Background Check

This is one of many pictures that show signs of composition. The upper part is quite different from the lower.

We Never Went to the Moon, 2002, p. 20. p.

Here's an illusion so ridiculous that not even David Percy uses it. Bill Kaysing uses it, and so does apollohoax.com. It's the well-known picture of Charles Duke standing beside the Lunar Rover near Stone Mountain with the ground sloping abruptly down to the distant horizon. The steepness of this slope causes a sudden "break" in the ground that is quite distinct and, to some Apollo deniers (but by no means all), highly suspicious.

Charles Duke beside Rover near Stone Mountain. (as16-107-17446; Annotated version from apollohoax.com)

In the words of apollohoax.com,

A) Look at how the background suddenly changes. The surface is all rough and filled with rocks, and then in a straight line it just becomes all smooth and no rocks appear anymore. I think that they took the picture and then superimposed another picture with a smoother background.

Bill Kaysing has his own theory that is somewhat different and equally inane:

Could the background be nothing more than a large photograph and the foreground nothing more than gravel and dirt spread on the floor of a large sound studio? (We Never, pp. 40-41)

Sure it could be, and so could this picture: Demonstration of abrupt background change (Author, 27/11/02)

Look at how the background of this grassy knoll suddenly changes. The surface is all rough and filled with leaves and pine cones, and then in a straight line it just becomes all smooth and no cones appear anymore. Does anyone think I took the picture and then superimposed another picture with a smoother background? Or is the foreground nothing more than grass and clover grown on the floor of a large sound studio?

Anybody who has ever spent time around hills would recognize this effect for the simple and obvious illusion that it is: a distant background photographed from a high place. Yet some deniers still fall for it, a classic case of failing to see the mountain for the rocks.

* Update 2005 *

It seems the author of apollohoax.com has moved on to better things. Last time I checked, the domain is available to anyone who has the $$$. So no one is promoting that silly "different background" illusion, right? Read on.

* Update 2004 *

Some time after I'd posted the above, I took another look at an illusion presented on page 41 of Dark Moon. In addition to some nonsense about this picture being imaged from above eye level (refuted over here) and "Filled-in area" (refuted over here), there is some extra nonsense about a "Fall-off area."
Fall-off in this case refers to the effect you get when you illuminate an object with an artificial light. The darker area beyond the light's range is the fall-off, and so Percy implies that this Lunar Module must have been lit up on stage, and with a cheap light at that.
It's nothing of the kind. If you take a closer look at that "fall-off area," you will see that it's really the edge of a hill, and the darker patch is simply distant terrain with shadowed craters.

And here I was trying to give the benefit of the doubt to that fall guy. He knows better, I thought, he's not so dumb. Well, I guess I can't be right all the time.