Mesmerized by the Moon

One point that no-one has made yet... How is it possible that the ratio of the diameter of the moon vs distance to the sun is exact enough to cause a perfect fit solar eclipse? What are the odds on that? You'd have more chance of winning the lottery ten weeks running than finding that again in the universe... Implies intelligent intervention of some kind in my opinion...
 
It is my contention that the lack of close up photo's of every part of the moon is the biggest mystery. Nearly 50 years of probes landers and Astro-nots, dont add up to the few low resolution photo's available
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I think that's a good point. I don't know if ancient artifacts or recent bases exist on the moon but the available data is SO shallow, and we've actually landed there for god's sake!

My first reaction to this post was, well ... we know very little about the ocean and it makes up the majority of our planet, so why should we know more about the moon?

It then occurred to me that the moon has no atmosphere, if you photograph the moon from space, there is no obstacle to look through (studying the ocean is hard because you have to look through water to see it's inhabitants and its shape, not to mention the difficulty it's size offers to anyone trying to understand it). To my (admittedly amateur) understanding, there is no physical barrier like water or atmosphere to interfere with our view of the moon's surface. So why are we just seeing a 'low rez' view of the moon? It doesn't make sense to me. With current technology we should be able to count the grains of dust (at least on the side facing us)!

I suppose my point is there should be a 3D tour of the moon by now but the best we have available is grainy pictures. I'm not saying there is a grand conspiracy regarding the moon but one would expect more information than is presently available. How can one not wonder, considering the close proximity of the moon, why don't we have better pictures?
 
Mmmm, let's clear up a few things:

1) Nearly every part of the lunar surface has been photographed (including the backside). Exept for areas near the poles, which are a bit difficult (=expensive) to reach, because highly inclined orbits are difficult to achieve.

2) The max resolution for pictures of the moon is not unlimited. For Earth-based telescopes, it is limited by atmospheric disturbances, for orbiting telescopes by the optical resolution of the telescope.

3) I think it has been surmised that Hubble could in fact see the landing modules, but why? The HST is VERY busy exploring space, why should we use priceless telescope time getting close-ups of areas we have actually visited? What could we possibly gain from that?

Hans
 
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Originally posted by Star_One
Why is there 1 Hubble ? Surely they could make a few more.
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They made loads, except all bar one face downwards and are used to spy on people. This is the conspiracy theory wrt Hubble, that it was largely assembled from OTS spy satelite technology, and they fitted a downward looking lense, which is why it's focus was off.

But that speaks volumes, that world governments are far more willing to spend money spying on each other than on science.

Back onto the subject of fuzzy moon photos vs crisp spy satellite images. Spy satellites relied on returning film for development until the early 1980's, as until then, film resolution vastly outweighed the quality of data obtainable via CCD devices.

Which brings us nicely to CCDs. CCDs are a fixed array of light sensitive memory bits, each flipped by incoming photons, and have several limitations. Firstly, the resolution of each single CCD isn't that impressive wrt photographic film. They Do suffer from bleed over, in that each pixel isn't wholly discreet, and will have it's data changed by that of it's neighbour, if it's neighbour is registering a very bright source. So bright sources lose resolution, so without attenuation BEFORE the light hits the CCD, an image of the moon, would lose resolution. Get some astronauts to fit Ray Bans to Hubble, and you might get that hi-res picture of the moon, But as Hubble was designed to gather AS MUCH LIGHT AS POSSIBLE so it could look at faint objects, and therefore effectively peer back in time, at very distant objects, it currently is not configured for staring at the moon. Of course, with film, you want better resolution, you focus on a larger film plate, but you can't do that with CCDs, as large ones are hard (read, expensive) to make., so you end up using an array of CCDs, and mosaicing images back together,

Pictures from fly bys. Two issues. Firstly, film return wasn't really possible with many of these missions, so all that is available are the scanned images. Well, what was the resolution of the scanner on the satellite? For the Luna missions, I'm guessing not that good (what was the quality of terrestrial TV like back then? Size of Terrestrial TV cameras?). Also, what was the data sending capability? What was the data storage capability? Think when this took place!! It was hard to store data on earth back then, just think how big computer MEMORY was. So you have a choice, Take a med-res image, store to memory, and spend an age transmitting it back at the slow speed the onboard modem could handle, or take a series of lower res shots, and get more. Sending a probe all the way to the moon for a few med-res shots doesn't sound like too much of a bargain to me.

It seems obvious to me why the quality of the shots is low, but then I work in IT (and have done for a while) and used to work in aerospace, with guys thet designed and built space telescopes.

So guys, if you think the quality should be better, get a PhD, get funding, and build something that can live up to your own high expectations!
 
