Photographed on the Sea of Tranquillity?
The following is a a shortened version of a study from Andreas Märki, M.Sc. The full article can be found
here.
On the relatively flat Mare Tranquillitatis the lunar horizon should be more than two kilometres away from an astronaut’s Hasselblad camera, but in the case of the Apollo 11 photographic record there is insufficient visible lunar surface.
In all the Apollo 11 photographs the missing lunar surface background in general, and the far too low horizon in particular, strongly indicate that these photos were taken in a studio environment. This is also demonstrated to be the case for the so-called ‘live’ TV broadcasts.
At the Apollo 11 landing site (unlike other Apollo missions 12 and 14-17) there were no visible mountains or hills. Everything is relatively flat and level.
....the height of the Hasselblad still camera was approximately 1.35 metres (4.43 ft) above the lunar surface.
In this photo Aldrin’s chest is in line with the horizon. And from a camera height of 1.35 m (4.43 ft) the surface area appears to be virtually level as far as the horizon.
In this instance the visible distance to the horizon in the photo with the flag (AS11-40-5875) should therefore be 2.2 kms.
The range of visibility over a flat and horizontal area can be calculated easily for a camera height of 1.35 metres:
On the Moon it extends as far as 2.2 kilometres
and for comparison,
On Earth it extends to 4.1 kilometres
AS11-40-5928 seems to fit best for detailed analysis: Aldrin is upright and therefore the photograph can be considered to be well levelled. Nevertheless, the distance from the camera to the horizon is extremely short and can be estimated as being in the order of only 38 metres, as indicated below:
The length of the shadow of the LM is calculated taking the height of the LM to be 7 m, and the sun incident angle of 14° at the beginning of the extravehicular activity (EVA). In the initial photograph with the solar wind collector, (fig 1) the incident angle is somewhat steeper; but the estimation will remain on the conservative side.
The distance from the camera to the astronaut can be calculated with the angle between the cross hairs (10.3°) and the height of Aldrin (1.8 m).
In this image, there is foreground, mid ground – the LM and shadow – but no distant background surface area whatsoever.
On the left half of this photo one looks down to the horizon and also "
down to space". The estimated sight angle to the end tip of the shadow is 1.35m/38m or 2.0°; this conservative estimate is in line with the 2.5° as measured in the photo. Even if one added a margin of 45 cm to the height to cover possible bumps in the terrain and 7 m to the length, the angle to the end of the shadow would still be 0.9m/45m or 1:50 or 1.1°. And at the left border the angle would be somewhat greater still.
Even a 1:50 downward viewing angle on the Moon would mean that the landing area was actually a plateau towering at least 350 metres above the level of the Sea of Tranquillity – without any hills extending above the line of sight for the next 35 kms. This is illustrated in the following figure:
For a 4° downward viewing angle the height of the plateau would be 4,200 m and the distance (without any other high mountains) extending to 120 kms.
However, taking AS11-40-5928 alone is not a proof for a studio scene; the inclination of the surface area towards the horizon can only be estimated together with the other photos. Therefore the so-called 'live' (at the time) TV is now taken into consideration. The following figure shows a single frame of this coverage together with the re-creation; the approximate camera height is shown as a blue dashed line.
Here the "looking
down to space" effect is so obvious that this can be considered as mathematical proof that this TV sequence was recorded in a studio. Even if the camera had been slightly tilted or its height lower – the lowest option would be around the chest of Aldrin – the "looking
down to space" effect would still be huge.
In this sequence the effect is 13°, this corresponds to a plateau at an altitude of
over 45 kms and no mountains in the vicinity of 400 kms. Even if one applies a margin, the effect would be at least 1:10, or 5.7°.
Conclusion
In a real environment this limited visibility would only be possible from a 8,600 metre-high platform – with no visible mountains in the neighbourhood for 170 kms. All this fits with neither to the Moon in general nor to the Sea of Tranquillity in particular.
But it does correspond perfectly with these images having being created in a studio environment where one can only see a limited surface area – the equivalent of the illuminated foreground in the re-creations.
Therefore this study concludes that these Apollo 11 still photographic images and the ‘live’ TV coverage must have been taken in a studio on Earth.
Andreas Märki,
Andreas Märki was born in 1955 and graduated as Master of Science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
He is employed as a technical expert in the space industry.
It was as recent as 2008 that he began to notice inconsistencies in the Apollo record and realised that virtually no public person was willing to address this matter.
Andreas therefore commenced his investigation into Apollo 11 history and found disinformation to be more prevalent than is generally realised. He has published the results of his findings – mainly on the Web.