepard at the conclusion of his second extra-vehicular activity (EVA), during the Apollo 14 mission. Shepard was preparing to ascend the ladder to re-enter the Lunar Module Antares, when he likely noticed Venus shining brightly next to the crescent Earth. He made a series of photographs with his chest-mounted Hasselblad camera, likely all at 1/250th second exposure, and differing f-stops. Owing to its position closer to the Sun and its complete coverage by clouds, Venus has a higher surface brightness than Earth, and is indeed visible to the unaided eye in broad daylight from Earth, given a sufficiently transparent sky. It would have been plainly visible to Shepard in the lunar sky, and easily recorded on film. For a complete explanation, consult the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal's "Venus over the Apollo 14 LM."

• Later Apollo missions used Nikon F 35mm cameras with a special f1.2 aperture 55m lens in order to take photographs in low light conditions of the solar corona, Zodiacal light and other phenomena that are difficult to photograph in a terrestrial Environment. Two of Apollo 16's magazines are available on this website. Several of the photographs feature identifiable stars and planets. The bright star on the left margin of this image, for example, is Sirius, this image features the southern cross, and this one shows Venus, Mars and (hidden in the glare by the window frame) Saturn. Apollo 16's Magazine SS has Hasselblad 70mm photographs of stars in the Solar Corona.

• In an August 12, 1969, Apollo 11 post-flight press conference, astronaut Neil Armstrong states, "We were never able to see stars from the lunar surface or on the daylight side of the Moon by eye without looking through the optics." Stars were visible with the naked eye only when they were in the shadow of the Moon. All of the landings were in daylight.

File:Crescent Earth and Venus over the Apollo 14 LM.jpg

AS14-64-9191: Original Apollo 14 photo

File:A14det9191-2Venus.jpg

Enhancement of Apollo 14 photos AS14-64-9191 and AS14-64-9192 showing the planet Venus

Inconsistent color and angle of shadows and light

The shadows should be absolutely black and run parallel to each other.

• Shadows on the Moon are complicated because there are several light sources: the Sun, and the Earth, as well as the astronauts and the Lunar Module. Light from these sources is scattered by lunar dust in many different directions, including into shadows. Additionally, the Moon's surface is not flat and shadows falling into craters and hills appear longer, shorter and distorted from the simple expectations of the conspiracists. More significantly, perspective effects come into play, particularly on rough or angled ground. This leads to non-parallel shadows even on objects which are extremely close to each other, and can be observed easily on Earth wherever fences or trees are found. And finally, the camera in use was fitted with a wide angle lens, which naturally resulted in subtle versions of fisheye lens distortion.

File:Apollo14Shadows.jpg

AS14-68-9487: Apollo 14 photo showing shadows in different directions because of the terrain, examined by the MythBusters

The photographer's shadow should point to his position which is straight below the centre of the bottom edge of the photo.

• No explanation is given as to why the photographer's feet must be below the centre of the photograph. Indeed, many photographs show this to not be the case.

File:Apollo 11 AS11-40-5961HR.jpg

AS11-40-5961: Neil Armstrong photographs the Lunar Module Eagle

Apparent "hot spots" in some photographs

AS11-40-5866: Buzz Aldrin on ladder. "Hot spot" on the heel of his right boot.

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!"

• The illumination of the Aldrin photograph referred to by Lundberg is an artifact of altering the brightness and contrast of the image, and it is not found in all reproductions. This can be seen in the next section, where this photograph is shown in two versions.
• Lunar dust reflects light in a manner similar to street signs or wet grass – a significant amount of light is reflected back at the light source (the Sun in this case) instead of being scattered in all directions as Earth sand would do. This can be observed on Earth, as it explains why the full Moon is much more than twice as bright as a half Moon. This effect explains hot spots in photos that contain the photographer's own shadow.
• The sunlit portion of Armstrong's spacesuit is in the correct place to provide the light for the hotspot in the photo of Aldrin on the ladder.
• The "hot spots" are discussed at the debunking website Moon Base Clavius (Clavius.org).

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."

• Conrad is only describing the brightness of the sunlight on the Moon.

Issues with crosshairs in photographs

There are some issues with crosshairs that were etched onto the Réseau plate of the cameras.

• Apollo 11 1998 scan.jpg

  AS11-40-5931: 1998 scan

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  AS11-40-5931: 2004 scan

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  AS11-40-5931: 1998 scan enlargement – crosshair bleeds out

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  AS11-40-5931: 2004 scan enlargement – crosshair visible

a) In some photos, the crosshairs (fiducials) appear to be behind objects, rather than in front of them where they should be, as if the photos were altered.

