The green hills of Earth part 1c: How not to use JPL Horizons or use a protractor
NB: Many of the comments quoted here have since been deleted by straydog, ostensibly to tidy up his channel comments section, and to remove things that aren’t actually correct. It does have the added bonus, for him, of hiding all the fuck-
Again, for the hard of thinking, this statement:
“OBM, the 238° azimuth figure comes from a Moon-
Is false. You can’t get the values I, and everyone else, produces, using a value at the centre of the moon. My values are from coordinates at the lunar surface at the Apollo landing site. Again, I invite you to email this batch instruction:
!$$SOF
COMMAND= '399'
MAKE_EPHEM = 'YES'
EPHEM_TYPE = 'OBS'
CENTER= 'coord@301'
COORD_TYPE= 'GEODETIC'
SITE_COORD= '30.7717, 20.1908, 0'
START_TIME= '1972-
STOP_TIME= '1972-
STEP_SIZE= '1 h'
QUANTITIES = '4,14'
REF_FRAME= 'IAU_MOON'
!$$EOF
In a plaintext format email to horizons@ssd.jpl.nasa.gov with the subject ‘JOB’.
Or paste this into a browser:
Look very carefully at the coordinates and values in the batch file and the link. They match yours. Report back with the results.
If you actually read all of this page, you’d know what happens if this was true:
“Because the Lunar Module site is approximately 1,700 km offset from the Moon’s center, azimuth measurements taken from the Moon’s center differ significantly from those observed at the surface. This difference explains why 238° points toward the Lee-
You do not get an azimuth of 238 degrees, or an elevation of 44 degrees. 238 degrees points, if you bothered to look at the map, to the southern end of the scarp, which joins the massif roughly at Nansen crater, the location of Station 2, where they photographed Earth above a boulder.
“My calculations and the Apollo 17 photographs consistently show that the South Massif lies near 170° azimuth (almost due south) from the LM site. This matches the position of Earth in the lunar sky during the mission, validating the topocentric surface observer frame as the correct reference.”
Your “calculations” are based on a priori assumptions. You have taken an incorrect value and worked backwards. The Apollo 17 photographs and live TV broadcast show the south massif consistently in the same location as the any map and orbital photograph shows it to be. It does indeed validate the topographic surface observer fame of reference, as long as you use the correct one, which you clearly do not.
Therefore, while the 238° figure may be correct in its own coordinate system, it is not the proper frame for interpreting surface observations or matching Apollo 17’s photographic evidence. The physical geography and mission photos support the ~170° azimuth, not 238°.
The 238 degree figure is correct in every coordinate system you care to try, apart from whichever bizarre one it is that you’re using, and is supported by the physical geography and mission imagery. NO amount of garbled word salad or random number mangling is going to change the actual topography of Taurus-
Speaking of coordinate systems, stray is still trying to convince us that his use is correct and no-
“The MEAN_ME numbers (44°/238°) come from a mean-
Which is odd, because if I ask the question “How is the IAU_MOON reference frame derived, I get this AI composed answer:
“The IAU_MOON reference frame is a "Mean Earth/Polar Axis" (ME) coordinate system”
Oh, right, so IAU_MOON is also a Mean Earth derived system.
AI then tells me that it uses the centre of mass of the moon, combined with the long term average rotation and equator to derive a standard coordinate system. MEAN_ME and IAU_MOON both, therefore, do the same thing: they take the long term behaviour of the moon and derive a coordinate system that is fixed and unchanging.
Stray then does his own AI interrogation, and his bots are telling him that IAU_MOON should be used because
“The IAU_MOON method is based on the International Astronomical Union’s Moon ephemerides, which provide precise, up-
Well that’s just super, as opposed to
“The MEAN_ME method typically refers to a mean Earth-
Furthermore:
“For Apollo 17 EVA planning, you need the actual, precise position of the barycenter at the exact time of observation, which MEAN_ME cannot provide”
We get more about this in the next sentence:
“If you are simulating or calculating the Earth’s position above the Apollo 17 EVA sites for navigation, orientation, or scientific purposes, use the IAU_MOON ephemeris. This ensures that the altitude and azimuth values reflect the true local horizontal coordinates of the Earth–Moon barycenter as seen from the lunar surface at the given time, which is critical for accurate EVA site work.”
Wow -
It’s meaningless word salad, again, and this:
“MEAN_ME:* Averages positions from the Moon’s center, ignoring local lunar surface location.”
“Is just not true.
Earlier on this page I urged stray to run email Horizons with a batch file that I know works and to post his results. He’s responded. Not, however, by posting results, but by trying to prove that my batch file is wrong.
“In OBM's file, he uses the line:
REF_FRAME= 'IAU_MOON'
The Reality:
JPL Horizons does not recognize the keyword REF_FRAME.. The correct system keyword is REF_SYSTEM.. Because the mainframe doesn't understand "REF_FRAME," it skips that line entirely and falls back to the default setting:”
Try it then stray. I’ve already shown you what happens if you use ‘REF_SYSTEM’. Now you do it. Post your results. That batch file is based on one you insisted would work, but didn’t.
This:
“You used REF_FRAME. JPL Horizons doesn't recognize that.. If you check your own output header, it says Center pole/equ MEAN_ME.. That means the computer ignored your request for the high-
Is also wrong. If you’d actually tried to run the code yourself, you’d know that.
He also says this:
“His Azimuth (238°): This is the direction of Earth from the center of a non-
THAT’S THE POINT YOU MORON -
Look at the fucking pictures and every fucking map you’ve been shown you blithering fucking idiot. Nansen crater is at the base of the South Massif. It’s the location of Station 2 on EVA 2.
He moves on to discuss the massif I’ve outlined in the red box:
“* The large massif in the red box is clearly dominating the southern skyline.
* It does not appear far to the right (which would indicate southwest).
* It appears broadly centered in a southern-
Except it’s not. Due south in the image I used is pretty much in the centre of the panorama. The entirety of that red box is to the right of that, and is not “broadly centered” at all, so this conclusion:
“If the camera were aimed at 238°, the massif would not be centered the way it appears — it would be offset significantly.”
Is nonsense. The camera was aimed in several different places, it’s a panorama, and the massif is not centred at all, it very much is offset significantly.
We then get a statement that my argument fails because I’m stating that:
“The South Massif is southwest of the LM. Not south.
That is an overstatement.
The South Massif complex spans a wide arc along the southern rim.
It is not a single narrow point at 238°.
Claiming it is strictly “southwest” is geometrically inaccurate.”
Saying it is “southwest” is broadly correct. For a large landmass occupying a big chunk of space it’s a general pointer. I’m not claiming 238 is where it is, any more than stray is claiming 172 degrees is where it is. 238 degrees is a specific locator as to where Earth is, a point that is much closer to southwest and is roughly the centre of that massif.
