LRV on the Moon - Apollo 16 - Lights on Horizon

Apologies if this has been posted before, i did run a search but possibly not with the correct string.

On the stabilised footage above i noticed that starting around 1:07 bright lights start to appear on the horizon. By 1:15 you can see 4 lights which appear equally spaced.

At first i thought it might be experiments the astronauts had setup however it looks a long way off and i thought the range on the rovers was very limited.

Can anyone shed any 'light' on what these are as its clearly not just rocks?

Thanks.

a reply to: Grenade

I think they look similar to the objects in this image, which look like rocks.



Full Size:
history.nasa.gov...

a reply to: Grenade

could it perhaps be boulders on the horizon? not wanting to be the "it's a rock" guy here. i just figure we should rule out all other possibilities.

fingers crossed, though!

originally posted by: denybedoomed
a reply to: Grenade

could it perhaps be boulders on the horizon? not wanting to be the "it's a rock" guy here. i just figure we should rule out all other possibilities.

fingers crossed, though!

Indeed, just seemed strange that throughout the rest of the video there are no reflections off rocks on the horizon then suddenly they appear at equal distance from the rover. I thought the horizon would be littered with them as dust and rock seemingly all that's up there. Could well be rocks, just wasn't sure so thanks.

Also just before that angle cuts away there appears to be some kind of illumination at the right hand side of the screen, just out of camera shot. If this was the sun then surely the reflections would be in the opposite direction and not visible from the camera.

Probably rocks

It's terrain, something self illuminating on the horizon is not likely to configure itself the same luminosity as the background lighting reflections from a rock or three.
To add, had the subject been the self same 'X' numbers of rocks appearing to be uniformly spaced, you could have something to debate for a while simply because some of the rocks are of similar size, and look like making a coherent line, however in between there are other rocks visible, and of different sizes that interfere with the pattern, without any way of knowing their placement between the horizon and the camera. That's something that even the astronauts on the ground had problems with, knowing where the horizon was, or rather how far away it was visually.

Zero atmosphere means that the horizon, which is a lot closer on the moon, is very clear cut and defined. Any protrusions are going to stick out very conspicuously in the glare of the sun. So, I'm sorry to say, it very clearly is rocks.

originally posted by: Grenade
Indeed, just seemed strange that throughout the rest of the video there are no reflections off rocks on the horizon then suddenly they appear at equal distance from the rover. I thought the horizon would be littered with them as dust and rock seemingly all that's up there. Could well be rocks, just wasn't sure so thanks.

Probably rocks

I think I found the solution by looking in the foreground.

I love the 16mm film footage of the drives because it really helps hammer home just how rugged and uneven the lunar surface is. In the stills, the lack of contrast makes it look flat or gently rolling. I've made several stereo-pairs from astronaut panoramas and from consecutive frames of this film footage (the Apollo 16 footage is the best, and the view to the side when they're driving away from North Ray Crater & House Rock at 1:19 - 1:29 is awesome for 3D mining). It is anything but smooth. It's kind or like taking photographs from a boat when the swells are heavy, but there are no white-caps. You, on the boat, know how rough it is, but in your photographs the water is all the same color, so all you really see is the flat horizon and not the swells.

At any rate, the Apollo 16 site was between two fresh ray-craters and te area was littered with blocks & boulders that averaged a few inches to a couple of feet in size. This meant that from the normal height of the camera, if you tilted from the sky down you would see the sky, the horizon and then the boulders - that is to say, the boulders would not be sihouetted on the horizon. Because they are the same color and shade as the surrounding landscape, you really can't see them in this film.

Look at the footage and watch just in front of the rover. See where they're going. Just at around 1:13 they come upon a shallow crater and drive straight into it at ~1:14 - 1:15. When they do, the effective height of the camera drops a couple of feet so that now the tops of the biggest boulders are now higher than the camera and thus these rocks are now visible, silhouetted against the dark sky.

I should note that, when we think of the horizon, we normally think of something a long way away. On the Moon, assuming the terrain is flat and the camera is 4 feet off the ground, the horizon would be just over a mile away. In the segment of film we're looking at, there's a lot of uppity-downditty and I think the ridge where the blocks appear may be much closer - possibly within a hundred yards.

Hope this helps.

They have a fairly distinct conical / flattened look to them, and I'll join the others saying that those are distant rocks or boulders.

wow, almost a full page and no moon landing skeptics chimed in yet.

im just appalled that they took a couple of LRV's up there and not one high powered telescope(no pollution or atmosphere and all.)

i want a foldable car! why dont Tesla work on that for the public next year.

theres more hd vids on yt

a reply to: odzeandennz

Apart from the UV telescope in Apollo 16?

A visible spectrum scope is of questionable value on the moon thanks to light from either the Earth or the sun always being around, and a decent sized one mans bulk and weight on a mission where both those things mattered.

a reply to: Grenade


Why do you say they are cleary not what they obviously could be

As for the distance the Lunar Rover could travel it was probably a lot further than you think.

On Apollo 15 the LRV was driven a total of 27.8 km in 3 hours, 2 minutes of driving time. The longest single traverse was 12.5 km and the maximum range from the LM was 5.0 km. On Apollo 16 the vehicle traversed 26.7 km in 3 hours 26 minutes of driving. The longest traverse was 11.6 km and the LRV reached a distance of 4.5 km from the LM. On Apollo 17 the rover went 35.9 km in 4 hours 26 minutes total drive time. The longest traverse was 20.1 km and the greatest range from the LM was 7.6 km.

originally posted by: odzeandennz
wow, almost a full page and no moon landing skeptics chimed in yet.

im just appalled that they took a couple of LRV's up there and not one high powered telescope(no pollution or atmosphere and all.)

They took 3 LRV's up, why take a small telescope to the Moon even with no atmaosphere it would not show more detail than telescopes from Earth the largest at the time with a mirror as large as the diameter of the lander.

originally posted by: wmd_2008
a reply to: Grenade


Why do you say they are cleary not what they obviously could be

As for the distance the Lunar Rover could travel it was probably a lot further than you think.

On Apollo 15 the LRV was driven a total of 27.8 km in 3 hours, 2 minutes of driving time. The longest single traverse was 12.5 km and the maximum range from the LM was 5.0 km. On Apollo 16 the vehicle traversed 26.7 km in 3 hours 26 minutes of driving. The longest traverse was 11.6 km and the LRV reached a distance of 4.5 km from the LM. On Apollo 17 the rover went 35.9 km in 4 hours 26 minutes total drive time. The longest traverse was 20.1 km and the greatest range from the LM was 7.6 km.

Actually it was tongue in cheek, i said "clearly not boulders?" the clue is in the ?

originally posted by: Grenade

originally posted by: wmd_2008
a reply to: Grenade


Why do you say they are cleary not what they obviously could be

As for the distance the Lunar Rover could travel it was probably a lot further than you think.

On Apollo 15 the LRV was driven a total of 27.8 km in 3 hours, 2 minutes of driving time. The longest single traverse was 12.5 km and the maximum range from the LM was 5.0 km. On Apollo 16 the vehicle traversed 26.7 km in 3 hours 26 minutes of driving. The longest traverse was 11.6 km and the LRV reached a distance of 4.5 km from the LM. On Apollo 17 the rover went 35.9 km in 4 hours 26 minutes total drive time. The longest traverse was 20.1 km and the greatest range from the LM was 7.6 km.

Actually it was tongue in cheek, i said "clearly not boulders?" the clue is in the ?

OK