The Dish

One of my favourite movies, The Dish, by working dog productions, screened on Friday night.

When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969, one of the main telescopes used was at Parkes in NSW, Australia. Set in the middle of a sheep paddock, the dish played an intergral part in allowing people around the world to witness the Apollo 11 astronauts on the moon.

Or did they? A quick google search for "moon walk hoax" shows that there are many deluded conspiracy theorists who believe the whole thing was a fake. The pictures we saw were not from the moon, but from a movie studio.

I have had one person try and convince me that the photos were all fake. They claim that the shadows are wrong, the background is the same in all shots, the flag moved in the "wind" and other facts that "prove" the moon walk never happened.

Ian Goddard shows on his web-site how the so-called anomolies can be recreated. The moon has no atmosphere, so the sunlight is much stronger, as is the reflection of the sunlight from the moon's surface.

Why do some objects, in shadow appear to be lit from another source? Because the light reflects back off the moon surface. Why do cross-hairs vanish on some photos? Because these are white objects and the strong reflection causes "wash out" that can even be shown on the Earth with much duller light. Why do shadown appear to travel in different directions? Because shadows look different when they are on uneven or sloping surfaces.

Take a look at some of the photos and their explanation and then do your own experiments. Can you make shadows look like they are from different directions? I have tried this. It works!

Another good explanation of other factors providing evidence that we did walk on the moon can be found on the moon hoax site. This is a much more detailed site that covers things such as why we don't just get a telescope to show the lunar lander on the moon, explains how the moon dust shows that there was no atmosphere and many other logical, scientific explanations for things that conspiracy theorists claim are proof that the moon landing was a hoax.

The problem is that even if we could show the LEM sitting on the moon, the copnsiracy theorists would then claim that those pictures are fake as well. If we were able to fly them to the moon and show them the LEM, they would claim that it had only been placed there recently and was not from 1969.

"There is only one truth. How we interpret that truth is called belief."
"The presence of belief, does not indicate the existence of truth."