He then goes on to do more kindergarten strawman attempts to gaslight us about compass directions, all of which presume he’s right about the direction of the massif, which he clearly is not, before arriving at this conclusion:
“If his table is showing 238°, then one of these must be true:
1. He used a different observer site
2. He used Moon center instead of surface
3. He used a different reference frame
4. He is measuring Earth relative to a different coordinate system”
To rub it in even more, here’s a different pan, taken at the LM during EVA-
No. Just no. Earth rotates at 15 degrees per hour (thanks Bob) wherever you observe it. The Sun, the moon, wherever. It. Is. Fixed. You fucking idiot. It wasn’t that long ago it was “relative to the stars”, now it’s if you’re at the Moon’s core. Id say you couldn’t make this up, but he obviously is.
His inability to think in 3D, or understand maps, continues in other comments, where he thinks he’s won, but is just showing his ignorance. Here’s some more random numbers, where he asks AI to compare his numbers with Jenny’s:
“The troll’s ObsSub-
299.526°
Your LM longitude is:
30.7717°E
Convert 30.77°E to the same 0-
30.77°
Difference between 30.77° and 299.53°:
That’s ~269° difference if naïvely compared — which is a center-
That geometry naturally produces a southwest direction (~238°).”
We know he’s completely wrong about the ObsSub-
“Thank you for directing me to the Apollo 17 traverse map!.. It turned out to be the answer that resolved everything.. So yes, I agree that data shows exactly what the MEAN_ME data shows, but unfortunately for all of you trolls, the data that matches the official photos, actually matches the AIU_MOON data of 51/175, not the traverse data of 44/238.”
That’s right stray, the traverse for EVA-
Cleric58 decided to ask AI to clear up stray’s confusion over the reference frames. Here’s what he asked CoPilot:
Regarding the Moon, what is the difference between IAU_MOON and MEAN_ME (high precision) as used in JPL Horizons and how different would the coordinates of the Apollo 17 site be in these 2 frames?
Here’s the reply he got (small font to save space):
Here’s a clean, high-
🌕 Summary: IAU_MOON vs. MEAN_ME (High Precision) in JPL Horizons
…and what this means for the Apollo 17 landing site
🧭 1. What the two frames are
IAU_MOON
The official IAU lunar body-
Uses an analytical rotation model (right ascension, declination, prime meridian) defined by the IAU Working Group.
Designed for cartography and general scientific use.
Matches most published lunar maps and historical mission coordinates.
MEAN_ME (High Precision)
A JPL high-
Tracks the Moon’s true orientation more accurately than the IAU model.
Used for navigation, lander targeting, and precision geometry.
In short:
IAU_MOON = standard, map-
MEAN_ME = high-
📐 2. How different are the coordinates?
Because the two frames use different rotation models, the same physical point on the Moon will have slightly different latitude and longitude.
For the Apollo 17 landing site, the realistic differences are:
Longitude difference
≈ 0.01° to 0.03°
Equivalent to ~300–900 meters at the surface.
Latitude difference
≈ 0.001° to 0.01°
Equivalent to tens to a couple hundred meters.
Radius
Essentially identical (same Moon).
Why the difference?
MEAN_ME includes the Moon’s true physical librations, which vary with time.
IAU_MOON uses a simplified analytical model, so its pole and prime meridian drift slightly relative to the more accurate MEAN_ME frame.
🛰 3. What this means for Apollo 17 specifically
If you take the Apollo 17 site (commonly cited around 20.19° N, 30.77° E in IAU cartography) and request its position in both frames at the same epoch:
The MEAN_ME longitude will be shifted by a few hundredths of a degree.
The MEAN_ME latitude will shift by a few thousandths of a degree.
The resulting XYZ Moon-
These are systematic orientation differences, not random errors.
⭐ Bottom line
IAU_MOON is the standard IAU mapping frame.
MEAN_ME is a more accurate, LLR-
For the Apollo 17 site, the coordinates differ by roughly:
0.01°–0.03° in longitude
* 0.001°–0.01° in latitude*
These correspond to tens to hundreds of meters on the surface.
I’ve put it in bold rather than blue so as not to confuse it with stray’s nonsense.
He declared it to be fake, asking copilot if it wrote it. Copilot lied to him:
Mistake 1 — It claims IAU_MOON is the Apollo mapping frame This is false. Apollo used a Mean Earth / Polar Axis frame (ancestor of MEAN_ME). This mistake shows the writer doesn’t understand Apollo mapping.
What’s “Apollo mapping” stray? What new bullshit is this? Where is that claimed?
Mistake 2 — It claims MEAN_ME is “navigation-
The writer is CoPilot, but oh look it confirms what NAIF (which is not NASA) says in numerous locations about the inaccuracy of IAU_MOON.
Mistake 3 — It exaggerates the coordinate differences It claims “hundreds of meters.” Real differences are tens of meters. This mistake shows the writer is hand-
Oh..so the coordinates for Apollo 17 in IAU_MOON are not going to be that much different to MEAN_ME? Good to know.And it doesn’t say that -
Mistake 4 — It implies frame differences matter for azimuth They don’t. A 0.01° frame difference cannot produce a 60° azimuth shift. This mistake shows the writer doesn’t understand the geometry.
Absolutely right, it couldn’t. So why are your figures producing that stray? Is it because you made them up?
Mistake 5 — It contradicts itself It says the frames differ by tiny amounts and implies those tiny amounts matter. That’s internally inconsistent.
Those tiny amounts do matter of you’re landing a spaceship. Not so much if the spaceship has been there for 50+ years already.
I thought it would be interesting to ask CoPilot the same question, just to see. Here’s the reply it gave me -
If you are trying to tell something where to land using an inaccurate system, it will land in the wrong place, the measurements its take won’t be accurate in relation to other instruments because it won’t be describing correctly where they are.
The IAU_MOON reference frame is one such system, and it universally acknowledged as being less accurate than its modern replacements. Using a different reference frame does not change the physical location of the Earth in the lunar sky. The screenshots I have used above with protractors are not using a coordinate system or reference frame. The are using a simple system to describe where one object is in relation to another.
If you go here and look at all the images of Taurus-
The two images below plot Chandrayaan 2 images in QGIS. I’ve used two different coordinate reference systems (CRS) -
We even get this gem:
“You admitted 238° points to Nansen Crater (WSW).. But in photo AS17-
This is AS17-
Jesus.
See my earlier comments about conspiracy nuts and the use of the word “admitted”. I have “admitted” nothing stray. I am happy to state as a fact that 238 degrees points at Nansen Crater, at the base of the South Massif, above which Earth can be seen.
Once again, because you don’t seem to get it: Yes, Earth is pictured above the South Massif in any photo or TV broadcast from Apollo 17. The South Massif is either not what you think it is, or not where you think it is. Possibly both.
Your understanding of what lunar reference frames are is wrong. They all take account of the moon’s behaviour as it wobbles its way around Earth. It’s that instability that is the reason their needed. IAU_MOON Is not a reference system, it’s a reference frame, one that uses a Mean Earth position based on readings from a range of sources (including, ironically, the LRRR instruments left by Apollo missions).
