Japan Moon Mission KAGUYA (SELENE) not releasing HD images of far side of the moon

Heres an image from the main page with something in it.

The Apollo 17 landing site is toward the middle of the frame, but there is an object in the upper left. It looks to be a black shadow, or something??

wms.selene.jaxa.jp...

I was debating whether or not to bring this up... but the Japanese HD pics look to me... well... The pics look like CGI. There's just something I cant put my finger on about why, tho. Mebbe it doesn't look like a natural environment to me. I do a lot of 3d fiddling- and maybe it's the fact I have a 'trained eye' in seeing CGI now. Maybe I'm just crazy.

Anyone else think about this?

reply to post by jra


The images you found are all on the NEAR side of the moon, as you can see by the lunar map that accompanies each photo. The original poster was specifically trying to find photos of the far side of the moon.

Living in the outskirts of DC my whole life, its kind of common to meet people that work for the Govt. But, last year i was dating this girl who's father had a "Crypto" clearance, and worked for some agency, i forgot which.

Anyways, i was at her house one night and was explaining to her how i was into conspiracies and stuff like that, when she told me of her fathers position. I jokingly asked her if he knew about the Alien moon bases. She said i dont know, ill go ask him. She yelled for him and he came, and she asked him about alien moon bases.

Well i guess he was caught off guard by his daughter asking him this question, because his face turned bright red, and he laughed and quickly walked away as he asked, "whered you hear about those?"...

That pretty much confirmed it for me.

reply to post by JipStix


Star for you Jip Stix I feel we are being robbed as well. All this secrecy isn't healthy for humankind. Maybe people would get up off the couch and read a book about space travel or science rather than watch Starsky and Hutch or judge Judy on the Foxchannel

The Japanese have dishonored their country. The only way to redeem redemption is death.

, tim1989. Great creation.

It's a damn shame the Japanese government is (very apparently) crapping the same old NASA/secret government crap, especially since their parliament is the only one discussing 9/11 at all... We shall overcome. It's just a matter of when.

reply to post by wylekat


Agree with you. I mean look at this:

wms.selene.jaxa.jp...

You mean to tell me that we can not get better quality photos with modern tech? Maybe this has been down scaled for the web, but I can not believe that we have satellites that can read number plates, and we can not produce high quality pics of the moon?

Come on ..., all these governments are hiding the truth from us "little" people who "can't" handle the truth! Wish they would grow up and realise that they are the ones being the children here.

And isn't today the day that that guy (can't remember name) of the disclosure project I believe, said that if the US government doesn't disclose he will put pressure or start leaking info?? Yeah, let's see if that happens

reply to post by DohBama


Thanks for posting the link to far side images. Not many there only about 25 images, and none of the site of the cigar shaped object. Most of these far side images are around the poles.

They could put this whole theory to rest just by releasing the image of the object. I know they have it, why not release it. If its just a rock formation then show us.

Can someone show me on a map of the Moon where this Cigar shaped object is lying, plz!

I have allways thougt this Cigar shaped object was very interesting even the video of it on youtube.

Tsom87

Originally posted by wylekat
I was debating whether or not to bring this up... but the Japanese HD pics look to me... well... The pics look like CGI. There's just something I cant put my finger on about why, tho. Mebbe it doesn't look like a natural environment to me. I do a lot of 3d fiddling- and maybe it's the fact I have a 'trained eye' in seeing CGI now. Maybe I'm just crazy.

Anyone else think about this?

I was looking at some of the images and thinking the same thing. Some of them do look like CGI and not actual images of the moon surface.

I think the TC images are the ones that look CGI, the HDTV images look ok.

The Japanese were told, not asked, to keep the images of the far side from the public. Don't forget that the Japanese people do not run their own country. The USA is still in complete control of the Japanese mainland and all aspects of its society. The images that are released are of a very very poor quality compared to the other ones they have. Their using the "we don't want to panic the public" excuse to get the photos censored. Japanese scientist have been threatened with death if they reveal what they have seen.
The Clementine probe was flawless. There are no image glitches/missing data from the photos. The images were blurred out on purpose to hide the amazing structures that are up there. This photo brushing is a commom practice at NASA.
NASA is continuing to release photos from the Clementine mission but there is really nothing new there. So every year there is more and more photos so people won't be able to say they are not releasing all the photos. Well I'm calling bu!!$#!T on that one and I'm saying they are not releasing all the photos they took because there are many many close-ups of these structures that cannot be released because it would "Panic the Public". But don't take my word for it. Here are a few youtube videos from the disclosure project of people who are in the know and would be willing to testify before congress that airbrushing is a common practice at NASA.

www.youtube.com...
www.youtube.com...

