Made in the Shade

As we might expect, there is a slight flaw in Percy's logic.

The flaw is that the Apollo astronauts were not photographed in a total vacuum. They had the entire moon under their feet. And the moon reflects light. (If you don't believe me, go outside and look at it.)

Of course Percy knows this, because he was told so (Dark Moon, p. 63). However, he smoothly discounts this fact by later saying, with just a touch of smugness:

Interestingly, most people are generally under the impression that the Moon's reflectivity is as high as 60% to 70%, when it is actually nearer to 10% of 70%, namely an average of only 7% or so--the reflectivity of asphalt. (Dark Moon, p. 66)

But for the sake of argument, I tried my lighting experiments on a surface of black asphalt.

For this experiment I went to my local auto supply store and bought a new toy: a handheld floodlight. 1,000,000 candlepower. With this bad boy I cold light up the Dark Ages, grill steaks on the lens, and refute some more of the deniers' inane claims, ar ar! I took it to a tennis court late at night and hung it from the fence so it was pointing down at some common household objects. The idea was to simulate the sun on the moon. I would shine the floodlight on the backs of these objects and see whether I could see their fronts. Want to try this experiment yourself but can't afford your own spotlight? You can make do with your car headlights on some dark road or parking lot. Just make sure to block off all but one of the lights so you have only one sun.

I started off by examining some of David Percy's "high contrast" light. I wanted to see how an object might look in space when it's "very bright on the Sun side, very dark on the shadow side."

This is how a soup can looks when held in the air and photographed at night with a bright light shining on its side. Half the can is lit up, while the other half (along with half of my hand) is black shadow. There's also a bright vertical band of light before the Campbell's name, a brighter spot on the metal rim above it, and another over my thumbnail. These are the infamous hot spots, local reflections of light which, according to Dave Percy, cannot be seen in shadow and are supposed to be a dead giveaway of NASA fakery. You can also click on the picture (or here) for a picture of the can with the light behind it. I warn you though, it's not very interesting, but it's an example of how Percy and friends (wrongly) think a backlit astronaut should appear on the moon. In case you're wondering, those lights in the background are from a nearby warehouse. Curiously, even though I took these pictures on a clear and moonless night, not one of these pictures showed any stars. Now isn't that strange. But now let's see how that can looks when placed on the pavement and shot it into the sun

What's more, the can's visibility cannot be excused by the earth's atmosphere scattering the light. My earlier black and boring picture was of the same can, on earth and with air around it. The only difference was that I held it off the ground. And not even a modest bit of atmospheric scattering could show it.

It was also claimed that it would be impossible to see Buzz Aldrin descending from the LM because he was "in total shadow." For this experiment, I placed a reflective coin a few inches before the can, but still lying well within its shadow. The result is seen below left.

Here's another "impossible" picture: a demonstration of how the porch and doorway of the LM could be seen during Aldrin's egress. Since the sun was behind the LM, then, according to David Percy, the entire doorway should have been "in total shadow" and totally black--as should be the inside of this empty tin can:

Page 75 of Dark Moon features an annotated version of this photograph of the Apollo 16 Astronomy Camera as another example of a picture that is supposedly impossible to take without extra light. "This piece of equipment was placed in total shadow--so it should be absolutely black." The authors claim that there was "a secondary source of illumination" and conclude that this picture is "yet another example of an image laden with inconsistencies." Naturally Percy offers no evidence whatsoever for this "secondary source of illumination"--aside from a haughty claim and his supposed expertise in photography. To test his claim and that expertise I went and... took another picture. This time I placed another coin well within the shadow of the Campbell's can and shot if from the side, with the results immediately below:

Some time after I posted the above image, a correspondent suggested this experiment was flawed because I used a low intensity-light (!) and therefore had to open the camera's aperture and reduce its shutter speed to catch the reflection. As a matter of fact, this picture was shot at f2 and 1/10 sec. But this correspondent's claim is still flawed because the coin was receiving reflected light, so its brightness was proportionate to the amount of primary light hitting the ground. Reducing the shutter would darken the entire picture--coin, ground and all--while increasing the light would also increase the light hitting the coin. So the camera setting would make no difference. (It would make a difference with objects that had their own light source, such as stars, but that's material for another argument.)

However, I'm no good at debating technical matters so I redid the experiment. This time I bought a newer and more expensive toy--a 420EX Speedlight flash--that allowed me to stop down the camera to f8 and 1/250 sec. (And I still didn't get any stars!)

Notice how the tea box's shadow (above) is totally black. Notice that its backside is quite visible in the "total shadow" and that the battery in the depths of that shadow is anything but totally black. Notice the bright hot strip running down its side. Notice how it's a lot wider and brighter than that cheezy "lightspot" on Buzz Aldrin's bootheel (right) upon which the Apollo deniers had pinned such high hopes. I suppose that "hot strip" is the result from reflected light bouncing in all directions off the battery's (and bootheel's) circumference. But one segment of that circumference is facing the camera, and so the camera gets extra light from that small area. When I moved the camera around the battery, the hot strip always faced the camera--and so did that "lightspot" on Buzz Aldrin's bootheel as he climbed down the ladder. At least that's my theory. But I'm no good at theory. Instead, I like to go out and take pictures. It's fun to take pictures. I wish more people would do it.