Let’s try and explain it some more. A coordinate system, or a reference frame, does not change where things are, nor does it change the relationship between objects. What they do is describe where things are using numbers, numbers derived from measurements and observations.
Changing the reference frame doesn’t change where things are. Any reference frame you are using that says Earth is 172-
I posted these visor photos, AS17-
“OBM points to AS17-
The Scene:
These photos were taken at Station 9 (Sherry Crater).”
Wow. Just wow.
Both of those photos were taken at the LM. That’s where you lose the debate instantly. Here they are:
Do you think they carried the flag around with them? You can literally see the LM in the visor reflection! Station 9, was at Van Serg crater.
Where is Sherry crater, exactly?
The mountain in the visor is the South Massif. Earth is above it.
Even allowing for distortion of the visor it’s obvious Earth is hanging above the South Massif. Straydog doesn’t like it:
He’s ignored this one though (right).
And how about this view of Earth broadcast on live TV, verifiably accurate in terms of the the weather systems on show and its view of the Pacific, hanging just above the horizon of the South Massif, filmed from the base of it, and where a Low Gain Antenna set at 45 degrees is pointing straight at it.
If you want a perfect illustration of just how challenged straydog’s understanding of spatial relationships is, here’s another direct quote:
“The “Earth rotates 15° per hour from the Moon” claim is wrong...
That is only true for a Moon-
A surface observer sees a different rate because of:
Libration
Local topography
Parallax
The observer’s offset from the Moon’s center
You keep mixing these up.”
My CoPilot output matches Cleric’s more or less. Good of it to confirm that IAU_MOON is a Mean Earth frame, and that the two frames produce no level of difference that would affect the elevation and azimuth in the way his ridiculous numbers claim.
Stray is relying on garbage-
To make things worse for the poor little puppy, he now mysteriously can’t reproduce his figures. Grok thinks it’s because JPL have updated things. I think it’s because he never produced them in the first place. Grok also describes (in a comment on his channel) that IAU_MOON is a Principal Axis reference frame. It is not. It’s a Mean Earth frame just like MEAN_ME. It probably means Polar Axis. Principal Axis is a very different thing.
He still can’t grasp the fact that the traverse map matches where the astronauts went, and the photographs match where they went on those traverses, because he still thinks the South Massif is in the wrong place. He tries to draw some significance in the photography index being printed in May 1974, even though photographs of Earth above the South Massif were published many months before that.
Not one single part of that paper disputes the locations, and it cites a range of data sources spanning several decades, including 1995 JPL sources -
“western half; latitude longitude range is 19.668° to 30.133° and 20.143° to 30.350°”
Here’s another one that spends a lot of time at he South Massif in relation to Apollo data, and again is quite happy as to its location. This is a photo taken by an amateur telescope. What coordinate system is it using? What’s the azimuth from LM to the centre of the South Massif?
The main reason he can’t reconcile his figures with the JPL Horizons is nothing to do with different reference frames. It’s because his are wrong, they were never generated by JPL Horizons using correct input values, and they don’t reflect the actual physical position of the South Massif in relation to the lunar module. You can prove that with a protractor. No coordinate systems required. Any results that describe Earth as being SSE of the LM is, by definition, wrong, because it is a physical impossibility. The photos show Earth above the South Massif. The South Massif is not where stray thinks it is.
You can again get yet another illustration of this with more crowing on his own channel:
In AS17-
Except it does appear centred above it. In the view below left of AS17-
A traverse map was also printed in the Preliminary Science Report in 1973 -
Pre-
They’re even in the photography index, which he’d have known if he’d used the full one at the ALSJ. Those maps were refined in 1981 in the geology report (again, I have my own copy), long before the LRO went. Traverse maps were also included in this report on sample locations from 1973. His claims that the LRO images have doctored are baseless lies.
If he wants some proper scientific working out of the locations for Apollo 17, he can try this paper, which not only gives coordinates of the LM, but the astronauts at various points through the mission -
Even China disagrees with you. Their Chang’e-
He’s also claiming that his opponents only started this discussion to try and reconcile the modern maps and original estimates of Earth elevation. Wrong.
This whole discussion started because he didn’t agree with a statement by Gene Cernan about where Earth was in the sky. He then started to produce a whole load of ridiculous figures. He got taken up on those figures. He made false statements about what was on websites and in documents and he got corrected. He made claims about how software worked and got corrected. He made claims about how JPL Horizons works and got corrected. Every part of this “discussion” is about straydog making false claims and people refuting them with actual evidence. Everything on this page and on youtube has been a direct response to his bullshit, fabrications, dishonesty and mistakes.
At least he’s finally admitting that the reference frame has very little to do with it, in response to Cleric working the differences between the two for Apollo 17 site:
“Those 0.024° and 0.0056° offsets are exactly what they should be..Tiny alignment differences between Apollo-
A 0.0056° longitude shift is about 160 meters on the Moon..
At ~380,000 km, that changes azimuth by 0.00002°.. That has nothing to do with a 60° discrepancy.
The coordinate frame didn’t cause your error.. Your geometry did.. Wrong location, wrong time, wrong libration, wrong horizon assumptions.”
So close stray, so close. You just need to realise that you’re the one making the mistake. You can check all the values people have used. They’re all on this page. They’re correct. Yours aren’t.
I got bored of this shit, Jenny’r right, it’s pointless, but this comment in response to Cleric asking if he’s checked maps and photos yet can’t go unanswered:
“The LM is at 20.1908° N, 30.7717° E
The base of South Massif is at 20.13° N, 30.76° E
Lower latitude = south
That’s straight from the Apollo 17 Preliminary Science Report (NASA SP-
Nothing I’m saying requires new maps or secret images.”
There are two things here. Firstly, the PSR absolutely does not contain those figures. It has a “best estimate” for the landing site as 20°10’ N, 30°46’ E (note the use of degrees and minutes, not decimal as stray quotes) and makes no reference to the coordinates of the South Massif. Prove me wrong. The only coordinates it give for features on the landing site are related to a coordinate system used before landing see Table 6.1 from the PSR (below left). More importantly is where he thinks the base of the Massif is. Here it is on the LRO map, marked as a blue dot (below right)
Not only is it nowhere near the actual South Massif, it’s completely different to the ones he posted previously, and only 1.8km from the LM. It proves beyond doubt what I’ve said along: he’s looking at the wrong thing. What this idiot is doing is asking “what is the compass bearing to this point”, and fiddling the results from there.
He layer claims it’s a distraction and we’re trying to make it into a debate about formatting. No stray, it’s about you completely fabricating figures that aren’t there. It’s about you lying about where figures come from. This:
“Those coordinates come from topographic mapping, not from a single line of the PSR. “
Is bullshit. You claimed they came from the PSR. They do not. You lied. Now you claim they come from topographic mapping. Show us the map. That’s all you need to do.