It amazes me that some folks won't believe a single thing they hear or even see with their own eyes unless some talking head from FOX or CNN tells them it is so. That is how controlled some people are. They can see something with their own eyes but won't believe it unless they see it on T.V.
And erasurehead your absolutley right. The original mission of the Japanese probe was to map the entire surface of the moon and NOT just areas of interest.

Starred and flagged OP thanks for the post. All of the pictures that aren't being released is troubling. Why is that. they should release everything to the public. What is there to hide? hmmmmm it makes you wonder.

Originally posted by TSOM87
Can someone show me on a map of the Moon where this Cigar shaped object is lying, plz!

I have allways thougt this Cigar shaped object was very interesting even the video of it on youtube.

Tsom87

Far Side - 17.25 deg S and 117.62 deg E
I highlighted the general area in green.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0bb3bdd357f8.jpg[/atsimg]

Not to bring the subject off topic in any way, but I had read a press release from 2002 about the VLT (very large telescope) in the andes mountains in chile that was supposed to focus on the lunar landing site and prove once and for all we landed on te moon. I emailed ESO and got a reply back from Dr.Oliver Hainaut. this is the sum of the contact I had with them and the result:

Subject: Apollo Landing Stie
Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 15:23:43 -0500
From: Phil Shamrock
To:

To Whom it may Concern
In 2002 you announced that you were planning on focusing the VLT on the Apollo lunar landing sites, to prove once and for all that the Moon landing were not a hoax. Try as I might, I have yet to find the results of your findings on the internet. Please direct me to your research findings.

Phillip Brown


From: Olivier Hainaut
Sent: Friday, May 22, 2009 7:12 AM
To: Phil Shamrock
Cc: Britt Sjoeberg
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Apollo Landing Stie]


Dear Phillip,


The original claim was that with the VLTI (see below), we would be able to resolve details as small as the size of an astronaut on the Moon.

VLTI is the interferometer combining several telescopes of the VLT, which gives a resolution similar to that of a telescope whose diameter would be equal to the distance between the actual telescopes involved with the interferometer.

That claim is true, and VLTI routinely resolve details as small as that. See, for instance these results showing details on the surface of a star: www.eso.org...

The problem is that VLTI works only with "coherent sources" - in short, the light must come from very sharp objects (like a very distant star), and does not work with extended sources (like a patch of lunar soil). So, when we now refer to the Moon as an example for VLTI, we say "we would be able to distinguish the 2 headlights on a lunar rover" (as these are 2 sharp sources).

So, VLTI is not going to be able to prove the Apollo landings were not a hoax. In any case, for many people that do believe these were a hoax, it is more an act of faith than a scientific conclusion. Indeed, there are already so many direct and indirect evidences that one more would not change their mind. The fact that there are so many web pages making outrageously wrong claim does not help. For instance, if the whole Apollo campaign were a hoax, it would be very simple to fake the VLTI observations to show what it should show. Obviously, as I am an astronomer, and as I am a former NASA employee, I would also be part of the hoax, and a die hard hoax believer would not believe me anyway.

Regards,
Olivier Hainaut

Oliver,

The original claim was not that you would be able to resolve details as small as the size of an astronaut on the moon, I quote the Sunday Telegraph from the UK as my source of the story:

Now astronomers hope to kill off the conspiracy theory once and for all by using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) - by far the most powerful telescope in the world - to spot the Apollo lunar landers.

Operated by European astronomers in the Chilean Andes, the VLT consists of four mirrors 27ft across linked by optical fibres. It can see a single human hair at a distance of 10 miles.


Trained on the Moon, such astonishing resolution should enable it to see the base of one or more of the six lunar modules which Nasa insists landed on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. Any images of the modules would be the first not to have been taken from space by Nasa.

Dr Richard West, an astronomer at the VLT, confirmed that his team was aiming to achieve "a high-resolution image of one of the Apollo landing sites".

The first attempt to spot the spacecraft will be made using only one of the VLT's four telescope mirrors, which are fitted with special "adaptive optics" to cancel the distorting effect of the Earth's atmosphere. A trial run

The VLT team hopes to improve on this, with the aim of detecting clear evidence for the presence of the landers. The base of the lunar modules measured about 10ft across, but would cast a much longer shadow under ideal conditions.

Dr West said that the challenge pushed the optical abilities of one VLT mirror to its limits: if this attempt failed, the team planned to use the power of all four mirrors. "They would most probably be sufficiently sharp to show something at the sites," he said.

Dr West insisted, however, that the decision to examine the landing sites was not driven by the conspiracy theory. "We do not question the reality of the landings," he said. "It is more for instrument-testing purposes."