You should read more on Nasa Policy

Nasa has a history of total deception. There are always many levels of cooperation. For Instance.

Oct. 16 1996-- NASA officials stunned those interested in the Martian
anomalies by announcing that near-real-time imagery from the Cydonia
region would be transmitted by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS).

At first glance it would seem that NASA has reversed its policy from
that in effect for the Mars Observer in 1993. At that time there were no
plans to provide near-real-time continuous data feed. Various reasons
were given as to why there could be hours of delay time even for the few
images that would be released to the public in advance of the
proprietary period of six months .

A summary of the previous policy may be found in The McDaniel Report,
page 23

"NASA's plan for Mars Observer images was that they would not be
broadcast directly to the public as they come in. No plan either to
take or to release pictures specifically of the AOC landforms was
articulated; a few hard-copy photographs of "selected features" were
to be released within weeks after transmission.
The recent NASA announcement not only appears to be a 180 degree policy
reversal on data release, but also appears to conform in part to the
recommendations from The McDaniel Report,
Specifically, NASA not only stated there will be near-real-time data
feed to the public from both Mars Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor,
but also stated that scientists and the general public would be notified
in advance as the Surveyor approaches the Cydonia region

We must repeat what we have said many times before: NASA's top priority
is for objects of the greatest scientific interest. If the Cydonia
objects are accorded little or no scientific interest (which remains
NASA's assessment), the priorities will not be adjusted accordingly. We
must recall Goldin's statement "You can't give priority to everything."

IN SUMMARY:

The images released in near-real-time to the public are useless ones
from the mapping camera. Histograms show out of 256 colors of grayscale 60 percent has been omitted. taking the remaining 40 percent to contruct the photo which removes any abilities to analyze the anomalies.
 
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You could direct your inquiries to some of the other governments that are surveying Mars now; surely NASA's conspiracy doesn't extend to Russia or Japan, although it might extend to UK.
 
Space finally going private ?

THE FIRST COMMERCIAL VENTURE TO THE MOON: Transorbital® is the
only private company to be authorized by the US State Department and NOAA for
commercial flights to the Moon. The TrailBlazer® lunar orbiter will be the first
delivery service to the Moon. Delivered to the Moon surface in a special capsule
will be your certificates, business cards, cremated remains, jewelry, artwork and
many other items of choice. The Trailblazer® satellite will deliver commercial and
scientific projects and experiments to lunar orbit, as well as conduct lunar
exploration and mapping.
During its voyage to the Moon, Trailblazer® will provide live
streaming video of the entire mission, pictures of earth from space, detailed maps
of the full Moon surface, photographs of Apollo landing sites including Apollo 11,
dramatic EarthRise; video and a mission ending live HDTV video broadcast of
the spacecraft as it "Barn-Storms" over the lunar terrain.

http://www.transorbital.net/

The paradigm shift approaches!
 
I don't really get why 'special authorization' is required. I understand that governing bodies will want to make sure the rocket is spaceworthy, or won't spin around and crash into a city or somethinhg but why else would/should they care who's going up? Does one have to get special authorization and jump through a bunch of beaurocratic hoops to go into space?

just curious.
 
Why I beleive Nasa is lying

Yesterday I sent Zolt Levay an email, briefly asking about his earlier statement that the hubble was unable to photograph the moon. Amazingly I received his response today 12-04-2003

In fact that statement I made a long time ago is not true (it was just an
honest mistake, with no intent to deceive or mislead). Although for various
technical and scientific reasons, there has been only one Hubble observation
of the moon (http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/1999/14/), which was quite
difficult to plan and execute and required great care to ensure no problems
with the telescope.

Zolt Levay

the Hubble was launched into space on April 24, 1990
his original e-mail was dated Mon, 4 Dec 1995 (see below)
I can't Beleive our Top Hubble people are this clueless when it comes to the abilities of the hubble after 5 years in space.
What are your thoughts?


E-mail from Zoltan Levay at STSCI :

X-POP3-Rcpt: mufor@mail
Return-Path: levay@stsci.edu
Date: Mon, 4 Dec 1995 10:51:14 -0500
From: levay@stsci.edu (Zoltan Levay)
To: mufor@keyworld.mt
Subject: Re: Hubble pictures
X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII


> ...has Hubble taken any photos of the moon?

No, the moon is too bright (even the dark side) to observer with HST.

> If you know of any FTP sites...

Try the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Lab:
seds.lpl.arizona.edu in /pub/images/planets/moon.

If you have World Wide Web access, these images and many more are available via
http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/ninepla...antes/luna.html

Zolt
 
Fluid, you contradict yourself. Do NASA have hi-res pictures of the moon captured from various previous probes? If so, can you explain why they need to use Hubble to get high res pictures of just one side, if they already have most of the lunar surface photographed? Why should they waste Hubble time getting data they already have?