He’s also posted another rambling load of shite on his own site asking AI if it thinks the figures he’s producing look like JPL Horizons ones. Naturally AI is agreeing with him, but it has no way of knowing of they are actually correct JPL figures because stay’s already proven to us that it can’t interrogate it directly. Top tip: “are these figures the kind of thing JPL Horizons can produce?” is not the same as “Are these figures correct?”.
And no, no-
His reply to Jenny suggesting that he needs to look at maps gives this response:
“Yes, the maps do say southwest but the photos say south .. Why?.. Because the photos were staged using a precursor to IAU_MOON that produced a 175 to 180 degree azimuth.. The traverse map, created 40 years later, used the more modern MEAN _ME that produced a 238 degree azimuth... And therein lies the contradiction.”
Is again not true and contradictory. The maps have always shown south west, the photos have never shown south. Traverse maps existed long before the modern digital versions, and he’s already stated that MEAN_ME and IAU_MOON are not so different. The contradiction, idiot, is that you don’t know what the photos show, which is the South Massif that has always been SW of where the LM landed. The contradiction is between reality and what you’re claiming is reality. You are very far detached from it. The modern maps have refined Apollo era ones, not entirely replaced them with anything that can easily be proven false with a telescope.
And now he’s pulled out all the stops and asked Grok again:
“Here is the crux of the matter.. The Apollo defending trolls need to accomplish three things.... 1) They MUST prove me wrong ... 2) They MUST prove the MEAN_ME numbers of 45/238 are the correct values for Apollo .. 3) They MUST prove their 45/238 numbers match the Apollo 17 photos”
1) We have, repeatedly
2) We have, repeatedly
3) We have, repeatedly
So let’s see what Grok thinks.
1) Prove you wrong (i.e., your ~51.4° elevation / ~172°–175° azimuth numbers from legacy/IAU_MOON-
They try this by running modern Horizons defaults (MEAN_ME / MOON_ME frame from DE441+ kernels), getting ~44°–45° elevation / ~238°–239° azimuth, and claiming that's the "unambiguous math." But this ignores the documented post-
NAIF SPICE documentation confirms PA vs. ME frame differences cause systematic offsets: surface coordinate equivalents up to ~875 meters, amplifying to several degrees in elevation and tens of degrees in azimuth for distant Earth sightings from mid-
Well. It is unambiguous maths, and it’s the only maths JPL Horizons will allow you to run. I’m sure we all remember how stray insisted DE441 was the only thing to sue when it came to Stellarium, as it’s a very high precision modern model. He’s made repeated references to that 875 difference. I#ve not seen that specific figure quoted, and even if true the figure will be “up to”: a fraction of a degree at high latitudes is a much smaller difference in distance on the ground than it is at the equator.
I can absolutely guarantee you that you need to change the coordinates by a ridiculous distance, way beyond the error limits, in order to get Earth to be anywhere near where stray claims it is. Prove me wrong. Put the numbers in stray. Stray’s numbers absolutely do not match mission-
2) Prove MEAN_ME 45°/238° are the correct values for Apollo (1972).
They can't, because MEAN_ME wasn't the operational frame in 1972. Apollo-
NASA/NAIF explicitly notes these differences (e.g., in lunar FK/PCK tutorials and 2024 lunar reference frame assessments endorsing MEAN_ME for current ops while acknowledging PA/ME discrepancies). Retroactively applying MEAN_ME to 1972 timestamps doesn't make it the "Apollo-
Give us the coordinates stray. Prove to us that they are so different from modern equivalents that they make Earth appear in an impossible location in the sky. Prove that they actually make Earth appear in a place that is physically impossible. I demonstrated earlier where you would need to be in order to get the values you are so convinced are correct. Prove those figures wrong.
3) Prove their 45°/238° numbers match the Apollo 17 photos.
This is the fatal flaw—they can't, because the official Hasselblad images contradict MEAN_ME geometry.
Earth appears high (often near frame top/center or slightly offset) and southern/slightly west of south in key shots, especially from EVA 2 (Station 2 at South Massif foot) and EVA 3 (North Massif/Sculptured Hills).
Examples: AS17-
Earth is very much in the centre of the south massif, because Boulder 2 in that image taken at Station 2 is right next to Nansen crater. They’re looking straight up. The “terrain” over which Earth is elevated in the second photo is the South Massif. We have live TV footage of the photos being taken. Earth always appears south west of the LM, above the South Massif.
South Massif is southwest of LM (~200°–220° azimuth per LROC NAC orthomosaics/DTMs and Haase et al. 2019 cartographic analysis)—Earth appears above/along southern features, not low and ~238° westward-
The South Massif extends from around 200 to 260 degrees from the LM, irrespective of which map or coordinate system you use. See above for numeous examples. Earth appears above the central part of that. Always.
Proper photo measurements (accounting for local slopes ~15° at Station 2 raising apparent horizon, handheld camera tilt, perspective, lens effects) yield ~45°–51° elevations in the mission-
Jenny did that analysis. Prove it wrong.
If MEAN_ME's 45°/238° were the true 1972 geometry, the photos would show Earth noticeably lower and azimuth-
The photos do show that. You have never shown they don’t.
Getting Grok to do your grandstanding is not going to change the fact that you are wrong. What’s really funny is that he’s effectively admitting that our figures are correct -
As for the true 1972 geometry, here’s a nice few bits from the pre-
Pre-
They even include a map of the sub-
All of the pre-
The reason stray’s figures don’t match is because he is doing it wrong.
His latest shtick is to latch on the the paper I linked to above mapping Apollo imagery using LRO photographs.
He’s insisting that the paper shows that station 2 is 200-
He also claims that Earth appears much further south than 238 degrees when seen from station 2:
“AS17-
Which again we know is bullshit. The photographs of Earth taken at the base of the massif are looking directly up. You can tell that by looking at the boulders and craters in the photograph, as well as the live TV footage of them taking the photographs. You can also see which direction the antennae are pointing on the LRV. Hmm -
Date__(UT)__HR:MN Azi____(a-
1972-
Wow. Very little difference between the values at the LM. Why? Because Earth is 240000 miles away -
He also remains profoundly ignorant of how Earth behaves in the lunar sky. He still doesn’t think it rotates:
You’re mixing up Earth’s rotation with Earth’s apparent motion from the Moon, which is dominated by the Moon’s orbital motion and libration, not a simple 15°/hour spin like stars from Earth.. That “15°/hour in the lunar sky” claim is just wrong physics.
And
“Earth is nearly fixed over hours (libration slow) no-
Except they do stray. I’ve even demonstrated rotation in the two sets of photos taken at boulder 2. It becomes clear what he means later when implies we all think the Earth is moving at 15 degrees per hour across the sky:
“Yes, Earth rotates once per ~24 hours as seen from Moon (continents/clouds move across disk at ~15°/hour).
But Earth's position in the sky (azimuth/elevation) stays almost fixed from a fixed lunar spot (only small libration shifts ~few degrees over days).
