Moon-landing conspiracists focus heavily on NASA photos. They point to oddities in photos and films taken on the Moon. Photography experts (including those unrelated to NASA) have replied that the oddities are consistent with what should be expected from a real Moon landing, and are not consistent with tweaked or studio imagery. Some main arguments and counter-arguments are listed below.
1. In some photos, the
crosshairs appear to be behind objects. The cameras were fitted with a
Réseau plate (a clear glass plate with a
reticle etched on), making it impossible for any photographed object to appear "in front" of the grid. Conspiracists often use this evidence to suggest that objects were "pasted" over the photographs, and hence obscure the reticle.
- This effect only appears in copied and scanned photos, not any originals. It is caused by overexposure: the bright white areas of the emulsion "bleed" over the thin black crosshairs. The crosshairs are only about 0.004 inches thick (0.1 mm) and emulsion would only have to bleed about half that much to fully obscure it. Furthermore, there are many photos where the middle of the crosshair is "washed-out" but the rest is intact. In some photos of the American flag, parts of one crosshair appear on the red stripes, but parts of the same crosshair are faded or invisible on the white stripes. There would have been no reason to "paste" white stripes onto the flag.[84]
2. Crosshairs are sometimes rotated or in the wrong place.
- This is a result of popular photos being cropped and/or rotated for aesthetic impact.[84]
3. The quality of the photographs is implausibly high.
4. There are no
stars in any of the photos; the
Apollo 11 astronauts also stated in post-mission press conferences that they did not remember seeing any stars during
EVA.
[88] Conspiracists contend that
NASA chose not to put the stars into the
photos because
astronomers would have been able to use them to determine whether the photos were taken from the Earth or the
Moon, by means of identifying them and comparing their celestial position and
parallax to what would be expected for either observation site.
- The astronauts were talking about naked-eye sightings of stars during the lunar daytime. They regularly sighted stars through the spacecraft navigation optics while aligning their inertial reference platforms, the Apollo PGNCS.[89]
- Stars are rarely seen in Space Shuttle, Mir, Earth observation photos, or even photos taken at sporting events held at night. The light from the Sun in outer space in the Earth-Moon system is at least as bright as the sunlight that reaches the Earth's surface on a clear day at noon, so cameras used for imaging subjects illuminated by sunlight are set for a daylight exposure. The dim light of the stars simply does not provide enough exposure to record visible images. All manned landings happened during the lunar daytime. Thus, the stars were outshone by the sun and by sunlight reflected off the Moon's surface. The astronauts' eyes were adapted to the sunlit landscape around them so that they could not see the relatively faint stars.[90][91] The astronauts could see stars with the naked eye only when they were in the shadow of the Moon.[92][93]
- Camera settings can turn a well-lit background to black when the foreground object is brightly lit, forcing the camera to increase shutter speed so that the foreground light does not wash out the image. A demonstration of this effect is here.[94] The effect is similar to not being able to see stars from a brightly lit car park at night – the stars only become visible when the lights are turned off.
- A special far ultraviolet camera, the Far Ultraviolet Camera/Spectrograph, was taken to the lunar surface on Apollo 16 and operated in the shadow of the Apollo Lunar Module (LM). It took photos of Earth and of many stars, some of which are dim in visible light but bright in the ultraviolet. These observations were later matched with observations taken by orbiting ultraviolet telescopes. Furthermore, the positions of those stars with respect to Earth are correct for the time and location of the Apollo 16 photos.[95][96]
- Photos of the planet Venus (which is much brighter than any of the stars) were taken from the Moon's surface by astronaut Alan Shepard during the Apollo 14 mission.[98]
5. The angle and color of shadows are inconsistent. This suggests that artificial lights were used.
- Shadows on the Moon are complicated by reflected light, uneven ground, wide-angle lens distortion, and lunar dust. There are several light sources: the Sun, sunlight reflected from the Earth, sunlight reflected from the Moon's surface, and sunlight reflected from the astronauts and the Lunar Module. Light from these sources is scattered by lunar dust in many directions, including into shadows. Shadows falling into craters and hills may appear longer, shorter and distorted.[99] Furthermore, shadows display the properties of vanishing point perspective, leading them to converge to a point on the horizon.
- This theory was further debunked on the MythBusters episode "NASA Moon Landing".
