Starship Asterisk*

Hi,
I just wonder if the moon is really made up of gray stones and dust.
As in the picture from 20 July 2007 you can see a panorama of the moon.
The Eagle and also the stereo close-up camera in front show colors. On the camera you can also see cyan edges like from chromatic distortion.
But the rest of the image is all gray.

So is this image really carefully colorized or has the surface of the moon really no noticeable colors?
If this image is not colorized, can somebody explain why the stones on the moon have no colors?

thanks
Harry

there are some more colorful images 1, 2 and 3 (source) but nothing too spectacular

some more clues to actual color of the moon can be found here (specifically, take a look at images of samples).

To borrow a phrase from country music artist Lee Greenwood, " I am proud to be an American" when I see these pictures.

Why are there no stars visible in the sky in the photo? Seems there would be, since there is no atmosphere to diffuse the sunlight and "drown out" the star light. Thank you.

Has anyone tried growing plants in the soil samples brought back from the Lunar expeditions? Seem like this would be important in setting up a base on Luna!
Orin

because it was all done for £5 in a basement in kent

or it could be to do with how optical instruments (cameras or eyes) work when presented with a very bright object in the field such as the surface of the moon compared to the very faint stars. camera would be set to a daylight aperture and exposure time in such bright conditions therefore no stars.

I reckon if they were hoaxing it and the above wasn't the case they'd remember to put the stars in!

Doran Williams wrote:Why are there no stars visible in the sky in the photo? Seems there would be, since there is no atmosphere to diffuse the sunlight and "drown out" the star light. Thank you.

There is more information here.
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html

basically, the camers has what is refered to as an electric eye (or Iris). the light in the area is detected and the Iris is opened or closed to allow for optimal lighting of the image being produced (to prevent overexposure). Unfortunately, the Lunar surface is so bright that when the Iris aperture and shutter speed is adjusted to to allow for a rightly exposed image, the alloted imaging time is not sufficient to allow for the imaging of stars.

If you were standing there, you would probably not be able to see very many stars either.

Never mind the stars, look at the shadows of the antenna, foreground rock just to the right of the antenna, and the astronaut. Shouldn't they all be pretty much perpendicular if cast by the Sun???
If there was another light source, why hasn't the foreground rock got another shadow???

HashishAssassin wrote:Never mind the stars, look at the shadows of the antenna, foreground rock just to the right of the antenna, and the astronaut. Shouldn't they all be pretty much perpendicular if cast by the Sun???
If there was another light source, why hasn't the foreground rock got another shadow???

As this is a partial panorama, features on the left of the image are in fact almost opposite features on the right. You need to imagine this image printed on the inside walls of a round room. As this is not a 360 degree panorama it wouldnt go all the way around, but would go about half way around the room. Then all the shadows will point to a single source.

Even in a single normal photograph on Earth shadows will appear to go in different directions.

Imagine yourself with 2 friends either side of you. With the sun directly behind you. Your own shadow will go straight ahead, your friend on your left's shadow will angle off to the right and the friend on your right's shadow will go off to the left.

A bit like this one
http://www.dennisflood.com/photos/galle ... hadows.jpg

Mike Constantine
http://moonpans.com

brbear1 wrote:I am proud to be an American" when I see these pictures.

O rly? Let me ask you then, since what year were you, personally, paying taxes?

For Harry_h:

The moon is typically very gray and is the color of asphalt. While there are deposits of stones of many colors, for the most part gray dominates. There are stretches of orange colored soil and yellowish soil, and even a patch of pale greenish soil has been reported. Samples of all were taken and brought back for analysis.


For Doran Williams:

This is very simple. If you are exposed to bright light, your pupils will contract to eliminate potential damage to your retinas. Camera "auto-iris" circuits also change the sensitivity of the camera to render it less sensitive so that you can see more than a bright blur.

When the cameras iris is contracted, the less bright objects will not register- and hence, the stars (which are very pale compared to the sunlit landscape) will not register. Go outside at night with a flashlight, look at the stars, and then shine the flashlight at your eyes. The stars will be difficult to see at best, for the same reason.


For orin stepanek:

Yes, in Houston the samples were used for all sorts of biological experiments. Plants exposed to lunar regolith (which is ground up rock with no organic matter in it) grow very rapidly. This is in part because there is no lack of trace elements in it, and these minor constituents can have a dramatic effect on plant metabolism. In our soils, these materials are washed out, bound in chemically, or taken by other organisms. Ever note how "rich" volcanic soilds are? Same reason.

In the same experimental facility, they also raised turtles at 1.5 PSI of air pressure and did so successfully. Many "lower" animals have the capability to survive incredible conditions. These experiments were part of the effort to find out if plants and animals could survive in space colonies and what their limits were.


For HashishAssassin:

Since the image is a panoramic one, and the camera is located at one stationary point, clearly the shadows must point in varying directions. Picture the scene from above- all the shadows are parallel. Now, pick a single point in the middle of the photo and rotate a line around it (like the viewpoint of the camera). The angle of the shadows will only be parallel at two points; at all others, the shadows will be cut at some angle. Simple.


