I hope this does not make me a conspiracy theorist, because on this one, I think the government is hiding something and I disagree with those who have dismissed this as a non-event.

On December 9 1965, a fireball streaked across North America and was sited in the Great Lakes region of both the United States and Canada.   There’s no doubt that this happened, as it was seen by many and produced sonic booms which were recorded on seismometers.   It was also seen in Pennsylvania, where some reports indicated that debris or meteorites may have started grass fires (there were grass fires, but whether or not this caused them is unproven.)

In the town of Kecksburg PA, local residents reported that an object landed (or crashed) in a small wooded area.   It has been pointed out that it’s not uncommon for observers of a meteor or other falling object, such as a satellite, to mistakenly believe that it has landed somewhere it has not due to an illusion which occurs when the object crosses over the horizon.  If there are trees or some other obstruction in the foreground, it can appear that the object has landed in the area behind the obstruction.   This phenomena is fairly common and it’s certainly possible that this is what occurred in Kecksburg, although there is some evidence to the contrary.

The Pennsylvania State Police were called and arrived to search the area, and the local volunteer fire department was also on the scene.   The State Police initially stated that they were turning over the site to the US Military, implying that there was something significant in the area and beyond their experience of jurisdiction.   However, later an official statement was released stating “The Pennsylvania State Police have made a thorough search of the woods. We are convinced that there is nothing whatsoever in the woods.”

At this point, the official documentation ends.   While there’s no doubt that something was reported and that there was an official report, any information about an object in the woods that night comes only from eyewitnesses – who are, of course, notoriously unreliable.   There are, however, a few pieces of indirect documentation to the event.   A Journalist from a local newspaper filed a report stating that an object had been found and the military had secured the area.   The reporter Bob Gatty, was at the site at the time and his story indicates that he had verified these events and seen them himself.   Despite these reports and the fact that the State Police had clearly stated that they did summon the military, the official line is that the US military never went to the location that night.

There is no doubt that many people in the area believed something did crash at the site on that night, although this does not mean anything did.

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NOTE:  See the question mark on the end of the headline?   That means this is not reported as verified fact but rather as a possible event that is being reported
Reports have come in from Mexico describing an apparent meteorite strike that left a thirty meter crater in an area of the country about 100 miles northeast of Mexico city.  The impact is reported to have occurred yesterday evening at approximately 18:30 (6:30 PM).   This would have been around 00:30 GMT, assuming that the reported timing is correct.   Thus far there’s not a lot of information outside of the Mexican press, but based on a number of reports it does appear that there was some kind of event that did occur in the area of Pachuca, Hidalgo Mexico.

Reports include sightings of a flaming object streaking across the sky, but it should be noted that until independent verification and more data becomes available, it can’t be stated conclusively that it was indeed a meteorite.   It is possible that this could have been a piece of “space junk,” an aircraft accident or possibly even something as mundane as a propane tank exploding.  It would not be the first time that a terrestrial explosion as reported as a meteor strike.

Via Bad Astronomy:

There have been some reports of a possible meteorite in Mexico — here is one news report translated into English.

Reports are a bit sketchy right now, but apparently a bright flaming object was seen coming down about 100 miles northeast of Mexico City on Wednesday around 18:30 local time. There was a roar that was loud enough to shake buildings. Another news article is reporting a crater 30 meters in diameter was found.

At the moment this is all I know. It’s not clear if this was actually an impact event from a meteorite or some terrestrial event. In 2007 a small meteorite struck in Peru, causing a lot of confusion (with me at least!) over the source of the event; there was a lot of speculation before an actual meteorite impact was confirmed. Before that impact, it was not considered likely that a small meteorite could actually hit the ground fast enough to make a crater in the ten-meter size range (they slow down or break up high in the atmosphere), so the Peru event was a surprise. It’s still not completely understood how the meteoroid survived to hit the ground.

So it’s possible this Mexico event is a meteorite, but we don’t know yet. I’ll post more information as I find it.

Possible Seismic Confirmation???