• In photography, the light white color (the object behind the crosshair) makes the black object (the crosshair) invisible due to saturation effects in the film emulsion. The film particles that ought to have been black were exposed by light from the adjacent brightly lit particles. Ironically, this saturation effect would not happen if the crosshairs were drawn on in post, and so is evidence of genuine photos. Attempting to alter photos that already have crosshairs would make the compositing process far more difficult.

b) In the classic photo of Aldrin on the Moon below (at left), the reticle (etched crosshair on the camera) is too low. Since the crosshairs are in a fixed position on all the images, a lower reticle on this image indicates that the image has been cropped. This is the case even on the 70 mm duplicate transparency NASA issues. The 70 mm transparencies should show the entire 'full' image. Conspiracists say that the only explanation for this is if the original full transparency needed to be cropped because of an embarrassing artifact like a piece of stage scenery was in the shot.

• The view of the actual photo below (at right) (source: AS11-40-5903 or AS11-40-5903 high resolution) is chopped off just above Aldrin, cutting off Aldrin's antenna (except for a small piece). Duplicate transparencies are not necessarily exact copies of the original. The publicly released version of the photo was cropped and recomposed by NASA within hours of the film being made available, with extra black space added at the top of most released versions for what NASA calls aesthetic reasons. This web page has NASA's history of the photo.

AS11-40-5903: The classic photo of Aldrin on the Moon, with reticules not centered. In addition, Aldrin appears to be illuminated by a spotlight.

AS11-40-5903: Aldrin, original photo. Reticules are centered and there is no spotlight effect.

c) In other photos, the reticules are not in a straight line, or appear in the 'wrong' place, indicating that the photo has been doctored.

• Clavius.org explains that the methodologies that the conspiracists propose for doctoring the photos with "wrong" reticules are often contradictory and generally require absurd lengths to explain the "inconsistencies" when there are reasonable explanations. In particular, prints were often cropped and rotated, which causes the illusion of reticules occurring off-center or "not straight."

File:Apollo 12 and Surveyor 7135.jpg

AS12-48-7135: Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean

AS12-48-7136: Slightly different photo, makes it appear that the crosshairs have changed

Apparently identical backgrounds in Apollo 15 photographs taken at different locations

There are issues with Apollo 15 photos having identical backgrounds.

AS15-82-11057: View of Apollo 15 Lunar Module from the nearby ALSEP site (Station 8) during the third EVA.

File:AS15-82-11082.jpg

AS15-82-11082: Later photo with same hills in the background near Hadley Rille (Station 9) during the third EVA, approximately 1.4 km west of the Lunar Module.

• Detailed comparison of the backgrounds said to be identical in fact show significant changes in the relative positions of the hills that are consistent with the claimed locations that the images were taken from. Parallax effects clearly demonstrate that the images were taken from widely different locations around the landing sites.

Claims that the appearance of the background is identical while the foreground changes (for example, from a boulder strewn crater to the Lunar Module) are trivially explained when the images were taken from nearby locations, akin to seeing distant mountains appearing the same on Earth from locations that are hundreds of feet apart showing different foreground items.

Furthermore, as there is only an extremely tenuous atmosphere on the Moon, very distant objects will appear clearer and closer to the human eye. What appears as nearby hills in some photographs, are actually mountains several kilometers high and some 10–20 kilometers away. Changes in such very distant backgrounds are quite subtle, and can be mistaken for no change at all.

As the Moon is also much smaller than the Earth, the horizon is significantly nearer in photographs than Earthbound observers are used to seeing (an eye 1.7 m above completely flat ground will see the horizon 4.7 km away on Earth, but only 2.4 km away on the Moon). This can lead to confusing interpretations of the images.

One specific case is debunked in "Who Mourns For Apollo?" by Mike Bara.

• While it is true that there is no haze to assist in judging distance, the maximum distance to the horizon is much closer than on Earth, due to the smaller size of the Moon. This limits the scope for the same objects to appear in different shots taken at different locations.

For a flat area of the Moon, the distance to horizon ≈ sqrt ( 2 * radius of Moon * height of observer )

The Moon's average radius is 1,080 miles, and assuming generously that the astronauts held the camera 5 feet, or 0.000947 miles above the surface (the cameras are shown in photographs as having no viewfinder, and the astronauts seem to hold them in the centre of their chest, so five feet is generous).

These figures give distance = sqrt (2 * 1080 * 0.000947) = 2 miles.