Why they haven't released all this data is a different story. Cost, maybe, scanning the images. They'll get around to it I'm sure.

Quality of pictures vs terrestrial pictures. Well, the earth has been completely photographed by spy satellites, and if you want a picture from one, you have to pay for it, there's no free hi-res archive. Why should the Moon, therefore be open season? NASA has a limited budget, a failing Shuttle Fleet, and a comittment to the ISS it can't meet. It's got far more pressing matters than trying to satisfying a few conspiracy nutters with images they won't trust unless those images show buildings and structures.

Also, it's about ownership of data. In Europe, most Principle Investigators get only one years exclusivity to the data from their observations, after that, it becomes public domain, and anyone can access the information, and this data can be downloaded by anyone, and analysed by anyone. From US based PIs I've known, this isn't the case, and data is exclusively owned by the PI for ever, and if you know they have data from an observation that you want to analyse, you have to kiss ass and put people down as second author on your papers sometimes. So perhaps NASA just don't have to share?

Anyway, let's see the images of buildings, the high res ones, that people have supposedly seen. If they exist, you'd have thought someone would have leaked one. The fact we haven't seen any, just makes me think that this is another case of canals on Mars.
 
Dont see the contradiction?

I think my impatient attitude is justified when you take a look at the big picture.

I was 3 years old when the first moon probe was sent to the moon.

I was 10 years old when Neil went for his moon stroll.

I was 31 when hubble was sent into space. And now 44 years old and we still dont have high res pictures of the moon ?
They will get around to it eventually just doesn't cut the mustard or mayo whatever your preference.

Apollo 18 was already paid for and crew all ready trained. No technical problems arose when the plug was pulled on this final mission why ?

I am quite aware that Hi res Photo's from previous probes and apollo missions exist. Making excuses for why they aren't in the public light at this late date is absurd.

Many scientists have requested hubble to photo the moon because of the lack of hi res pictures available to them. It's these excuses that have stalled scientific examination of what is probably mankinds greatest discoveries.
 
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Re: Dont see the contradiction?

Originally posted by fluid1959

I am quite aware that Hi res Photo's from previous probes and apollo missions exist. Making excuses for why they aren't in the public light at this late date is absurd.
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Fluid, the difference between us, is that I have worked with scientists, archived satellite data, and met astronauts, and I know I was not privy to some conspiracy. You might think that NASA and every other space organistion are trying to prevent you from seeing this stuff, when in actual fact, it's YOU preventing yourself from getting your hands on the data.

Get a PhD, and go work for NASA. Satisfy your own curiousity, don't expect others to do it for you.
 
Re: Re: Dont see the contradiction?

Originally posted by phlogistician

Get a PhD, and go work for NASA. Satisfy your own curiousity, don't expect others to do it for you.
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I will try to be civil.

That is the most moronic , stupid thing I have heard you blurt out to date!

Exactly what are the qualifications to get hi res Photo's?

That I have a PhD and I work for NASA.

Please send whatever it is your smoking .. to me!

Your ridiculous
" I DONT WORK FOR NASA! NASA IS SUPPOSED TO WORK FOR ME !"

But you made an excellent point.

You and NASA share that same moronic beleif that NASA doesn't have to answer to the "here it comes" " THE PUBLIC"

Only NASA Geologists, Astrologists etc.

can have opinions on data?

Joe Public paid the Hundreds of Billions of dollars spent so far on our space program.


How many rocket scientest are needed to take a photograph ?
 
Fluid - the fact that you pay taxes never has made you privy to the results of what they fund. NASA is an organization that uses your tax money to do whatever they feel like, and they don't have to give you their information any more than the President has to give you a room in the White House...

You may think that this is WRONG - by all means, go ahead!

But it's not ILLEGAL, so there's not much you can do...

I would only say that, given the amount of information that they've released about the rest of space, it's strange that they would deprive the public of hi-res photos of the moon if they had them; they'd touch them up, or something, if they didn't want you to see the alien Lunar fungus farms. Most of the lunar pics are B+W from what I've seen, I could probably do a credible touch job myself with Photoshop and no one would know the difference.
 
The unaware

Many live in a fantasy world. Oblivious to what their neighbors are doing; let alone their government Officials or offices of goverment like NASA. The Space Act http://www.hq.nasa.gov/ogc/spaceact.html#POLICY

Sec. 102. (a) The Congress hereby declares that it is the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind.

not just phlogistician and a few Phd's @ NASA

There is a vast amount more Astromers Geologists Physicist etc that dont work at NASA than there are that do. Working for NASA doesn't make you smarter, or make your opinions more valid to the scientific end.
 
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