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In one of the greatest  losses of information in human history, eclipsed only by the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, it seems that the original tapes containing recordings of the unconverted vide0 from the Apollo-11 mission have most likely been destroyed.   This probably occurred sometime in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s, although it has not been specifically confirmed that all copies were degaussed at the time, it is known that many tapes in the collection from the era were.

At this time, there remains a very slim chance that there may be some of the original M22 tapes, most likely the on-site duplicates, that may have escaped degaussing and are hidden away somewhere in the US, Guam or Australia.  Although, that seems at best, a very long shot.   More likely to have survived was at least one recording, a possibly two made at the Parkes observatory on a modified  Ampex VR-660 video tape recorder.   If this tape exists, it is most likely in the archives of either the US government or the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. However, thus far, efforts to locate these tapes has also proven fruitless.

There is, however, another potential source of at least some of the information lost during the scan conversion process, which could be of use in the efforts to restore the video recordings, or which at least could provide some additional record for posterity:  Still images.

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It’s amazing how hard conspiracy theorists will dig, looking for anything they can cling to as evidence of their pre-conceived notions.   Here’s a video which claims to prove the Apollo Program was a hoax because of the mention of “classified fiber optics” in the Westinghouse Lunar Television Camera manual.

Now the reality:

When Westinghouse was asked to design a television camera for the Apollo program, they faced a difficult technical problem.  In addition to having to transmit the images within a relatively narrow portion of the spacecraft’s bandwidth, they had to create a camera that would work in the extreme lighting conditions of the moon.   With no atmosphere to defuse light and provide some indirect illumination, the conditions could be extremely bright out in the open and extremely dark in shadows.  This required a camera with very high dynamic range, but at the same time, the camera had to be as simple and free of adjustment as possible.  Astronauts would be too busy with other things to adjust the settings on the television camera during operation.

These requirements exceeded commercial video cameras of the day, but it turned out Westinghouse did have a camera tube that would be perfect for the job.  The only problem is that the technology that would make this high dynamic range, automatically-adjusting camera possible was being used as part of a military project to develop low-light television cameras for remote surveillance and weapon guidance work.    As the Vietnam War increased in intensity, the US military was turning to advanced low-light optics to help locate the enemy in the dark.  Because of this, the technology was classified at the time.

Westinghouse was able to get permission to utilize this classified military technology in the lunar television camera.   Specifically, it was something called the “secondary electron conduction” tube, a specialized variety of vidcon tube that was the bleeding edge of military imaging technology of the day.   The classified system was more or less hidden in plain sight, as it was built into the lunar television camera but never really acknowledged to the public as being a classified system.   Of course, only a handfull of people would ever actually handle or use the television camera and even fewer would ever open it up to service it, so the secret was fairly safe.

As mentioned in the article “TV’s Longest Remote”:

Westinghouse supplied a lot of battle-hardened electronic gear to the Pentagon, including some small black and white television cameras for use on ships and helicopters. Westinghouse also had something that many companies didn’t at the time—a facility for fabricating custom integrated circuits solely for use by the company.

And to make the hand even more attractive, Westinghouse had created a very special television camera pickup tube; one that could run circles around conventional image orthicons and vidicons in terms of size, sensitivity, S/N and lag. This was the secondary electron conduction, or SEC, tube. It had an outstanding dynamic range and was so sensitive that, without stretching the truth too much, it could make pictures of the proverbial black cat in a coal bin at midnight.

And there was one other thing unique about this specialized television system – it used a “fiber optic face plate.”  Yes, a fiber optic-based optical adapter that channeled the light from the camera lens into the image sensing tube.    In 1969, the same year that the mission was launched, Westinghouse got permission to file for a public patent on the design.   The patent, which was granted in 1971 can be seen here.    Believe it or not, although the widespread use of optical fiber for high band width communications has only been widespread since the 1980’s, fiber optic technology has actually been around for much longer than that.

And there you have it.   A lot less to this whole  story than some might want to believe.

It just keeps getting lamer.

Sure, the Apollo missions were about expanding scientific knowledge, pushing the boundaries of exploration and going one past the Soviet Union in human space exploration, but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t just a little bit of time for fun involved. Alan Shepperd famously hit a golf ball on the moon during Apollo 14.