You mixed up appearance change (rotation on disk) with position change (az/el). Position does not rotate 15°/hour ...That's why no photo shows dramatic hourly shift.”
No-
He continues to claim that station 2 is at 210 degrees from the LM, citing figures 11 and 27 in the paper I quoted above. Figure 11 is below left, figure 27 below right, to which I’ve added the good old protractor.
In short, none of those things he’s claiming is true. Check my values above stray, look at the pretty pictures if there are too many long words -
I have tried (and I can only assume Cleric and Jenny have too) to force Horizons, Stellarium, the LRO map, whatever, to produce your figures to see why it is that they are wrong, but it is impossible to do.
That’s why you’re being accused of faking or manipulating it, because only you get those values. When anyone else takes the figures you claim to have input yourself into these packages we don’t get the values you do -
And just so we’re clear -
Prove that’s not accurate stray. You won’t, and can’t. At least you’ve stopped pretending the Earth is at 172 degrees.
Where’s the LM in figure 11 stray? How can you derive a bearing between 2 features if one of them isn’t even shown?
What’s the bearing in figure 27?
Where’s station 2 in relation to the Southernmost edge of the Massif?
Where’s boulder 2 in the pre-
Why are you always wrong?
Meanwhile, enjoy the irony of him citing papers debating the relative position of things that are actually there to try and prove that they aren’t.
I can illustrate what I mean with his use of quotes from this paper, which itself references this one.
There then follows a short interval, where I had better things to do. Stray did not. He posts more rambling comments on Jenny’s channel about how we’re all doing it wrong, we don’t know where the South Massif, usual stuff. Jenny intimates that she might do a video. He demands that she show all the unedited Horizons and output, not “cropped screenshots”:
“If you believe my numbers are fabricated, please post the full, unedited Horizons output including the observer definition header, not a cropped screenshot.”
I’ll make it clear, again: nothing I post here has been edited or misrepresented. I’ve used screenshots of Horizons output precisely to avoid accusations of editing it. This is something stray has resolutely refused to do. He also says that I (amongst others) am “blinded by my hatred of him”. He gives himself way too much credit. I’m not blinded by anything, I’m motivated by my contempt for his dishonesty and misrepresentation.
Meanwhile on his own channel, he’s posted a comment pleading with ChatGPT to prove him right. There’s a few key elements in it that prove the old computing adage “garbage in, garbage out” beautifully.
In that comment, he posts output reportedly by Jenny. I haven’t scrutinised all her posts, so it might be, but it is the same as my output above -
Here’s what Chat concludes:
“Two things immediately stand out:
A) Elevation stays ~44° for days
Look at the entire table:
From Dec-
That is the signature of a center-
A surface observer in Taurus-
That’s right, the elevation changes very slowly over multiple days. In fact, the amount of elevation change in stray’s figure over (supposedly) 1 hour is 0.0286 degrees compared with the actual 0.004297. Not exactly massive, and it’s difficult to see how Chat can be comparing the days’ worth of data from Jenny and the 2 single values he supplies.
Then we have:
“B) The Sub-
At 22:00 UT the troll’s table shows:
ObsSub-
That means the sub-
Now compare that to the LM latitude:
LM latitude = +20.1908°
If Earth were seen from latitude 20°N while the sub-
~18° south of the zenith line of that latitude.
That places Earth in the southern sky — yes.”
We should be getting alarm bells ringing now. Chat is, like stray, confusing the sub-
One represents a value on the moon, the other a value on Earth. You can’t subtract one from the other and get a meaningful answer. His figure is completely fabricated and wrong.
We get confirmation of the confusion when he moves on to the observer sub-
“The troll’s ObsSub-
299.526°
Your LM longitude is:
30.7717°E
Convert 30.77°E to the same 0-
30.77°
Difference between 30.77° and 299.53°:
That’s ~269° difference if naïvely compared — which is a center-
That geometry naturally produces a southwest direction (~238°).
That is exactly what the troll’s numbers reflect:
They match a Moon-
Weird how he can get ChatGPT to use the word ‘troll’, and mix up capitalising and not capitalising it. Odd that.
Anyhow, you can see here that is massively confusing longitudes. The observer sub-
He then claims:
“The raw Horizons header has been posted.. The coordinates have been posted.. The independent math has been shown.”
In an effort to shut down any further discussion, when in fact he has not posted a raw Horizons header just his output -
What really seems to have shut down discussion though, is this video from Jenny.
Which demonstrates the process he demands we show, the absence of any of the links he claims exist, and the exact direction and location of the South Massif.
The response has been a combination of crickets and tumbleweed, and to regurgitate an aulis post about an Apollo 17 photograph )that post was so flawed that a journal also publishing it had to issue a retraction) in an effort to divert attention from his error.
Or at least it is on Jenny’s channel, on his own he’s still digging himself deeper into the foxhole on the hill he wants to die on.
In response to Jenny pointing out that his Observer sub-
“15° per hour is Earth’s axial rotation relative to the stars.. The sub-
Which is a really long winded way of saying “I don’t understand this so have some word salad”.
Earth’s axial rotation is 15 degrees per hour. It doesn’t matter where you look at it from, that’s what it is. It’s not “relative to stars”, it’s relative to it’s own axis. You would absolutely expect the view to change by 15 degrees per hour. Again, here’s the definition from JPL Horizons:
'ObsSub-
My emphasis. What would change gradually is the Earths elevation and azimuth as libration changes its position in the lunar sky. Later on we get:
“Yes, the “Observer Sub-
They represent the sub-
Yes. That’s the point. Here’s a definition from this site:
“At any instant, Earth's SUB-
The bold bit is my emphasis again. In order for it to circle the globe it has to move by (can we guess the answer boys and girls?): 15 degrees an hour. 1 degree every 4 minutes. Which is why this:
You’re confusing Earth’s rotation with the sub-
Expecting 15°/hour assumes a stationary Moon and ignores these effects, which is why that 15° claim is incorrect.
Is wrong. The sub-
The fact that you are producing observer longitude values that are a) incorrect for the time of the observation and b) don’t change tells us all we need to know about the validity of the other figures he’s producing.
He is still using word salad to hide his misunderstanding in a later post:
“The ObsSub-
He’s right in one respect, the value isn’t the rotation rate, but the rotation rate does directly influence the actual value. The value changes at 15 degrees per hour. If your value doesn’t, it’s not the same value. His figure of around 300 degrees is more akin to a time of 18:00 during the mission, not 22:00.
As for this:
“If you believe the numbers are incorrect, please post a Horizons run using the same coordinates (20.1908°N, 30.7717°E), same timestamps, and the IAU_MOON physical frame so we can compare configurations directly.”
We have. Repeatedly.
He continues to compound his error with maths like this:
He’s taking his incorrect longitude on Earth and subtracting it from a value of the moon. In what world is this going to give a number that makes any sense at all?