[edit on 29-5-2009 by eightonefive]

What if the aliens jumped ship once they learned that we were onto them during the Apollo missions? They could have cloaked their structures as well

Bah the text limit is killing me, anyway here is his final response:
Hello,


Phil Shamrock wrote:
Oliver,

The original claim was not that you would be able to resolve details as small as the size of an astronaut on the moon, I quote the Sunday Telegraph from the UK as my source of the story:

Now astronomers hope to kill off the conspiracy theory once and for all by using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) - by far the most powerful telescope in the world - to spot the Apollo lunar landers.

Operated by European astronomers in the Chilean Andes, the VLT consists of four mirrors 27ft across linked by optical fibres. It can see a single human hair at a distance of 10 miles.

(not optical fibres but mirror trains - it's a detail)
(and it could not see a hair, but details as small as a hair).



Trained on the Moon, such astonishing resolution should enable it to see the base of one or more of the six lunar modules which Nasa insists landed on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. Any images of the modules would be the first not to have been taken from space by Nasa.

Dr Richard West, an astronomer at the VLT, confirmed that his team was aiming to achieve "a high-resolution image of one of the Apollo landing sites".

When Richard West was at ESO (he is now retired), VLTI was a project, and was just starting to give results. I suspect he did not fully realize the problem of the coherent flux.

(Actually, "his team" did not include interferrometrists - he was the head of the public relation department.)


The first attempt to spot the spacecraft will be made using only one of the VLT's four telescope mirrors, which are fitted with special "adaptive optics" to cancel the distorting effect of the Earth's atmosphere. A trial run of the equipment this summer produced the sharpest image of the Moon taken from the Earth, showing details 400ft across from a distance of 238,000 miles.

Well, that image was acquired.



The VLT team hopes to improve on this, with the aim of detecting clear evidence for the presence of the landers. The base of the lunar modules measured about 10ft across, but would cast a much longer shadow under ideal conditions.

Dr West said that the challenge pushed the optical abilities of one VLT mirror to its limits: if this attempt failed, the team planned to use the power of all four mirrors. "They would most probably be sufficiently sharp to show something at the sites," he said.

Dr West insisted, however, that the decision to examine the landing sites was not driven by the conspiracy theory. "We do not question the reality of the landings," he said. "It is more for instrument-testing purposes."

As you can see, a Dr. Richard West was quoted as saying his team was going for a high resolution image of the Apollo landing sites. A bold claim in 2002, and it would have once and for all quieted the conspiracy theorists. I am curious as to why such a bold claim was made, and never followed through on? Perhaps it was, and no landers were seen? My curiosity piques when such a sensational story is released to the public and then nothing further is reported on it. I was only recently reminded of the original claim when watching a special on the VLT broadcast on the Science Channel, and I remembered the press release above.

I have worked with Richard for some times (he was my thesis supervisor almost 20yrs ago) - the least I can say is that he was a very very careful gentleman, and that he very seldom issue anything like a bold statement. I can of course not claim he did not actually say that, but I have a suspicion that the journalists might have ... extrapolated a little what he said. This particular journalist does not strike me as very accurate (cf the notes in the above texts about the factual errors).

In any case, I am really sorry, but the observations would not work, if they were ever attempted. It is one of the most frustrating issue with interferometry: it works well only for small things on a dark background. Anything extended adds noise, but no details can be seen on it.


Regardless, I'm sure you have better things to do than to entertain my curiosity, so this will be the last time you hear from me. I would like to know what, if any information was gleaned when the VLT was trained on the landing site? If you could perhaps put me in touch with Dr. Richard West, or answer my question, I will abstain from further correspondence with you.


Well, the observations were not taken. By the way, all the data taken by the VLTI (and by the VLT) are available on our site archive.eso.org.

Try: ESO data > Raw data > OB ID: %MOON% and interferometry: all > query = returns nothing. While: OB ID: $Achernar% (a famous star) returns hundred of files.

So, if some VLTI data of the moon had been taken, they would be there. Of course, you will say, we could have removed them or hidden them? Right. We could have.

No problem, you can write to me. I cannot promise I'll always find/take the time to reply, though.

That said, there is an intriguing point in the article: the mention of the shadows. In theory, one could work with a dark spot in the middle of a bright area. With our current technology, we cannot (yet?), but it might be a possibility in some times. We are not there yet... That single comment, however, gives a touch of credibility to the article. Next time I see Richard, I'll ask him if he remembers this story.

I hope we will eventually come with the evidence that astronauts were on the moon, but I suspect that there will always be people to question it, even if one would send them up there...

cheers,
olivier

Well to go back on topic. Why is it that the KAGUYA or for that matter the Clementine probe take photos of the lunar landing sights? It would have been a very simple thing to do. Why not even a FAKE photo? I'm talking about people who are experts at fake photos and out right lies. Very interesting indeed.

Originally posted by ExPostFacto
reply to post by Erasurehead

 

Doesn't it appear that this cigar object has a strip of paint around the nose area, or is it just me?

Maybe its Cuban lol.