I found this video quite funny. Jack Schmitt, an astronaut and geologist (the only formally trained scientist to visit the moon as part of the Apollo program) has finished with the mission objectives and is preparing to end the EVA. He has a geology hammer, which he won’t be needing anymore and he wants to throw it in the 1/6 gravity. This isn’t for any real reason, he just wants to, because it would be fun.

What I find so humorous is how he begs mission control like a kid in a store asking “mom, can I please please have one of these?”

I came across this video online.   I’m not sure whether to be humored or irritated by these kind of videos, but I suppose it’s both.   Like most conspiracy theory videos, the creator speaks in a very authoritative tone, like he knows everything and is schooling the public on the “Truth.”   Yet like in so many cases, this self-proclaimed expert on the truth seems to have no clue about the fundamentals of radio communications.

It’s not even like these are things that you need a Ph.D. in communications systems engineering to see this either.  Most of these errors are so fundamental that anyone with a ham radio technicians license (the lowest level) should know better.   It’s amazing anyone could be so sure of something based on evidence that they are so ignorant about.   Then again, conspiracy theorists tend to start off with a conclusion and only try to make the evidence fit as an afterthought.

Actually, this guy has made over a dozen videos on the moon landing “hoax” – all of which appear to contain similar basic errors. He must have a lot of time on his hands.

A few glaring errors:

Error Number 1: It was not Australia and only Australia that received television from the moon.  It was received at Goldstone in California and in Guam.  Anyone who had a suitable receiver and was on the portion of the earth facing the moon could receive it.   Other portions of the mission, as well as other Apollo missions transmitted television  and/or data that was received at Ascension Island, Madrid, Goldstone CA, Madagascar, Guam, Hawaii, Carnarvon Australia and elsewhere.    There were also tracking ships.

Of course, there were other stations in the world that were capable of receiving the transmissions, even if they did not do so in any official capacity.

Error Number 2: NASA does not and did not own the Parkes Observatory in Australia.  It was made avaliable by the gracious cooperation of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

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There’s certainly no shortage of independent confirmation of the Apollo missions.  From ham radio operators to the Jorell Bank Observatory, plenty of independent observers received the radio communications.   Others tracked the missions optically.   The missions relied on centers located in Madrid, Australia, California, Guam, Madagascar  and elsewhere to track and maintain communications with the spacecraft.   Since then, lunar samples, observations and data have been confirmed by independent scientists and other national space programs.

However, one mission stands out as having been confirmed more than any others.   Apollo-15, the third to touch down on the lunar surface and the first to use the Lunar Rover, has been imaged by at least three different space agencies.   Nasa took images of the area during the mission, and these images were confirmed as accurate by later probes including the DOD’s Clementine probe and probes sent by the European Space Agency, Indian Space Agency, Soviet Union and Japanese Space Agency.

At least three of the probes have had imaging capabilities of sufficient resolution to see traces of the mission activities.   The best images come from NASA’s LRO, the only spacecraft able to return images of a high enough resolution to recognize the equipment left behind.  However, Japan’s SELENE probe confirmed the profile of the area and imaged the “halo” caused by the engines of the LEM disturbing the lunar dust, which had been undisturbed for millions of years, causing the top most layer to have different reflectivity due to the time spent exposed to the solar winds and intense sun light.   SELENE also saw the outlines and shadows of equipment, but without high enough resolution to definitively tell they were man-made.

More recently, the Indian Chandrayaan-1 probe provided slightly better images than SELENE, providing additional detail and confirming the observations already made by the two previous imaging missions.  This was announced in early September, but the images were not immediately avaliable.

The reason that I held back on posting on this is that the images were not avaliable and a number of websites erroneously  posted images that were supposedly showing the tracks of the Lunar Rover as seen by Chandrayaan-1.   The following image showed up on a number of websites and claimed to trace the path of the rover:

Unfortunately this image (which seems to have originated on Gizmodo – note the watermark.)   Is not what it seems.   It does show the general area where Apollo-15 landed, but it is actually a three-dimensional compost image of Chandrayaan-1 data and not a single image.   It also is not nearly high enough resolution to see the tracks of the rover.   The area highlighted in red is not even the path of the rover.   Rather, it appears to be an illusion caused by a string of craters and shadows in what looks like a continuous track, if you look hard enough.

