Moon Fakery: Q

[Oxygon]

I thought it was impossible to see the vehichles, etc... left on the moon with earth based telescopes, thus leaving a doubt about whether we acctually ever landed there...???

but according to this Link...

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn7880

We are going to start scanning it surface with high resolution cameras...?

Wouldnt a high resolution image give final proof...

Or did I miss something...?

[ME]

it can identify spectral features just 50 metres across over swathes of lunar terrain

hmm, don't think a vehicle left on the service is that big.

One way to get a higher res image is making more than 2000 picture of almost the same area, and then the resulution is still more than a meter. So if a feature of 50m across can be identified, then with 2000 overlapping images you could identify an object 1m accross.

[Jonathan]

ME, what are you talking about? I don't think taking any number of pictures and combining them will increase resolution.
There can be no doubt about the Moon landings, Apollo missions 11, 14, and 15 placed retroreflectors on the Moon for use in the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment. Those mirrors could have been placed by robots, like Lunokhod 1, but it didn't do nearly as good of a job as the people we sent there did.
Also, the US DoD lunar orbiter Clementine has taken pictures that independent scientists have concluded depict the Apollo 15 landing site.

[ken_behrendt]

It's truly amazing that there are any people left out there who still doubt that we ever landed human beings on the moon. But, then again, it is a really amazing accomplishment considering the level of technology used.

What convinced me it was real was when I saw one of the astronauts hopping around and occasionally kicking up a some lunar dust when his boots hit the surface. If those scenes had been filmed in a studio on Earth, then the dust would have remained suspended in the air to form a cloud. But, the dust I saw kicked up immediately fell right back down to the lunar surface without forming a cloud.

With today's CGI technology, even that detail could be faked, but for the early '70's? No way! We had to have landed actual humans on Earth's nearest neighbor in space.

ken

[ME]

ME, what are you talking about? I don't think taking any number of pictures and combining them will increase resolution.

Example stacking 6 images
CCD Mars
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[Jonathan]

It seemed to me that fuzz+fuzz=fuzz. If you know the specifics of what they do to combine the images, email me about it!

[jim_mich]

It seems that they are using multiple images to produce a single photo with improved quality and sharpness. This is perfectly logical. The atmosphere blurs each image but by using multiple images the average picture is very accurate. The software needs only find the most common color for each pixel from the multiple overlaid photos.

This method will increase the clearness of the pictures but it will NOT increase the resolution.

Existing pictures can be increased in size by adding pixels between existing pixels. The added pixel's color is an average of adjacent pixels. This prevents the picture from appearing grainy but the picture LOOSES sharpness.

[ME]

Maybe this clarifies a bit.

Let's take some snapshots of someone (no family btw).
Three low-resolution pictures are the result; one in red, one in green, one in blue. Then overlap these images as good as you can.

[ME]

To get a better result you can blur the pixel images a bit, and do the same overlapping.

[Jonathan]

So...you're not increasing resolution, you're just making it look better?

[Fletcher]

ME may be right however. There is a technique used in land survey & adapted for land valuation purposes. Most countries have aerial photography runs which form an overlapping grid. When each picture is looked at in isolation it appears as 2D & is flat with little detail.

When 2 pictures are placed side by side & viewed thru stereoscopic lenses the image to the viewer appears in 3D showing relief, topography, contour, shading, hills & valleys etc (its due to the different angle of light in the 2 shots superimposed). Although it is a manipulation of the visual effects of light it increases detail out of sight & this could be employed.

[rlortie]

Ah! yes, the stereoscope.
I remember my parents having one as a child. each picture consisted of two shots developed on a card side by side. you stuck them into a hand held viewer and looked through paired lenses.

The result was a 3D appearance. Early television you might say.

THis did not improve pixel count or resolution though.

Ralph

[ken_behrendt]

I think that there are image "enhancement" programs available that will, in essence, "morph" a blur into a distinct image, but that sharper image may not exactly correspond to what was contained in the original image from which the blur was made although it will appear to be clearer. I doubt if any of these programs allow one to take a high resolution image, blur it, and then unblur it back to its original appearance.

I assume such enhancement programs work by analyzing the properties of the surrounding pixels and then interpolating what the properties of the extra pixels being placed between them might look like.



Ralph...

When I was a kid the big thing was the Viewmaster Slide Viewer which was the modern version of the old "Stereopticon" viewer (picture cards for these are still available at antique shops in Eastern Pennsylvania, USA). The Viewmaster, however, used small circular cardboard discs or reels each of which held 7 pairs of colored slides. The packs for these cost about $2 at the time and contained 3 reels devoted to different topics.

I collected as many as I could and had ones for different major cities around the world, the New York State World's Fair, space flight including a trip to the moon, and some works of fiction like 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea. The 3D images these produced were truly breath taking and I wish that I had had enough money at the time to purchase the special camera used to make the images for the reels. There was even a special projector that would project large 3D images onto a screen, but which required one to wear polarized glasses to view.

Oh well...maybe some day I'll try auctioning off my large collection of these Viewmaster slides on eBay and see if there's still any interest in the stuff.

ken

[trevie]

What convinced me it was real was when I saw one of the astronauts hopping around and occasionally kicking up a some lunar dust when his boots hit the surface. If those scenes had been filmed in a studio on Earth, then the dust would have remained suspended in the air to form a cloud. But, the dust I saw kicked up immediately fell right back down to the lunar surface without forming a cloud.

Ken, I would have to disagree with you on the dust, they could of used fine glass thats quite heavy and would of acted as it would of on the moon and fell straight back down without having the dust cloud

[Jonathan]

I don't think that's true, sand and glass are both silicon dioxide, so grains the same size will weight about the same. And we know from experience that grains of sand on Earth (that are as fine as Moon dust) do waft about.
NASA could have put the fake astronauts in a giant vacuum chamber, but that still doesn't fix the Apollo-15-landing-site-picture-link I posted.