Did the Apollo 11 land on the Moon!
That’s one small step for man and a giant leap for mankind -Neil Armstrong.
Its been 50 years mankind first landed on the moon on the Apollo 11 and since then a lot of conspiracy theories surround the moon landing. Some of the theories and questions put forward by the community read :
- Why are no stars seen on the photos that were taken on the moon?
- What happened to the actual footage of the moon landing?
- What is the physical evidence that man landed on the moon?
- Why can’t we see the remains left by the astronauts on the moon?
- Why is the Flag seen waving in the videos and photos taken on the moon?
- Was the moon landing staged by Nasa?
Myth No 1:Why are no stars seen on the photos that were taken on the moon?
Nasa’s main objective was to shoot the moon. 2 things that define the camera setting are the aperture and shutter speed.
A location with a lot of light like the reflective lunar surface, you would need to use fast shutter speed and small aperture. Apollo astronauts had the cameras set to shoot the brighter thing, the moon at the cost of the darkness of the stars that surround it.
To capture the stars on a dark sky you would need to increase the shutter speed to up to 15 seconds so that the camera sensor can trap as much light as possible.
Myth No 2: What happened to the actual footage of the moon landing?
The bandwidth needed to transfer video from space was already being utilized to send vital ship data and the electronic data to earth. They couldn’t transmit the amount of data required for a normal TV video, so they cut back on the amount of data sent from the tv cameras.
The cameras attached to the lunar lander shot at 10 frames per second with 320 lines per frame. A normal video that is broadcasted as of today is 24–30 frames per second and has 625 lines per frame.
The best way to get this low-resolution video on TV was to point a standard camera at the receiving monitor and broadcast it. This way a lot of video quality was lost.
Whatever live feed was coming from the space was being written onto magnetic disks and stored at Goddard Space Flight Center. In the recent past when the budget was reduced for NASA and they ran out of magnetic tapes, they remembered that they were dozens of tapes lying around in the reserves and they used them and overwrote the tapes that had the actual moon landing photos and videos. This was reported by John Sarkissian who was head of a radio observatory which was used by Nasa.
Myth No 3: What is the physical evidence that man landed on the moon?
The conspiracy theorists talk to a group of geologists who are closely studying the samples that were brought back from the moon.
They say as there is no water on the moon, the samples brought by the astronauts should have no traces of water or salts. And when the geologists performed tests, they found that there was no water or salts found in those rocks.
The conspiracy community then raised the question that these rocks could be lunar meteorites that fell on Earth and not actual rocks from the moon.
The geologist countered saying that when any lunar meteorites fall through the atmosphere, due to the friction and the heat, it reacts and forms a layer what they call frost glass. As soon as they land, they come in contact with water. So, as a result, traces of water can also be found on the lunar meteorites.
Myth No 4: Why can’t we see the remains left by the astronauts on the moon?
The moon is 384,400 km away from us and the most powerful telescope on earth could not help in this regard. With the quality, they could capture the rover would be in less than one pixel.
We have to investigate this from the images of space that come from space. The LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) put an end to the conspiracy theory as they could see the lander and the rover on the moon. The satellite took images that even showed the path they travelled on the rover.
Myth No 5: Why is the Flag seen waving in the videos and photos taken on the moon?
A former astronaut explains the reason behind this conspiracy theory. He says the waving comes from the handling of the flag itself.
As they are setting up the pole and the flag, the motion is transferred to the flag. If there arose a similar situation on earth the flag wouldn’t wave much because of the atmospheric resistance called drag. On the moon, since there is no atmosphere to resist the motion of the flag it keeps fluttering. As we can notice after the astronauts finished setting the flag it remains where it is.
Myth No 6: Was the moon landing staged by Nasa?
In the snap where Buzz Aldrin is stepping on the moon, the sun is right behind him, and as an amateur photographer would know if your object is right in front of the source of light you don’t get much detail. But as we can see in the photo he is seen with a lot of detail as if there was a second source of light shining on Buzz Aldrin. So, was this all shot on earth using artificial lighting and a set?
A replica of the moon landing along with the exact lighting conditions was recreated by some experts and they proved that it was legitimate. There were 2 sources of light in the photo that was taken by Neil Armstrong. One for obvious reasons was the surface of the moon and another source of light was the suit of Neil Armstrong. The testing led to the conclusion that the suit worn by the astronauts was reflective and light bounced off it and illuminated Buzz Aldrin in the photo
So, One small step for man was indeed a huge leap for mankind.
Source: Discovery Plus.