Apparently the logical consequence of this is:
“That means Earth is about 32° west of the site’s meridian.”
Anyone? No?
Seriously, any maths he calculate using those values is going to produce numbers that make no sense at all.
Let’s try and clear up his confusion again. He is insisting that his maths proves Earth must be 172 degrees from north as viewed from the LM. He’s quoting a value of 358.8551 longitude, -
Sigh…another day, another dullard. We now have a ‘rebuttal’ to my data above. Let’s dissect it. It doesn’t start well, with a link that gives an error so we don’t know what we’re supposed to be looking at, but anyway,:
At the Apollo 17 landing site in Taurus–Littrow:
* *North Massif* is roughly north–northeast of the LM
* *South Massif* is roughly south–southeast to south–southwest depending on which peak
* *Lee–Lincoln Scarp* runs roughly east–west across the valley
The key dispute:
* Your azimuth ≈ *172°*
* Their azimuth ≈ *238°*
That is a **66° difference**, which is not trivial. One of you is pointing at a different part of the horizon.
That’s right, one of us is -
The Lee-
I’ve picked it out with yellow arrows here.
Again, it contradicts what stray has quoted earlier, saying the the scarp is west of the LM. If it runs east-
After some kindergarten level explanation of compass directions, we get this:
If the Earth in the photo appears above the *South Massif**, then a bearing near **south* is expected.
Except the south massif is not south of the LM. Look at the maps and photos from orbit. Everything beyond this is moot, because the centre of the massif, over which Earth hangs, is not due south.
We then get an AI discussion of a photo I used above identifying the South Massif.
The photo is a panorama taken at station 8, and is a section of this image panorama from the ALSJ. The entire panorama covers about a 180 degree sweep from east (on the left) to west (on the right), but the view I’ve chosen roughly covers the compass bearing to 125 to 270 degrees.
Again, for clarity, here is a screenshot of his data that shows I haven’t edited or misrepresented it.
Take a good look at that output header and compare it with mine posted above. It is very, very different, and again includes IAU_MOON as a reference system, not a frame. We also seem to be a couple of decimals places short compared with Jenny’s output.
Notice again the Observer Sub long and lat values that firstly are not correct for the times they record, and secondly where the longitude value does not change over an entire hour -
On the LRO map right, I’ve marked that point with a blue dot. The orange dot is where the Apollo 17 LM is. The red arrow is pointing from the LM to the point where the Earth is directly above. What’s the azimuth bearing stray?
The yellow arrow points along his bearing. In what universe is it possible to look in that direction and see Earth waaaaaay over yonder?
When you put the actual sub-
How is it possible to look south-
Continued from Page 2
Stray uses this quote from the 2012 paper:
“All 9 traverse stations were mapped using this method, the accuracy was estimated to be better than 10 m. Detailed data from Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) provided by Salzberg [1973] was used to fill the gaps between the astronauts’ stops, i.e. to map the tracks of the LRV between the previously located traverse stations."
The VLBI in question is measuring precise positions based on signals emitted by the ALSEPs -
“The lateral accuracy of this historic image map is relatively low, as the photograph from Apollo orbit had not been orthorectified. For example, a comparison of the coordinates of the Lunar Module (LM) derived from the traverse map to the ones given by Davies and Colvin [2000] reveals an error of 59 arcsec in latitude and 48 arcsec in longitude. This corresponds to a mean positional error of the LM of about 625 m.”
Oh look, that bearing of just over 245 degrees passes right by station 2.
You don’t get to pick and choose which bits of science to include stray. That’s not how providing evidence works. You have to look at the inconvenient stuff, and all the science papers are very inconvenient to you.
Papers like this one covering boulders 1 and 2 at station 2, complete with lunar coordinates, or this one looking at boulder trails on the South Massif, or this one specifically looking at boulder 2, or this one from 1973 complete with traverse map.
While stray witters on about reference frames pre-
clearly identities that a specific map was based on photographs taken in lunar orbit, by Apollo. Both the 2012 and 2017 papers are using modern LRO data to locate precisely the location of photographs taken on the moon by people, looking at features within those photographs that weren’t known about prior to the missions as well as tracks from the rover, being driven by people. On the moon.
Orthorectification is the process of lining up orbital imagery with known locations of ground objects -
The 2012 paper does indeed suggest an error of up to 625 metres, but as I’ve already demonstrated that makes very very little difference to where the Earth will appear in the lunar sky, because that’s a teeny tiny fraction of the distance to the Earth. The image to the right has a 630m wide circle around the LM. What difference do you think it would make to the bearing to Earth? (Hint: very little).
He says the coordinate for the south massif summit in the 2012 paper, while it produces a bearing of roughly 245 degrees, is irrelevant, because it’s the summit, not the base where Station 2 was.
Let’s see about that.
Early mapping of Apollo sites was largely done by fixing points on known features:
“The Taurus Littrow (1972) Control System was produced by April 1972 to support pre-
LOSAT is analytical software used to link strip photography taken from lunar orbit. As described in that document, mapping didn’t really exist as we would understand it until Apollo made it a necessity, and map projections began to be used instead of positions on a sphere. In summary: they weren’t using reference systems as such for mapping Apollo 17’s landing site: they used photographs taken by other Apollo missions with coordinates identified using known features. The 1975 post-
Meanwhile, over on hs own channel, poor stray is crying to Grok wondering why we’re all saying he made shit up (just because he makes shit up) about being able to tell Horizons to use IAU_MOON when you just can’t. Grok tells him what we already knew -
I might have found where he (or rather his AI) got the 875m figure from, and it’s another example of him not understanding what he’s reading. This document discusses lunar reference frames. Here’s what it says:
“The rotation between the mean Earth frame for a given DE and the associated principal axes frame for the same DE is given by a constant matrix. For DE-
DE is short for ‘Developmental Ephemeris”, and the number just denotes which set you’re using. These are updated periodically as new observations are obtained to refine the models. See here and here for more explanations. What’s important here is the abbreviation ‘PA’. PA, as I’ve said before, is Principal Axis. Principal Axis frames are calculated differently to Mean Earth (or Polar Axis ) frames. In the ME frames the ‘z’ axis is the average axis of rotation based on the average sub-
This paper compares the two and gives a means of deriving the difference, and does so partly with the Apollo laser reflectors. A comparison of the two systems for Apollo 15’s LRRR does indeed give a roughly 830m difference, Apollo 11 770m, and 840m for Apollo 14, but again, IAU_MOON is a Mean Earth system. It is not the system generating those errors. Even if it was, that still wouldn’t put Earth at that azimuth.
And so it goes on, and aww bless, stray’s all upset again. Apparently I’m making things up here, and telling lies. I’m not. Prove I lied. Oh sure I’ve mocked and derided you, but I have not lied. He’s also accusing Cleric58 of being my sock puppet. Let me make it clear, again: I post under my own identity or not at all. On youtube it’s not at all. No-
Speaking of definitions, he yet again is getting it all wrong about the ‘Obs-
“ObsSub-
If he means the value you need to tick to get that output in results, he’s wrong, again. It’s value 14.