The image does confirm the accuracy of the images and observations made by Apollo 15, but it does not show the tracks of the rover.  Based on NASA maps, if the tracks could be seen, they would look more like this:

For this reason, I elected to avoid this topic until the real images were avaliable.   Contributing to incorrect information, even if the information would seem to support a reasonable cause, does not help credibility and is really not acceptable.   However, the images and analysis are now avaliable from the Indian Space Agency and can be found in this PDF.

Now, onto the images…

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It has been mentioned here before that the landing of Apollo-11, as well as other Apollo missions were not only monitored by the official NASA communications and telemetry stations, but also by a number of amateur and professional facilities operating in an unofficial capacity. One of the most capable of these facilities was the Jordell Bank Observatory in North West England.  Despite having one of the largest radio telescopes in the world, Jordell Bank was not an official tracking station for NASA’s Apollo missions.   Instead, the European portion of the receiving network was located at the Madrid Deep Space Communications Center.

Jordell Bank had, however, provided critical data reception and tracking for the Soviet Luna program.   Early on in the Soviet program, the Soviets lacked the capability to reliably receive the weak signals from the tiny probes and therefore had to rely on Jordell Bank to provide tracking and reception capabilities – an uneasy relationship during the Cold War.   By 1969, however, the Soviets had upgraded their tracking stations and improved the transmitters on their lunar probes.   However, Jordell Bank continued to track and observe Soviet probes even after its services were no longer critical to the program.   In 1969, The Lovell Telescope at Jordell bank was the largest fully steerable antenna in the world (today it is the third) and thus was capable of providing greater signal gain than anything the United States or Soviet Union had.

On July 20 1969, the scientists at Jordell Bank were simultaneously observing two dramatic events.    The Lovell Telescope, their largest, was receiving signals from the Soviet Luna-15 probe, which was supposed to land just hours after the Apollo 11 landing.   Rumors had been floating that Luna-15 carried a sample-return spacecraft that was intended to beat the US in getting the first lunar soil and rock samples back to earth.  Having had experience with the Luna program, the scientists at Jordell Bank were very eager to see if the rumors were true and to observe the landing of Luna-15.

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You may know Bart Sibrel as the Apollo conspiracy theorist who got a well deserved punch in the face from Buzz Aldrin a few years ago. If you live in Nashville, you may also know him as the guy who drove you home from the bar, because his actual day job is driving a taxi cab there.

The first thing Sibrel said after being punched was “did you get that on tape?” to his camera man. Apparently he felt that the punch would make Buzz Aldrin seem like a dishonest or hot-headed person. Of course, it’s worth nothing that this happened after Subrel had been following Aldrin for much of the day, repeatedly getting in his face and refusing to listen to Buzz’s initially polite requests to leave him and his granddaughter alone.

But it seems that Sibrel himself has some issues with his temper. In his case, the thing that set him off wasn’t being stalked all day by a creepy guy with a video camera but a parking space.

Via News Five Nashville:

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Jupiter apparently took quite a hit from an asteroid, comet fragment or something else in space.  Nobody saw it coming, but we certainly can see the spectacular scar it has left on the planet.    The first signs of the impact were spotted just about a week ago, and since then there have been a number of photos taken by earth-based observatories.

The spectacular photo bellow was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.   The fact that this photo was taken goes to show how important NASA deemed this event.   Hubble was visited by the Space Shuttle this past may for an extensive servicing and systems upgrade. Since that mission, NASA has been going through the lengthy process of systems checks, calibration and testing the new sensors onboard Hubble.   Although they have not yet finished, NASA took a break from the calibration and testing schedule to take a few stunning images.

Our friend Phil Plait, “The Bad Astronomer” has some great info on this on his website and even more linked to it.