As I said, conspiracists can come up with unsubstantiated claims almost instantly, while using science, evidence and logic to knock them down takes much longer as you'll see here. This is a simple example, but it carries with it, all the convoluted nonsense imparted by conspiracists. In this case, their lack of knowledge, of photography, physics and common sense is brought into sharp relief.
The visor reflection proof of a moon hoax
The claim is that a stage-hand wearing jeans has wandered onto the set where they were faking the landings and can be seen reflected in John Young's helmet. It took only seconds for a conspiracist to claim it is a long-haired (sixties) man in jeans who has been caught "off to one side" (remember that quote) while they were faking the photographs in a studio. Literally seconds and it went viral, even becoming a major article in the national British Daily Express newspaper. The headline in the Daily Express about the picture below was "MOON HOAX PROVED".
Nothing could be further from the truth, but "Moon Hoax Exposed" would sell fewer copies.
Shame on the Daily Express for not getting one of their professional photographers to expose this for what it is!
To understand what has happened here requires a tiny amount of scientific knowledge – nothing fancy – any kid working with a convex mirror in the Physics laboratory at school, could work this out quite adequately. Thanks to clavius.org for the image below.
Young is wearing a convex faceplate, which behaves exactly like a convex mirror when it reflects something. You can check this yourself with any convex mirror. Go and have a look at one opposite someone's difficult driveway entrance. You can see for yourself what has happened here.
For the lazy among you, here is the explanation:
If any photograph is taken of a convex mirror (or reflective convex faceplate), the closest point of the faceplate in the image tells you where the camera was. It is ALWAYS the closest point on the mirror. It is a known convex mirror fact. A law of physics for convex mirrors. Now look at the picture.
Which part of that faceplate is nearest the camera? The man is not standing "off to one side" in the background but is actually the man taking the photograph. No part of that visor is closer to us than the circled man. Look at it. Examine it. It is quite clear the man is standing at the closest point. The visor left of the man is bending away from us, same with the bottom, right and top. So, the closest part MUST be where the camera was positioned.
First let's dispose of the obvious stupidity of the conspiracist's claim. Would NASA, while creating elaborate fakes, allow someone to wander onto the set? So, why do we see a long-haired man with jeans taking this picture of John Young as he walked around the moon? Anyone with any knowledge of convex mirrors and lighting will tell you that the man taking the picture is laterally compressed (squeezed) and therefore appears thinner than he really is. So, when you look at the blonde, long-haired man in jeans who took the picture, you now realise that his head is a space helmet and the hair is the white of the helmet. The impression of jeans is because his legs are in shade and compressed left to right.
Now look closely at his shadow. The red line runs right through the shadow, but, nevertheless, it is extremely thick from his front to back. This is, of course, correct because it is an astronaut in an extremely bulky suit with a huge backpack sticking out behind him. It is shorter than it should be because of the lateral compression (squeezing) caused by the shape of the faceplate.
We already know that the geometric closest point to the photographer is the black-spot half-way up his chest. What is that? It is the lens of the camera which is strapped to Schmitt's chest. The reflection is of Schmitt – the second astronaut who has the camera attached to the top of the front of his chest to make it easy to use in pressurised gloves.
Look how difficult it is to explain that and notice that it needs a knowledge of physics and the science of convex mirrors. It is hard to explain these things, yet the conspiracist starts it all off with a stupid, uneducated comment about a man standing 'off to one side' which looked a bit odd. So easy to start these rumours off.
I am not going to deal with very piece of conspiracist's evidence in detail, but I can give you a broad idea of some of the pictures the conspiracists use. You'll recognise them if you have visited their websites or seen their YouTube videos.
· One picture they use, shows the Earth in the sky and it is supposed to be only a third as big as it should be – not true. If you take a 50mm picture on Earth of the moon, like the example below, it is much tinier than you expect. The image of the Earth in the 50mm moon pictures is EXACTLY the correct size. Again, the claim took seconds to make but it takes time to prove it is incorrect and knowledge of how 50mm lenses work.
· Another pair of images shows the Earth missing in a shot of an astronaut in the moon buggy at a distance, but clearly visible above him in a closer shot. In fact, if the close-up is shrunk to match the distance shot then laid over the other image, lining up the mountain, the Earth can clearly be seen to be above the frame of the distance picture which explains why it is not present. Again, a conspiracist has claimed fake because NASA has forgotten to insert the Earth in the distance picture. It takes a lot of work and superimposition to show why it was not faked. Clavius.org have the detail for this one. It is the same with almost all of this stuff, but please don't skip any – it is all important to show the damage these conspiracists do to real science, not to mention the lies many have accepted and possibly passed on to others.
