"Extraterrestrial Archaeology" -- triangular installation?!?

Anyone read the book Extraterrestrial Archaeology by David Childress? So much of this book is loaded with photos that "appear" to provide evidence that there are artificial structures on the moon and other planets in the solar system. Now, I have seen some photos over the years that at times appear compelling. Such was the case with one particular photo in Extraterrestrial Archaeology:



(source: Extraterrestrial Archaeology 1994 AUP Publishers Network, p.144. Author: David Childress)

Childress clams that this triangle is an "installation" or "hangar". When I first saw this photo, my first reaction was that any reasonable mind would look at this and conclude that this flat-edged triangular crater-like feature or installation was completely artificial, and as such, evidence of an intelligent presence on the moon, whether it be earthling or extraterrestrial. But it seemed too obvious, to much of a smoking gun, and I had never seen this photo in any other demonstration of lunar anomolies, either in publication or on the internet. Something wasn't right here.

One of my first clues was the rest of the book, which contains hundreds of supposed instances of artificial structures, though of which only a small handful seemed hard to explain naturally. Yet the author David Childress seemed more than willing to assume "aliens" at every turn. Then I realized that this was the same David Childress who stretches credulity to the limit on the Ancient Alien TV series:



Childress and fellow ancient alien theorists such Giorgio Tsoukalos (he of the Sideshow Bob hair style) are always quick on the "aliens did it" mantra at the expense of critical scientific thinking.

So with this knowledge of Childress and his way of approaching the subject, I did a little investigating into the above triangle anomaly photo. In Extraterrestrial Archaeology, the caption of the photo revealed it to be from photo# HR157 from the Lunar Orbiter 4 mission. A search on the internet led me an extensive gallery of Lunar Orbiter mission photographs, maintained by the Universities Space Research Association, Lunar and Planetary Institute (www.lpi.usra.edu...). It was here that I was able to find the LO4 photograph which is the source of the one in his book:



Zooming in to the area in question, and adjusting for orientation (rotating 90 degrees, and for some reason Childress' photo is a mirror image), gave me this photo.



Suddenly, the photo doesn't look so intriguing. It looks to me like the triangular object is nothing more than a flaw or hole of some sort on the photographic film itself. If you look at it closely, you can see that the straight-edged portion of the anomaly looks brighter, which to me suggests that this could be a rolled-up portion of the film that "curled up" having been separated from the rest of the film on the adjacent two sides, like the lid of a tin of sardines.

Even the supposed "shadow" area of this triangular area is more of a gray compared to the black shadow of the authentic crater next to it, which is evidence that this is not a shadow at all, but simply additional evidence that this is merely a flaw in the film. Really, nothing about this triangle compares positively to the features of the true crater right next to it.

Note also in this next photo, that a similar type of anomaly appears some distance away from the first, over to the right side of the photograph. Would Childress claim that this too is an extraterrestrial structure in the same manner about which he is claiming the first?



It gets worse. If you compare the original and Childress' photos, you can see that the two side-by-side craters/structures in Childress' book are similar in every way except in their shapes; i.e same general size, similar lighting, same shadow. However you can see in the source photo that this is definitely not the case.




I don't want to claim that this was done purposefully to mislead, but at the same time, if it was merely coincidental that the two shapes appeared as similar as they happened to appear during the transfer of photographic images from their source to his book, no attempt was made to rectify this erroneous perception and perform the necessary corrections to ensure a more true depiction of what the photographs actually show.

Lesson learned -- don't always assume a photo is what a appears to be.

The late J.P. Skipper and "marsanomalyresearch.com" were often guilty of the same kinds of things -- over-manipulating images to the point that mundane things began to look "alien".

They often claim that the manipulations were necessary to bring out detail. However, it was quite often the case (similar to your moon examples from Childress) that the important details that can be seen in the original image is lost in the manipulated image, and often artificial manipulation artifacts are seen instead.

Problem with the camera/photo processing.

The error occur on multiple images in the center of the frame. The original "alien structure" image has been tweaked so that it appear to be part of the moon. When you look at the actual orbital pictures, it's obviously a processing error.

www.lpi.usra.edu...

(look around the image for even more funky errors).

Edit: here is another one www.lpi.usra.edu...
You can probably find that on many more of the images but I wont bother searching.

a reply to: merka

The problem with many of the images from the "Lunar Orbiter" satellites (Lunar Orbiters 1 through 5, launched between 1966 and 1967) is the way the images were processed and transmitted.

This was the days before digital imaging technology was feasible for a spacecraft, so what was done instead was the images was taken with a normal film camera, and then the film was robotically developed (robotically because these were unmanned probes), and then the film image was robotically scanned and transmitted back to Earth in an analog fashion, something akin to the way fax was transmitted.

As one might imagine, such a system was prone to photo-developing and/or transmission errors.

Lunar Orbiter images were developed in lunar orbit, and many images contain all kinds of blemishes as a result of that.

Good detective work.

I own an original hard copy of the Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon, which contains the medium resolution version of the OP image taken at the same time - needless to say it does not have the blemish on it.

The atlas is here ntrs.nasa.gov... - 490 Mb download!

I don't want to claim that this was done purposefully to mislead, but at the same time, if it was merely coincidental that the two shapes appeared as similar as they happened to appear during the transfer of photographic images from their source to his book, no attempt was made to rectify this erroneous perception and perform the necessary corrections to ensure a more true depiction of what the photographs actually show.

Lesson learned -- don't always assume a photo is what a appears to be.

i would be more suspicious that it was done on purpose... not necessarily that they used a poor photo on purpose but that the lack of follow-up or critical thinking is pretty much on purpose with guys like this. they take something half-baked and run with it.

good research!

hah busted

Pretty obvious that the moon was strategically placed by whom I'm sure we will never know,and whomever placed it there traveled from moon to earth quite frequently,just more suppressed truth,sad part is they know what happened,who inhabited the earth before,genetic manipulation etc

originally posted by: Oldtimer2
Pretty obvious that the moon was strategically placed...

Do you have anything to back up that claim?

Other than the fact that the Moon sometimes appears to be the exact size as the Sun in the sky, what else is there? And I say "sometimes" because the apparent size of the moon relative to the Sun is always fluctuating (it varies in size from month to month, and can have a 14% difference in size over that time.

For example, there have been some eclipse where the Moon appeared larger than the sun, and more easily covered it completely. There have been other recent eclipses where the Moon appear smaller than the Sun, and could never completely cover it (the best it could do was have a ring of sunlight all around it).


I should also mention that the Moon is moving away from Earth, and in ancient geological times (on the "billions of years" timescale) has not always been where it in the sky -- it was once much much closer and appear much, much larger -- and it is still moving, so in a couple of billion years, it will be much farther away and look much smaller...

...but others could argue that its placement assumed humans would be here "now" in order to be able to experience a moon that was kind of/sort of the exact same size in the sky as the Sun. But that begs the question, "even if it were artificially placed in order that as it moved away from earth, it would appear approximately the same size as the Sun 4.5 billion years later, why would that placement would be important in the first place?"


So, no --the Moon is does not seem the Moon was intentionally perfectly placed as to appear exactly the same size as the Sun. One other oddity about the Moon is its size relative to Earth. However, there are natural explanations for that, also.