India Far side of the Moon photos - oddities

When looking at pictures from the moon it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between craters and domes due to the direction of the light...

TIP:
Download the actual image, and rotate it in steps of 90 degrees until you see it correctly.

This little trick helps the brain to see the moon landscape as it is

reply to post by warrenb


what I don't get is, why is there always "few" photos release of the dark side of the moon... where the hell is the rest of the "thousands" of photos that are taken?! and why take so long to release them to public (air brushing)?

Originally posted by EnlightenUp
That isn't a hill, its a crater. The proof? Look at smaller object that cast shadows. The light source (sun) is approximately from the south-south-west.

well-spotted.

'course, now everyone will say that that's water at the bottom....

reply to post by freighttrain

...why is there always "few" photos release of the dark side of the moon... where the hell is the rest of the "thousands" of photos that are taken?!

Actually, freighttrain, there are. AND, once and for all....There is no "dark side" of the Moon!!! I am tired of this misconception!!

There is a 'Dark Side' of the Earth....happens once every 24 hours. The Moon also experiences a series of dark/light....except, for someone who might live on the Moon, a "day" would last about 13~14 Earth days...same with the 'night'. Depends on the latitude, just as it does on the Earth.

Here...if you don't trust NASA, here are old pics from the old USSR:

www.mentallandscape.com...



[edit on 6/18/0909 by weedwhacker]

reply to post by freighttrain
There is a hidden side though,maybe people just like to think of hidden things, as dark things.
I agree with Weedwhacker that the Moonclip 1 pic is a Crater within a Crater.


[edit on 18-6-2009 by smurfy]

Being a civil engineer and a topographer, I find this picture very intresting. After an hour discussion with my colleagues we decided its a crater. Do any of you guys out there know if somebody has a contour map of the surface of the moon? I would not be surprised if nasa has never released one before.

This photograph is very odd. Why are some shadows pointing one way and some pointing the other? Some shadows show that the sun is at the top right whilst the other suggest its at the bottom left.

GREAT THREAD WarrenB!

Look closer.... Zoom in the yellow boxes............?....?...?...!!!
www.isro.org...




[edit on 18-6-2009 by Taymour]

[edit on 18-6-2009 by Taymour]

reply to post by star in a jar


Couldn't agree more...these pictures MUST be deliberately poor quality, because (and i hate to say it) the photos from the Luna Orbiter and Apollo series from the 1960's are better quality than these , and thats saying something!

Who spends 100's of millions, send a craft (their countrys' first too) the hundreds of thousands of miles and all of the complexity that entails, with a camera that takes worse quality snaps than craft from the 60's?!
I bet, from that altitude, you'd get comparable results from a high street digicam, if you could get it there.

They must be holding back the good stuff, or if not, i say what an absolute waste of money.

Judging by the light, they are pictures of craters.

reply to post by scubagravy


When you look at this picture it's a crater with a shadow that seems completely normal but, then there is another crater impact within the shadowed part that is completely illuminated within the shadow of the larger crater! It doesn't seem logical to me and this picture is probably completely fake. A moon model and a little misplaced paint splatter

HERE THE PHOTO LINK
www.isro.org...

and the REALLY big question is.....


WHERE OH WHERE IS THE AMERICAN FLAG?? !! but, i'm sure they'll be posting that really soon~~NOT......


but, meh.. time will tell....

When you zoom in on the 10th image down Finer details of a lunar crater captured by TMC. It looks like the illuminated dome has a human like petrogliph that has been tamperd with on the upper right side of the dome.

reply to post by sean
In Moonclip1 the small Crater right hand face is picking up the light from the Southwest,which is at a very low down angle and the very dark shadow is cast by the lower left lip of the Crater.



[edit on 18-6-2009 by smurfy]

Originally posted by Taymour
HERE THE PHOTO LINK
www.isro.org...

That's great.

Thanks Taymour.

reply to post by sean


Spot on.

Either this is a copy and paste of a crater from another photo, onto something we're not meant to see to cover it, or the small crater at the bottom of the large one, must be self illuminating!

How can a crater, at the bottom of a large crater, tucked right down the bottom left of it too, where the whole area is in dark shadow, yet be lit up brighter than virtually anything else?

It cannot be catching the sun, it's lower than the bottom left crest of the large crater. It's this bottom left crest, that's casting it's shadow on the large crater!

Looks like an uncircumcized penis with a NASA overlay of some planet photo. Ha Ha

Originally posted by weedwhacker
reply to post by General_Salazar

 

In the middle of the small crater is a strange shape that is symmetrical and partially covers the floor of the crater.

It's known as a "shadow". It is the shadowing of the small crater's rim, and the uneven surface of the crater's floor.

At the risk of repeating myself, the photos were taken whilst the Sun was at a low, or oblique, angle. This accentuates the shadows.

Compare to GoogleEarth photos....they are usually taken (or posted) when the Sun is nearly vertical, to minimize shadows. When GoogleEarth shows a car, in an image, we already know how large a car is supposed to be. A boulder on the Moon??? No frame of reference. We have to then understand the pixel resolution of the photo, etc......in order to guess at size. The shadows help, in those calculations.

As a former professional photographer, I am well aware of the effects brought about by low angle sunlight

At the the risk of repeating myself ( ), the anomaly that sits above the basin of the small crater is symmetrical and does not show the high contrast lighting you would expect from being illuminated at such a sharp angle.

When zoomed, it looks like the original crater basin can be seen underneath the anomaly and it also seems to cover the shadow on the side of the crater. But it is difficult to say for sure what is going on without a view from another angle, rather than the current top-down view.

If it is actually the basin itself, then it is strange, as it is a symmetrical trapezoid rather than the circular or eliptical shape one would expect from a high velocity impact and in terms of lighting it is still not consistant with the rest of the crater it sits in.

Due to it's odd lighting I am open to the possibility that it could simply be a graphical artefact resulting from being compressed as a jpeg from an already low quality original, but it just looks "wrong".

Originally posted by sean
reply to post by scubagravy

 

When you look at this picture it's a crater with a shadow that seems completely normal but, then there is another crater impact within the shadowed part that is completely illuminated within the shadow of the larger crater! It doesn't seem logical to me and this picture is probably completely fake. A moon model and a little misplaced paint splatter

you are absolutely right. The lighting within this whole scene seems completely wrong, thats why it looks so perculiar. This is a great find.