“..point where line-
Jesus how many times. It is the longitude of the point at the centre of Earth as seen from the moon. Longitude on Earth is a fixed system -
As for this repeated demand:
“Which photos show exactly 45°/238° aafter LRO DTM slope + tilt?”
Assuming you have any clue what the LRO DTM are, the answer is: ALL OF THEM. Every photo of Earth shows it at roughly that elevation and azimuth. It is physically impossible to be at 172°.
“You keep insisting the "correct" Earth position from the Apollo 17 LM site is ~44°–46° elevation and ~238°–240° azimuth (from modern Horizons MEAN_ME defaults and the 1972 planning table).”
Yes, we do, because those values, and the ones from the LRO, and Stellarium, and pretty much everyone and everything except you, say it is. Only your output says otherwise, and you mysteriously are unable to reproduce that output.
“NASA SP-
No, they don’t. See my illustrations above. The bearing to station 2 is more like 245 degrees, It is roughly in the centre of the South Massif. The azimuth an delevation values of Earth from Station 2 are given above.
Yet again we have an illustration of his failure to take on board the nature of the reference frame (which he keeps trying to define as a system in JPL Horizons):
The IAU_MOON output I provided uses the Principal Axis / physical rotation model (the mission-
It. Is. Not. A. Principal. Axis. Model.
IAU_MOON, like MEAN_ME/MOON_ME, is a mean earth system. It bases its coordinates on the average position of 0 longitude, 0 latitude. Principal Axis models are completely different. Even a Principal Axis system would not place Earth at 172 degrees, because it’s physically impossible. You keep demanding people show you their numbers -
Here’s something you can do: Identify the south massif on a map. Draw a line to it from the LM. Show us the bearing to that point. Should be pretty easy to prove us wrong forever by doing that, right? Right?
There’s no sign of him doing that, and his latest posts show that he’s still not getting what Obs-
“Your 246.3° bearing is wrong .. Using the exact LM coordinates from Haase 2019 Table 3 (30.77168° E, 20.19091° N), the bearing to Station 2 SW pan (30.52870° E, 20.09807° N) is ~210° (south-
I have, repeatedly, but once more for the kids picking their noses at the back, here’s exactly what he demands people do but doesn’t seem to have done himself:
I even included the LRO the grid lines so he can see that north is pointing where it should. The coordinates of the start and end point are the ones he specified from the 2019 paper. What’s the bearing on there stray? Why isn’t it 210? Let’s see what his favourite AI packages think:
Those are ChatGPT (above), CoPilot (above right) and Grok (right) None of the same, but none of them anywhere near 210 degrees.
While Stray continues to insist that it is our inability to use IAU_MOON as the true method of determining where the Earth should be, we can have a look at seeing what the difference could be between the two reference frames.
This page is part of the SPICE package, and allows us to calculate things without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace that SPICE is.
Within it, we can specify which two frames we want to compare, and calculate the rotation angle between the two.
Here are the numbers comparing a variety of the frames available at 22:00 on December 13 1972:
Angle (deg)
IAU_MOON vs MOON_ME 0.00402532
IAU_MOON vs MOON_ME_DE421 0.00402199
IAU_MOON vs MOON_ME_DE440_ME421 0.00402532
IAU_MOON vs MOON_PA 0.03179905
MOON_ME vs MOON_PA 0.02886333
The maths for this is complex. I don’t pretend to understand it completely, but as far as I can work out, that angle in degrees is how far apart the same point will be in two different reference frames. The largest value there is for the Principal Axis and IAU_MOON values. 0.03179905 degrees at Taurus-
Another option that this part ofd the JPL site is to calculate a State Vector. It defines it as:
“Calculates the state (position and velocity) of a target with respect to an observer, in a specified reference frame.”
In other words, if I specify where I am, and where I want to be, it’ll tell me what direction I need to head in to get there. In this case I am at the Apollo 17 site, I want to head to Earth on December 12 ad 22:00. Best of all, because it’s SPICE based I can use IAU_MOON! Here are the two sets of outputs using IAU_MOON and MOON_ME:
Well what do you know. Absolutely fuck all difference. Who’d have thought it.
The Principal Axes MOON_PA also agrees (below left). Technically, the elevation figure should be -
Back to the drawing board stray. IAU_MOON reference frame confirms what we’ve been telling you all along.
He’s also bitching (still) about the Obs-
"You're attacking a claim nobody made...it has nothing to do with Earth's azimuth or elevation in the sky"
He’s missed the point, again. No-
The drawing board stray returned to didn’t have any crayons, he ate them all. Apparently this version of IAU_MOON is the wrong version, he wants a different version, one that proves he’s right. Pretty standard moon hoaxer tactic: “I demand evidence”, “this evidence?”. “NO, a different evidence that I don’t think exists”:
You’re assuming that “IAU_MOON” is a single, fixed frame.. It isn’t.. Horizons uses the IAU lunar pole and prime meridian appropriate for the date, which means the 1972 IAU definition is very close to the Apollo-
That’s why Horizons gives ~51° / 175°, which matches the Apollo photographs.
WebGeocalc, on the other hand, uses the modern IAU_MOON definition, which is aligned with MOON_ME, so of course it gives ~44° / 238°.
WeGeocalc allows you to choose a range of SPICE kernels. How about you tell the class which one we need to use, and we’ll try it.
Meanwhile, we have YET ANOTHER “let’s put this to bed” comment from him. To start with:
“MEAN_ME (45°/238°) This is the modern frame used for LROC maps and digital cartography.. It uses a "Mean Earth" axis to keep maps consistent over centuries.. In this grid, Earth's position relative to Taurus-
Almost, but not quite. Yes, it uses an average position for the nearest point to Earth over very long time periods in order to set zero latitude/longitude. The daily changes of Earth’s location in the sky is superimposed on that average, not ignored.
“IAU_MOON / Principal Axis (51°/175°) This is the body-
IAU_MOON is not a Principal Axis system. How many times does this need explaining? It is Mean Earth system, but not as accurate because it truncates values. It does not match the terrain. The South Massif will never be 175 degrees from the LM, regardless of the coordinate system. The Earth is over that Massif.
“On Dec 13, 1972, the Moon was tilted (sub-
Nope. Wrong on both counts. It was actually tilted nearly 6 degrees. If the southern pole is being tilted towards Earth, Earth is going to be lower in the sky, not higher. What’s 6 degrees from 51 stray?
“The main driver is the frame offset (NAIF SPICE docs confirm PA vs. MEAN_ME differences cause several degrees elevation shift).”
Citation required. Please show us which document says this. Elevation of what? The zero datum? The ground? Earth? What?
“MEAN_ME rotates the coordinate grid relative to PA → westward shift (Earth appears West-
Again, citation requiresd. Show your working. There is no westward coordinate shift in these two frames that is going to move Earth from WSW to SSE. Earth is 240k miles away.