It seems that this would be far enough for terrain features to appear in shots taken from locations some distance apart, but perhaps not "miles apart." Without having specific information as to which shots and the terrain they are purported to contain, there is no definite answer.

High number of photographs

When the total number of official photographs taken during the EVAs of all Apollo missions is divided by the total amount of time accumulated by 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 considering that many locations in the photographs are situated miles apart and would have taken considerable travel time, especially in bulky pressure suits. On top of this, the cameras were neither equipped with a viewfinder nor with automatic exposure control, which means that taking good pictures would take considerably longer.

File:Apollo 11 photo map.pdf

• The astronauts were well trained before the mission in the use of photographic equipment. Since there were no weather effects to contend with and the bright sunlight scenes permitted the use of small apertures with consequent large depth of field, the equipment was generally kept at a single setting for the duration of the mission. All that was required of the astronauts was to open the shutter to take a picture. Film winding was accomplished with a motor drive.

In these conditions it is possible to take two photographs per second at best. The camera was in a bracket mounted on the front of their spacesuit, so they looked straight ahead at what they wanted to photograph; no viewfinder was needed. Also, many of the photographs were stereoscopic pairs or sets of panoramic images, taken immediately after each other. The Lunar and Planetary Institute's Apollo Image Atlas shows that 70 mm magazine 40/S of Apollo 11 has 123 photos taken during the walk on the surface—less than one per minute. In addition, by looking at the photographs in sequence, one can see that very often several of them were taken in rapid succession. Here is a list of Apollo 11 surface photos (AS11-40-5850 to AS11-40-5970). As can be seen from the map, many photos were taken from a similar position.

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.

• The astronauts were trained in the use of their gear, and shots and poses were planned in advance as part of the mission. NASA selected only the best photographs for release to the public, and some of the photos were cropped to improve their composition. There are many badly exposed, badly focused and poorly composed images amongst the thousands of photos that were taken by the Apollo astronauts. All photos taken on the surface of the Moon by the astronauts can be seen at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. Photos were taken on high-quality Hasselblad cameras with Zeiss lenses, using 70 mm medium format film.

File:ArmstrongOnMoon.jpg

AS11-40-5894: Underexposed photo of Armstrong on the Moon (lower left)

The Hasselblad 500 EL/M "20 Years in Space" anniversary edition medium-format camera, with motor drive and large shutter-release button. The camera is similar to the 500 EL/M used for the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project in 1975.

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.

• The "C"-shaped objects are most likely printing imperfections not in the original film from the camera, but only in some of the later generation copies of AS16-107-17446 (and no copies of 17445). One suggestion, as seen in the next link, is that when magnified the 'C' is a coiled hair present on a specific print of the photo which was later widely duplicated. (See "Who Mourns For Apollo?" by Mike Bara and "Clavius: Photo Analysis - lunar rover" by Jay Windley.)

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  Original AS16-107-17445 photograph

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  Original AS16-107-17446 photograph

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  Close up of later generation prints of AS16-107-17446, showing the "C"

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.

• It is true that Australian viewers saw the footage first, as the downlink was to several radio-telescopes in New South Wales, including Parkes Observatory. But the lead over Houston's transmission was only 6 seconds. Not enough time to do a convincing superimposition of a bottle being kicked by an astronaut, and not enough time to convincingly remove a bottle kicked by an actor, even with today's technology, and even if the operator was prepared in advance.

• Transmissions from the Moon required video signals of very different design than that of ordinary television, and were converted to standard video by pointing a camera at a video screen, a process known as kinescope—similar to the predominant method of recording television in the day—to 16 mm film, not to videotape, which was expensive and cumbersome. The process is vulnerable to added reflections between the monitor glass and the camera lens. "Ghost" mirror images of highlights appear throughout the recordings of the broadcast video and are undoubtedly a result of this process. Such artifacts were noticed at the time by the operators, though some of them may have been introduced in the recording of the broadcast, rather than during the preparation for broadcast.

Analysis shows an optical artifact fitting the description given. It is clearly caused by a reflection inside the kinescope conversion system. Its motion precisely mirrors Aldrin's in the shot.

A MPEG video segment available directly from NASA, said to be of the exact footage in question, does indeed show artifacts which correspond to ghosting occurring—although none obviously resemble any type of bottle. Indeed, with the quality of the recording available, spotting a stray bottle on the "set" is a hard task, even when told what to look for, where and when.

• A Clavius.org researcher, Peter Barrett, who examined archival copies of the editions of the paper surrounding this time, was unable to find any evidence of published discussions described by Ronald. Likewise, chief librarian Tracey Bennett for The West Australian confirmed that for at least two weeks following the Apollo 11 moonwalk, the paper published no accounts of a Coke bottle being seen in the broadcast.