· Shadows – another image taken from the onboard automatic camera, shows two astronauts with the sun coming from the right and the astronaut on the left has a shorter shadow than the one on the right. Conspiracists claim that this shows the light source is not the sun, but a studio light which is quite nearby. In this case, using the word 'stupid' about conspiracists is not sufficiently strong. It exhibits the height of ignorance of some of these individuals. Imagine having two astronauts in a studio with a studio light off to the right. Which shadow should be longer? The closest astronaut or the furthest one from the light. Try it at home with a table light if you wish. The furthest astronaut should have the longest shadow. However, the conspiracists are claiming that this picture shows the left astronaut has a shorter shadow, so they can't both be being lit by the sun. The trouble is that they don't feel the slightest compunction about their stupidity when NSAS pointed out something which is clear in other pictures taken on the site, that the ground is rising under the second astronaut, so, OF COURSE, his shadow is shorter. So, this picture gives two excellent examples of sheer stupidity of the conspiracists. The John Cleese video comes to mind again.
· Shadows – there is a second picture (not shown) where the astronaut is standing in a small crater, so lower, causing a shorter shadow, but the crater wasn't obvious in the image. Once more the claim was instant, but explaining it needed a lot of groundwork and detailed knowledge of the landing site.
· Disappearing cross marks on the pictures (not shown). It is a known fact that these sometimes disappear depending on relative brightness and contrast.
· The letter C appearing on a rock showing it was a studio prop! Oh yes, they only had 26 props in the studio? Who is kidding who? Close analysis of this one showed that it was a hair introduced during printing and does not appear on the negative.
· Conspiracists complain that anything on the surface of the moon, not lit directly by the sun, would appear jet black. Again ignorance. The light from the moon's brilliant surface, fills in many of the shaded areas. Even light bouncing off the astronauts or the LEM can provide illumination. This argument holds no more credence than any of their others.
· There are many more, but this is the last one I'm going to bother with. Conspiracists say that NASA blanked out the stars in all the moon pictures, because if the stars could be seen then it would be possible to prove they were not on the moon by the star positions. Great idea. So why are there no stars visible? Total ignorance of photography is the answer. Why not check this one out yourself? On a dark night when there are lots of stars in the sky, go out and take a picture of the sky – lo and behold – the image has stars. Were the conspiracies right, then? Of course not! Put a white sheet or tablecloth on your patio table, shine a bright light on it. Now the table is bright like the moon's surface. Now take a picture including both the bright surface and the black starlit sky. Amazing, not one star appears in the photograph. This is because the cameras adjust for the brightest part of the image so that it is not washed-out, but this means the stars are completely invisible. Conspiracists use the lack of stars in the moon photography over and over and over again. Pig ignorance!
Do you see how there can be thousands of such things? The conspiracists can point to any puzzling feature and, without any effort to find the correct solution, they claim "FAKE!"
Clavius.org state that "the prevalence of conspiracy theories is astounding. Almost every historical event or observable phenomenon seems to have at least one conspiracy theory associated with it. Conspiracists pounce upon tidbits of inconsistency upon which most conspiracy theories rely. It's natural for people to believe that there should be no inconsistency in legitimate activities. So, if we observe an inconsistency, we take that alone as evidence that the intuitive explanation must be flawed and we should search for a more complicated answer."
These points, raised by Clavius.org are common to all conspiracies, whether it be Kennedy's shooting, the 9/11 attacks, Hitler escaping in 1945, the ISS-deniers, Area 51, holocaust-deniers or the moon-landing-deniers.
When the points raised by conspiracists are taken back to the source material, they can be easily, though not quickly, exposed. This makes it much more difficult to disprove conspiracies than to create them in the first place. We must not forget that conspiracists never withdraw their claims, so it appears the amount of evidence for a conspiracy is growing when, in fact, everything is explained. Hate having to keep repeating that, but it is important.
So, all of the pictures I have mentioned earlier, and which have been shown to be consistent with real moon-landings, are STILL used by conspiracists in their videos and websites as proof the landings didn't happen. If you stumble across them in semi-ignorance of the subject, you are suckered in. They ignore the fact that they have ALL been shown to be real and it allows them to fool the gullible into thinking that the amount of evidence is accumulating. It is NOT accumulating. It is all being shown to be nonsense. There is currently nothing which supports the moon-landing-deniers – nothing!
They then start grasping for straws like Neil Armstrong's speech in which he mentioned secrets to be found – of course there are fucking secrets to be found! Neil was not a good public speaker and is often criticised for being hesitant or evasive, when really he was just not very good at it. He was chosen for the mission because he was the most brilliant test-pilot and could keep cool in a crisis. He was not selected for his charisma or ability to entertain the public.