6. There are identical backgrounds in photos which, according to their captions, were taken miles apart. This suggests that a painted background was used.
- Backgrounds were not identical, just similar. What appear as nearby hills in some photos are actually mountains many miles away. On Earth, objects that are further away will appear fainter and less detailed. On the Moon, there is no atmosphere or haze to obscure faraway objects, thus they appear clearer and nearer.[100] Furthermore, there are very few objects (such as trees) to help judge distance. One such case is debunked in "Who Mourns For Apollo?" by Mike Bara.[101]
7. The number of photos taken is implausibly high. Up to one photo per 50 seconds.
[102]
- Simplified gear with fixed settings allowed two photos a second. Many were taken immediately after each other as stereo pairs or panorama sequences. The calculation (one per 50 seconds) was based on a lone astronaut on the surface, and does not take into account that there were two astronauts sharing the workload and simultaneously taking photographs during an Extra-vehicular activity (EVA).
8. The photos contain artifacts like the two seemingly matching 'C's on a rock and on the ground. These may be labeled studio props.
- The "C"-shaped objects are most likely printing imperfections and do not appear in the original film from the camera. It has been suggested that the "C" is a coiled hair.[101][103]
9. A resident of
Perth, Western Australia, a woman named Una Ronald (a pseudonym created by the authors of the source
[104]), said that for two or three seconds she saw a
Coca-Cola bottle roll across the lower right quadrant of her television screen that was displaying the live broadcast of the Apollo 11 EVA. She also said that several letters appeared in
The West Australian discussing the Coca-Cola bottle incident within ten days of the lunar landing.
[105]
- No such newspaper reports or recordings have been found.[106] Ronald's claims have only been relayed by one source.[33] There are also flaws in the story, e.g. the statement that she had to stay up late to watch the Moon landing live is easily discounted by many witnesses in Australia who watched the landing in the middle of their daytime.[107][108]
10. The book
Moon Shot[109] contains an obviously fake composite photo of Alan Shepard hitting a golf ball on the Moon with another astronaut.
- It was used instead of the only existing real images, from the TV monitor, which the editors seemingly felt were too grainy for their book. The book publishers did not work for NASA.
11. There appear to be "hot spots" in some photos that look like a large spotlight was used in place of the sun.
- Pits on the Moon's surface focus and reflect light like the tiny glass spheres used in the coating of street signs, or dewdrops on wet grass. This creates a glow around the photographer's own shadow when it appears in a photograph (see Heiligenschein).
- If the astronaut is standing in sunlight while photographing into shade, light reflected off his white spacesuit yields a similar effect to a spotlight.[26]
- Some widely published Apollo photos were high-contrast copies. Scans of the original transparencies are generally much more evenly lit. An example is shown below:
12. Who filmed Neil Armstrong stepping onto the Moon?
- The Lunar Module did. While still on the Module's ladder steps, Armstrong deployed the Modularized Equipment Stowage Assembly from the side of the Lunar Module, unpacking, amongst other things, the TV camera. The TV camera was then powered on and a signal transmitted to the command module, which beamed the live signal back to Earth. This meant that upwards of 600 million people on Earth could watch the live feed with only a very slight delay. Similar technology was also used on subsequent Apollo missions.
Environment
1. The astronauts could not have survived the trip because of exposure to radiation from the
Van Allen radiation belt and galactic ambient radiation (see
radiation poisoning and
health threat from cosmic rays). Some conspiracists have suggested that
Starfish Prime (a
high-altitude nuclear test in 1962) was a failed attempt to disrupt the Van Allen belts.
- There are two main Van Allen belts – the inner belt and the outer belt – and a transient third belt.[110] The inner belt is the more dangerous one, containing energetic protons. The outer one has less-dangerous low-energy electrons (Beta particles).[111][112] The Apollo spacecraft passed through the inner belt in a matter of minutes and the outer belt in about 1 1⁄2 hours.[112] The astronauts were shielded from the ionizing radiation by the aluminum hulls of the spacecraft.[112][113] Furthermore, the orbital transfer trajectory from Earth to the Moon through the belts was chosen to lessen radiation exposure.[113] Even Dr. James Van Allen, the discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belts, rebutted the claims that radiation levels were too harmful for the Apollo missions.[114] Plait cited an average dose of less than 1 rem (10 mSv), which is equivalent to the ambient radiation received by living at sea level for three years.[115] The total radiation received on the trip was about the same as allowed for workers in the nuclear energy field for a year[112][116] and not much more than what Space Shuttle astronauts received.[111]
2. Film in the cameras would have been fogged by this radiation.
- The film was kept in metal containers that stopped radiation from fogging the film's emulsion.[117] Furthermore, film carried by unmanned lunar probes such as the Lunar Orbiter and Luna 3 (which used on-board film development processes) was not fogged.
