Smoking Gun - Photoshop

In this video, Rasa tries to demonstrate that NASA somehow altered all of the photographic record ever to remove some sort of discrepancy that he claims exists. He also has another video where someone else says the big words for him, alleging chicanery at the ALSJ.

He uses, as his basis, this incredibly famous image (right):

I’ve very deliberately used the ‘March to the moon’ version of this image, because it is a raw scan of the positive film, untouched or altered in any way.

Prove me wrong.

Rasa’s contention is that NASA had versions of this image out there that keen eyed and super-clever observer’s like him realised contained errors, so they changed it to better versions. Not sure why he decided to use a black & white version of the image, maybe he felt it made his point better. Who cares.

NASA, apparently, removed all of their images in 2004, which is kind of weird because all of the images he’s mentioning were only uploaded to the Project Apollo Flickr Archive in 2015.

Below is the version of the image on Flickr.

It’s much brighter than the March to the moon’s scan, because it’s a scan of a photo (I believe, and I’m happy to be proved wrong), rather than a film positive.

He doesn’t like it because other versions of the photo show a lot more contrast, which helps his theory that Aldrin is standing under a spotlight.

What he hasn’t explained is how a spotlight above Aldrin would produce an elongated shadow heading almost towards the Armstrong!

Let’s see what other versions of the photo we can find from contemporary sources (that I happen to own).

Lots to choose from there, and there are things to point out that matter. First up, the medium used. There’s a wide range of material there, from newspaper print to slides, matt versus glossy. There are also the editorial choices of the printer - many of them like to add more black space above Aldrin’s head than existed in the original because it just looks better. Others rotate it slightly so that the horizon is level. Many crop them to make the square photo a portrait format. All of those choices are out of NASA’s hands once they are distributed to whoever wants to print them. There’s even one (above centre, from here) that was printed in reverse by NASA! You can also add the quality of the scanner, and the software used with that scanner.

The other important thing to note is that while NASA may have re-scanned images, that doesn’t suddenly remove the literally millions of copies of them in all the forms they have elsewhere in the world.  Things have moved on a lot from the early days of scanner technology. The resolution and copying fidelity have improved massively. Changes in the digital representation of an image is not the same as altering what is in it.

Speaking of what is in it, what re we actually looking at?

Neil Armstrong took this photograph standing near the Solar Wind Collector experiment, as we can see from the reflection in the visor (I’ve flipped it here to show the ‘real’ view as Aldrin would have seen it). The illustration below right shows the location, and direction of the image (5903).

All the above are my own copies, as is the Apollo Expeditions below left. The two below centre and right are from here.

So Armstrong is looking north-east across landing leg ‘+Y’. In front of Aldrin is disturbed ground from the EVA activity, whereas behind him there is no disturbance. That disturbed ground appears darker as a result of it being churned up.

With a little investigation, we can also find other images showing that exact same spot at other points in the EVA. The pair below left are AS11-40-5858 taken before Buzz emerged, and the pair below right are AS11-40-5870, taken just after his descent from the lunar module.

And just in case someone wants to argue that these photos didn’t exist until the digital age (and there are some that will), here’s one from the Vintage Photos website, and another from the Italian publication that I own.

We also have a 16mm still to confirm where he’s standing, and the moment capture on TV (Buzz is just off camera).

There are features recorded in the Chandrayaan-2 image (right) that are also in the Apollo photograph.

I did originally think that the rock circled in yellow the TV broadcast, put into view as the ideal camera angle was being determined, but it’s probably more the one in the picture below right (the red dot markes the TV camera position. That’s what you do: check if you’re right, and re-assess if you aren’t.

You will not see those features in any pre-Apollo images. Yet there they are.

In focusing on the details that don’t matter, like how different print media, developing and scanning processes, they forget the ones that do: things on the surface of the moon shown in the photograph that they can only know is there by being there.

Aldrin’s suit is often attributed as a source of reflected light on the surface in the photos, causing some brightening (which is undoubtedly true), but the influence of the shiny reflective mylar foil is very evident here.

What’s Rasa’s doing is taking an image that confirms his preconceptions, then making up a story as to why a different version of the image doesn’t confirm his preconceptions. To be fair it isn’t just him, he’s really only parroting what other idiots have said and coating it with his easily peeled veneer of fake scientific credibility. He has a knack of stating as fact things that are not and apparently his claimed connections with the CNSA are enough to make that credible.

It’s not.

Many versions of the photo exist that were available in 1969 that are an excellent match for the modern scans. All that happened is that better scans were posted. Picking one photo ignores all the corroborating evidence from other photos, and even TV. Any claims that the record has been altered are just an over-active and ill-informed imagination. If we want to get all meta about it, we’re not seeing what was there. We’re seeing what a camera recorded, and how that recording was reproduced, and then how that reproduction was digitised, and then how changing technology allowed improvements to that. All of those versions are valid, but the hoax community like to cherry pick the one they think proves their point and ignore everything else around it.

Again, notice how the photographs have been affected by the medium used to reproduce them, neither of which had the benefit of Photoshop, and how the high quality print shows an evenly lit surface.

But wait, there’s more:

All these images help us to work out what we’re looking at