Have a great day.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070720.html

Think of it this way. The distance to the light source will determine the shadow vanashing point. If the light source were localized, for example say 20 feet away from the point of shadow source, the shadows would point outward from the source points. the farther away the light source, the more the shadows will point inward toward a vanishing point WRT to the specific point of view.

In this case, with the sun as the light source, the shadows should point to a convergence point that would be beyond the horizon but still appear to point to a common place. If the image were taken from above, the shadows would appear to be parallel.

If the subjects producing the shadows were standing 6 feet apart, the shadows will be 6 feet apart the entire distance (for the most part)

You can barely take a picture on a clear night away from town with just a normal point and shoot camera and expect the stars to show up. Much less even if there are large bright objects in the foreground. You won't see any if there is a lit lamp in the picture.

What strikes me is the lovely brightness centered around the camera's shadow. It is a version of heiligenschein, which has been mentioned in a few APOD descriptions before. While other heiligenschein is sometimes caused by optics of dew or cloud drops, the glow in this picture, I guess, simply arises from the total lack of shadows when looking in the direction of the sunshine (except for the shadow of the person who is looking.) If this were a 180 degree panorama I wonder if you would see a kind of anti-heiligenschein because of all the shaded surfaces that would be facing you. Maybe you would not notice it because you would have the sun shining in your face.

So what I'm hearing is that the hoax was so good that they left behind not one shred of evidence of that hoax. I congratulate them. However, I am not so stupid as I look. After all, lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. There must be some evidence that it was all a hoax, it's just that no one has found any yet.

Man = imperfect.
If the Moon landing were a hoax, there would be definite proof! We simply aren’t that adept at covering our tracks and certainly weren't in the late 60's. If we were that good, Area 51 would be just another dry lake bed known as Groom Lake and not a hotbed of controversy from accidental sightings.

The moon landings happened, between July 20, 1969 and December 11, 1972. A total of 6 missions successfully landed on the moon and a total of 12 Americans walked on the Lunar surface.

It's time to wake up Oh and by he way, the earth isn't flat either

BMAONE23 wrote:Oh and by he way, the earth isn't flat either

Dont be stupid, if it were not flat, all ocean water would stream off the planet. Not to mention that elephants would have hard time trying to hold the earth balanced on their backs.

Harry_h wrote:Hi,
I just wonder if the moon is really made up of gray stones and dust.


thanks
Harry

All replies deal with Harry_h's question of colour. But as he points out there is a lot of dust. Also a lot of craters. Must be quite a dusty "explosion" when any meteorite hits the surface.
Has any such been observed? Ever? Recorded? Ever? I mean by any of the various orbiters sent there, or any astronauts, or any of our telescopes.
Meteorite showers still occur in our atmosphere, the moon is not that far away, it cannot have swept clean ALL the meteorites in its path.
Has anyone looked for impacts on the moon when the earth is subject to meteorite showers?

Edited afterthought: Why isn't Mars as pockmarked by craters as the moon?

dited afterthought: Why isn't Mars as pockmarked by craters as the moon?

weathering from the atmosphere (wind, dust storms etc), volcanic activity and perhaps at some point in the past, flowing water, all act to clean the surface of craters just like on earth

toejam wrote:All replies deal with Harry_h's question of colour. But as he points out there is a lot of dust. Also a lot of craters. Must be quite a dusty "explosion" when any meteorite hits the surface.
Has any such been observed? Ever? Recorded? Ever? I mean by any of the various orbiters sent there, or any astronauts, or any of our telescopes.
Meteorite showers still occur in our atmosphere, the moon is not that far away, it cannot have swept clean ALL the meteorites in its path.
Has anyone looked for impacts on the moon when the earth is subject to meteorite showers?

I'm pretty sure both amateur and professional astronomers have observed the flashes of meteorites impacting the Moon on a fairly regular basis.

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~rhill/alpo/ ... pacts.html

Good heavens that page is hideous. But hey, they're astronomers, not web designers, they've got more important things to do.

Thanks Qev. Interesting.

brbear1 wrote:To borrow a phrase from country music artist Lee Greenwood, " I am proud to be an American" when I see these pictures.

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Iraq, Guantanamo...

When I consider these, I am not really proud to be a Human Being...

Pascal.

brbear1 wrote:To borrow a phrase from country music artist Lee Greenwood, " I am proud to be an American" when I see these pictures.

Make that 'proud to be human' and I'd agree with you.
I prefer the oft quoted 'That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind' statement as being far more apt.
The reason America got there is because all the scientific and technological advances up to that point made it possible. That, and they had the money to do it. Remember the German scientists who developed the rockets during WW2 or Gallileo, Leornardo, Newton or Einstein (none of whom were American) to name just a few.
I'm not trying to demean America, they did a wonderful thing in attaining this goal. But I don't wish to see the rest of the world who helped them be forgotten.
There's even an argument for the Russians. Without their part in the space race would JFK have pushed so hard to achieve this goal?
Food for thought.