Check It Out First

By

Steve Troy

A few weeks ago, Mike Bara, curator and keeper of the Lunar Anomalies website, (www.lunaranomalies.com) received an e-mail from an investigator, (to remain anonymous) who was interested in finding out about several supposed retouched Apollo 11 surface photographs. He found them posted on a NASA website and had attached several gif files of frames from this site to share. Mike forwarded his e-mail to me to look at.

The website frames in question (AS11-40 5863, 5875, and 5949) were taken of the lunar surface. There was also one orbital frame, (AS11-44-6642). The posted versions all had something suspicious in common. Along the borders of the subjects within the photographs (such as the astronauts, the terrain, and the lunar module), it looked like there had been retouching done to block out the lunar sky. The investigator had adjusted the brightness and contrast on the photos so that this could be seen. It seemed that NASA was really waving the red flag at us this time. After all, since the beginning of our investigation we have found many ‘discrepancies’ that include the retouching and alteration of lunar photography. We know, for example, that Ken Johnston, who worked at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston during Apollo, witnessed the photo retouching and airbrushing of first generation lunar Hasselblad photography as well as alteration of 16mm DAC film in order to cover up anomalous data.

To start, I wanted to test the posted images myself. I downloaded the frames, and adjusted the brightness (gamma) and a bit of contrast on them to see if I got the same results as our investigator. I did. They had been retouched. For the sake of image space, only one is shown below:

The gentleman who sent us these images was unsure whether the negatives for these frames would show much of anything at the time he sent them. He surmised that what we were seeing in the pictures wouldn’t show up on real film prints made from the negatives, which he never ordered. However we wanted to see if original data had been altered, so I ordered two of the negatives, AS11-5863 and 5875 from LPI, Houston. I also ordered them from NSSDC in Greenbelt, MD. I wanted to check out the analog results from both archives. All of the developed prints showed no visible evidence of retouching whatsoever.

Even if our investigator had ordered the negatives and had discovered what I had found, it still wouldn’t have answered the question of why NASA had posted them. I e-mailed NSSDC and attached some of the work I’d done on the gamma adjustments on the web images. I respectfully asked them why the sky had been blocked out and why retouched images had been posted on their site.

For researchers who are involved with lunar anomalies, know that for the most part that the NASA archivists will try to track down answers for most all interested investigators. Mike and I both agree that with very few exceptions, in all the years of accessing negatives, we have gotten the data and answers to most questions (except of course, acknowledgement of the anomalies themselves). Although I have had to really dig for some of it, the archivists have been cooperative in providing the data to me. Even some at NASA ‘at the top’ have answered a lot of crucial questions, like the questions asked during the search to get to the bottom of the “C-rock” hoax issue.

A couple days later, I got an answer. The archivist told me that he’d sent my question to the person responsible for putting them on the NASA website and that I would need to talk to him. His e-mail was provided. So I wrote to him. His answer:

“The working copy we used had many scratches which were particularly visible in the black background, so one of our guys covered it over. We’re looking into scanning better copies of these images so we don’t have the scratches and can keep the original black background.”

Well this seemed logical and understandable. Or did it? Both Mike and I wondered about the term “scratches”. ‘Working copies’ are handled a lot, and indeed scratches can and do occur. However from experience and close examination we know that often these ‘scratches’ haven’t been scratches at all, but rather signatures of glass structure which we’ve found in abundance on many prints from negatives. There is a difference between a scratch and a glass spire:

We requested a print of the ‘working-cut frame’ complete with the scratches. The NSSDC representative sent us a jpeg scan of AS11- 5863 and adjusted the gamma. I didn’t see any tape mask lines. However, to the left of the LM thruster and porch there looked to be real ‘glass structure.’ Richard remarked that it looked like other glass remnants seen on Ken Johnston Sr.’s unaltered Apollo 14 prints.

NSSDC’s comment: …” I don't see many scratches but this must be the one we used. Maybe they masked all of the images because some had scratches, but this one doesn't look like it needed anything. In fact I'm going to replace the one we have up with this one.”