• Ronald's claims have only been relayed by one source.

• According to the one source, Ronald distinctly mentioned that she had to stay up late to watch the Moon landing live. This may indicate that she is an invention of someone who is not from Australia, or is someone who has little knowledge of the Moon landing, as those who did watch the Moon landing live in Australia usually recall that it occurred in the middle of the Australian day.

• It would be technically incorrect to say that Western Australia received the footage "before the rest of the world," since this discounts the remainder of Australia. So if that is what was claimed in the original source for the claim, then that is one more glossing-over of the specific details of the event, which does not count in their favour, and demonstrates an actual lack-of-familiarity with Australia.

• Parkes puts the time of the broadcast at 12:54 p.m., and Western Australia is two hours behind Australian Eastern Standard Time, so any live broadcast would have been received there at around 11 a.m. local time. (Daylight saving time is not active in the Southern Hemisphere in July when the Moon landing took place, so the calculation is simplified.) So assuming Ronald did indeed watch her broadcast late at night, then logically the reason her footage differed from that seen by the rest of the world must have been that it had been doctored between the time of the live broadcast when most of the world failed to observe anything unusual, and her later viewing some kind of delayed broadcast (none is known to have taken place, but the possibility is hard to rule out).

However, it is not difficult to verify that videotape technology was not widely available in 1969, and was bulky, expensive and required specialist knowledge to operate. Film was still the predominant storage medium, even for professional archiving of television broadcasts. Altering a videotape would require access to prized equipment, which would be unlikely to be available to the casual practical-joker, even if they had the ability to operate it so well.

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.

Television image of the actual scene

• The picture was made (for the book) from several individual shots from the Hasselblad cameras (which had already been stowed at that point), and does not appear in the 1995 UK paperback version, although at no point is its nature mentioned in the book. It was used in lieu of the only existing real images, from the TV monitor, which the editors of the book apparently felt were too grainy to present in a book's picture section.
• The Lunar Module and its shadow come from a left/right reversal of AS14-66-9276. The astronaut on the right is a left/right reversal from AS14-66-9240, the TV camera has been removed. The astronaut on the left is a left/right reversal of AS14-66-9241, again with the TV camera removed. The flag is from AS14-66-9232 or one of the similar photos. Some of the equipment came from a photo similar to AS14-67-9361. The golf club, ball, and some shadows have been added. See this webpage for the dialog and discussion of the activity that the faked photo depicts.

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.

• The ball moved only two or three feet. Shepard also stated that the second ball went "miles and miles and miles" (off-camera of the television broadcast), which was clearly a joke, like the comment about the slice. Later, in an interview, Shepard said, "Then I thought, with the same clubhead speed, the ball's going to go at least six times as far. There's absolutely no drag, so if you do happen to spin it, it won't slice or hook 'cause there's no atmosphere to make it turn." A slice comes from hitting the ball off the outer end of the club-head, versus hitting it square in the middle of the club-head, versus hooking it, which is hitting it off the inner end of the club-head. Shepard did, in effect, "slice" the ball at first, and as he notes, being in the virtually non-existent lunar atmosphere, the ball did not curve laterally as an earthbound slice would.

• The Apollo Lunar Surface Journal contains the actual dialog, with the golf part around "135:08:17." Just above "135:08:11" is a video clip of the golfing sequence. Below "135:09:26" is a discussion of the mock-up photo in "Moon Shot."

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.

1-3. The dust cloud on these Apollo 16 lunar rover photos is not of a parabolic shape. 4. Although each particle on the plot follows a parabolic trajectory, the overall shape of the dust cloud deviates strongly from the parabolic shape. Note that the simulation does not attempt to mimic the exact shape of the dust cloud, it merely shows that a complex, unexpected pattern may emerge from simple laws.

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

See also

• Moon landing conspiracy theories
• Third-party evidence for Apollo Moon landings

References

• Cover page for online edition here.

External links

• "Magnificent Desolation: The Apollo 11 Moonwalk Pictures" from Apollo Lunar Surface Journal contributor Joseph O'Dea. Complete gallery of Apollo 11 EVA pictures.
• Apollo 11 Image Library at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal
• Apollo 12 Image Library at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal
• Apollo 14 Image Library at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal
• Apollo 15 Image Library at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal
• Apollo 16 Image Library at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal
• Apollo 17 Image Library at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal
• "Apollo Moon flags still standing, images show" from BBC News, July 30, 2012