3. The Moon's surface during the daytime is so hot that camera film would have melted.
- There is no atmosphere to efficiently bind lunar surface heat to devices (such as cameras) that are not in direct contact with it. In a vacuum, only radiation remains as a heat transfer mechanism. The physics of radiative heat transfer are thoroughly understood, and the proper use of passive optical coatings and paints was enough to control the temperature of the film within the cameras; Lunar Module temperatures were controlled with similar coatings that gave them a gold color. Also, while the Moon's surface does get very hot at lunar noon, every Apollo landing was made shortly after lunar sunrise at the landing site; the Moon's day is about 29 1⁄2 Earth days long, meaning that one Moon day (dawn to dusk) lasts nearly fifteen Earth days. During the longer stays, the astronauts did notice increased cooling loads on their spacesuits as the sun and surface temperature continued to rise, but the effect was easily countered by the passive and active cooling systems.[118] The film was not in direct sunlight, so it was not overheated.[119]
4. The Apollo 16 crew could not have survived a big
solar flare firing out when they were on their way to the Moon.
- No large solar flare occurred during the flight of Apollo 16. There were large solar flares in August 1972, after Apollo 16 returned to Earth and before the flight of Apollo 17.[120][121]
5. The
flag placed on the surface by the astronauts fluttered despite there being no wind on the Moon. This suggests that it was filmed on Earth and a breeze caused the flag to flutter. Sibrel said that it may have been caused by indoor fans used to cool the astronauts since their spacesuit cooling systems would have been too heavy on Earth.
- The flag was fastened to a Г-shaped rod (see Lunar Flag Assembly) so that it did not hang down. The flag only seemed to flutter when the astronauts were moving it into position. Without air drag, these movements caused the free corner of the flag to swing like a pendulum for some time. The flag was rippled because it had been folded during storage – the ripples could be mistaken for movement in a still photo. Videos show that when the astronauts let go of the flagpole it vibrates briefly but then remains still.[122][123][124]
- This theory was further debunked on the MythBusters episode "NASA Moon Landing".
6. Footprints in the
Moondust are unexpectedly well preserved, despite the lack of moisture.
- Moondust has not been weathered like Earth sand and has sharp edges. This allows the dust particles to stick together and hold their shape in the vacuum. The astronauts likened it to "talcum powder or wet sand".[101]
- This theory was further debunked on the MythBusters episode "NASA Moon Landing".
7. The alleged Moon landings used either a sound stage or were filmed outside in a remote desert with the astronauts either using harnesses or slow-motion photography to make it look like they were on the Moon.
- While the HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon", and a scene from the movie "Apollo 13" used the sound-stage and harness setup, it is clearly seen from those films that when dust rose it did not quickly settle; some dust briefly formed clouds. In the film footage from the Apollo missions, dust kicked up by the astronauts' boots and the wheels of the Lunar Roving Vehicles rose quite high due to the lower lunar gravity, and settled quickly to the ground in an uninterrupted parabolic arc since there was no air to suspend the dust. Even if there had been a sound stage for hoax Moon landings that had the air pumped out, the dust would have reached nowhere near the height and trajectory as in the Apollo film footage because of Earth's greater gravity.
- During the Apollo 15 mission, David Scott did an experiment by dropping a hammer and a falcon feather at the same time. Both fell at the same rate and hit the ground at the same time. This proved that he was in a vacuum.[125]
- If the landings were filmed outside in a desert, heat waves would be present on the surface in mission videos, but no such heat waves exist in the footage. If the landings were filmed in a sound stage, several anomalies would occur, including a lack of parallax, and an increase or decrease in the size of the backdrop if the camera moved (footage was filmed while the rover was in motion, and yet no evidence of any change in the size of the background is present).