No, I couldn’t figure out why they’d masked this particular image either. He sounded a bit unsure as to what version he’d sent. The whole thing just didn’t seem right. How, as Richard Hoagland said, could anyone even see into the blacks unless someone there was worried that that’s where someone would be looking: at the sky areas?

I then asked NSSDC for a tiff image of frame 5873. It came as a rather large file. On it, the glass was still there although it was fainter. It looked like the few real scratches were in different places and at right angles to the ones seen in the jpeg image. It almost seemed that they’d made up a special print to scan for me, where the blacks were suppressed on the tiff. Maybe they’d caught on to my reason for pursuing this as I was. Nevertheless, the glass was still visible, and the geometry signature could be seen.

There is more to this story that will be discussed in a later piece. To mention the nature of it now might compromise the research going into it.

This whole situation reminded me of a similar issue encountered in the past. Early on in my research after discovering ‘Malibu’, a gigantic rectangular mountain structure found on an Apollo 11 photograph taken over Mare Crisium (AS11-42-6223), there was, as there always is with anomalies, the search for corroborative data. I recall asking NASA for assistance.

This was during days before I had sets of the photo-footprint maps from the Apollo missions and was doing a lot of tedious index and latitude-longitude-work. I called Houston to ask them to help me locate a high-resolution panoramic negative of this mountain region (not mentioning what I’d found on the AS11 frame). In an effort to hasten the search, I gave them some Lunar Orbiter IV information that showed a vertical view of the area that sat just east of the brightest crater along the northern Crisium shore. Within a short time they tracked down Apollo 17 Panoramic frame 2249. I ordered the section of that negative that showed a high-resolution view of the same ‘Malibu’-mountain region. After I got it, I was surprised to see that it didn’t show a trace of the structure!

Looking again at the AS11-6223 frame of ‘Malibu’, one can see the obvious shadowed relief and undeniable inner and outer repetitive, geometric buttressing built into the slope. This immense structure covers the whole south side of the mountain, conspicuously absent on the same side that is exposed in the AS17 frame!

In the following days I found, ordered, and developed other corroborative Apollo mission photography that showed the ‘Malibu’ anomaly from different phase and sun angles, although it wasn’t as pronounced as in the Hasselblad AS11-6223 frame. (AS16-121-19432, AS17-M (mapping)-0293, AS14-71-9874, and AS15-M-1502.) By the time I had the data on the different views of ‘Malibu’, I really had nothing to lose by asking some NASA folks about the conspicuous absence of it in the AS17 frame. If the physical configuration this huge structure was so plainly visible from so far away in so many other Apollo frames, why didn’t the AS17-2249 panoramic frame show it?? By the very nature of the high- resolution Panoramic camera film flown on Apollo’s 15-17, which is markedly more resolved than the Hasselblad film, it certainly should have. I was surprised to see nothing there.

When I presented this to people at Houston, I remember a marked hesitation on the phone line with whomever I talked to about it. I wanted to know the reasons for the obvious differences between frames. They thought the discrepancy was unusual but couldn’t explain it. I never really got a definitive answer to the discrepancy between the frames from anyone. ‘Malibu’ is there. Of course there was no acknowledgement of the obvious by them at all.

A lesson to be learned from all of this is to check it out first, whether questions are answered or not. The lunar hoax crowd has yet to do this. Our investigator who found the anomalous AS11 surface frames (who isn’t in the hoax crowd) could have done it. If one suspects an anomaly and feels strongly enough to get an answer about it, get the negative, and make prints. Document everything. Many go to the web for images or do it digitally. Due to the nature of the existing lunar data, I personally have always preferred to get the raw data: the negatives, the original data to work from. It is more expensive, but much more thorough and accurate.

Not all NASA employees are involved in the lack of disclosure problem that has been going on for 40 years. They’re there to give you help with questions regarding the data. Just remember…… they’re not in the business of telling people about what is really on the Moon.