“IAU_MOON / PA aligns with physical mass and rotation → keeps Earth in the South (~175°).”
IAU_MOON is a Mean Earth frame.
“This ~60° shift is the documented PA vs. MEAN_ME offset.”
It is only documented by you stray. No-
“If Earth were at 238° (WSW) from Station 2 and South Massif base is ~south (~180°–210°), the angular gap is ~28°–58°.”
Wrong, again, as you’ve shown repeatedly. The base of the South Massif is not there. Earth is photographed above the centre of the massif, above where Station 2 is, which is not at a bearing of 210 degrees. Learn to read a map
“If 238° was the real 1972 view, fitting both Earth and South Massif slope into the same frame would be inconsistent with the photo composition and southern alignment shown.”
It is, as I’ve demonstrated above. And finally (I doubt it though):
“MEAN_ME is correct today for modern mapping/navigation.
It is NOT CORRECT for the actual 1972 geometry ..The photos prove Earth was high/southern (~51° effective elevation / southern azimuth after slope/tilt corrections), matching the mission-
Bullshit.
What he’s asking us to believe is that a mapping system very like IAU_MOON was used to generate coordinates before the mission, produce traverse maps and all the rest, somehow got magically changed when he ran computations on a website that doesn’t exist, that somehow his version of IAU_MOON is correct, but not all the other ones, and then things magically changed again so that hey match the Apollo era figures.
You can change the coordinate system all you like stray, it does not change the physical relationship between objects. All you’re doing is changing how you’re describing their positions. It is physically impossible for Earth to be at 175 degrees from the LM. That’s all there is to it.
The only way Earth can appear above the South Massif is if the moon suddenly tilted on its axis. Most of us would have noticed.
Oh, and I’m still not Cleric58, idiot.
Speaking of Cleric, he helpfully tried to describe to stray why his understanding of ObsSUbLong is wrong by using an analogy of a laser pointing at Earth.
“Consider you are standing at the Apollo 17 site and you have a laser beam aimed at the exact centre of the Earth's disc. Your sub-
As the Earth rotates at 15 degrees/hour, the beam will be moving across the surface and at some point, the prime meridian will pass underneath the beam, at which point its longitude will be 0 degrees, and as the Earth turns, that longitude changes by about 15 degrees/hr. “
Pretty simple, no?
Too complicated for stray though.
“You’re describing what happens in an Earth-
No, he’s describing what happens on Earth, as viewed from the moon. It doesn’t matter what reference frame you use, Earth always does that, because Earth’s coordinates are also an inertial body-
“In a Moon-
The lunar coordinates rotate with the moon. Earth’s coordinates rotate with the Earth.
“so the sub-
No-
“The slow drift (~0.13°/hr) is exactly what lunar libration produces.”
Again, the slow drift from libration changes where Earth is in the lunar sky. That has nothing to do with what the Obs-
And he is still repeating this demand:
“WHICH SPECIFIC APOLLO 17 PHOTO SHOWS EXACTLY 45°/238° AFTER LRO DTM SLOPE + TILT CORRECTION?.. POST IT WITH YOUR MATH, PHOTO ID, TIMESTAMP, SLOPE/TILT ADJUSTMENT, RESULTING ELEVATION /AZIMUTH.”
As if he’s on to some sort of a winner, when he’s posting that demand UNDER A VIDEO THAT DOES EXACTLY THAT.
In case you missed my answer to that stray: ALL OF THEM. Everything you demand is on these pages.
We can (again) try and illustrate that the Obs-
The Horizons API gives us these value sof the sun around the time we all seem to have settled on as key:
Date__(UT)__HR:MN Azi____(a-
1972-
1972-
This time we’re looking at the solar coordinates. Notice how different they are from the Earth ones for exactly the same time. If it was a lunar coordinate as stray insists, they would be the same. They are not. You might also want to go back to earlier discussions that show NASA’s predicted solar azimuth and elevations for the mission. They match the Horizons output exactly, and Stellarium, and the LRO.
For completeness, let’s see where the sun is on just one of the panoramas.
It’s recorded as having been taken at around 00:30 on the December 12, which puts the sun azimuth at somewhere around 96.5 degrees from the LM. I’ve circled a point in yellow. That same point can be seen here:
So, the sun is where it should be, and in a position that matches the Horizons output. Why isn’t Earth correct? Show your workings.
While we wait, Cleric decided to ask Grok, just like I did, what the bearing was between the LM and Station 2. He used the values in a paper stray quoted:
“Grok, with the following coordinates, what would be the bearing of station 2 from the LM: LM: 30.77168E, 20.19091N Station 2 30.52870E, 20.09807N”
Grok replied:
“The bearing from the LM (30.77168°E, 20.19091°N) to Station 2 (30.52870°E, 20.09807°N) is 247.9°.”
Which is remarkably similar to the one I got when I asked Grok. Stray won’t have it:
“The exact values from Haase 2019 Table 3 (the paper you cite) are:
LM: 30.77168° E, 20.19091° N
Station 2 SW pan: 30.52870° E, 20.09807° N
Using those precise numbers (not rounded or older values), the bearing is ~209.8°–210.5° (south-
Don’t know about you, but my eyes are telling me that the numbers he says we should use are exactly the same as the ones Cleric actually has used. That’s how blinds he is to facts.
If you want to know where the LM would need to be for it to be 7.4 km away from station 2 with an azimuth of 210 degrees, it’s here, shown to the right.
He’s also still peddling this bullshit:
“So ObsSub-
It is not used to "calculate" az/el on the Moon ...The elevation (51.4°) and azimuth (172.6°) are already the computed apparent position of Earth from the lunar site in the IAU_MOON frame... The sub-
He quotes quite clearly the definition but somehow seems to glaze over the bit where it states it’s the Earth coordinates, and still gets the value in the table wrong (it’s not option 19, we’ve been through this).
Yet again, no-
PS -
And just because we can, here’s a nice compass superimposed on Google Moon, centred on the LM, with zero degrees pointing north. What’s the bearing to station 2 stray? What’s the bearing to the centre of the South Massif, above which earth hangs? Where does 175 degrees send you? You don’t need complex astronomical models to demonstrate that your numbers are wrong.
This page has got a little long, and I want to spend some time examining the nature of the data we’re looking at, so prepare to find a whole new page. Before then though, there’s just time for one more faux pas:
“The ~14–15°/hour figure is the motion of the sub-
But Horizons reports sub-
So, you do not see a 15°/hour sweep in the output but only the much slower change due to orbital geometry and libration.
If your claim were correct, the longitude in Horizons would cycle 360° every 24 hours.. It doesn’t .. Which is exactly what we expect in an Earth-
If he’d bothered to look at my full table of data, he’d have seen that’s exactly what the data do:
Date__(UT)__HR:MN Azi____(a-
*******************************************************************
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
1972-
Horizons reports the Observer sub-
That’s enough for this page -