Shadows on the Moon: an ephemeral archaeology

A picture of the Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972 got me thinking about shadows on the moon as part of the archaeology of the six human landing sites.

Apollo 17 panorama. Image courtesy of NASA

The peculiar character of light on the Moon of course forms part of the corpus of conspiracy theories claiming the lunar landings were faked. It's argued that the shadows seen in photographs and film footage are caused by the lighting in the studio where actors lumbered about pretending to be in low gravity, rather than the Sun. Or something like that. To be honest, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the conspiracy theories.

(But I will offer this gem from the sublime Mitchell and Webb).

Shadows on the Moon are, however, of great interest from a completely different perspective. Years ago, I was in the library at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation headquarters here in Adelaide, and found a book that has stuck in my memory. It was a study written for US Congress, in the 1980s, on warfare in space. The chapter on the Moon was all about how lunar conditions would affect hand-to-hand combat. The author, a military expert, noted that many of the properties of lunar light would make a sort of shoot-out situation particularly interesting. For example, if you hid from someone in a shadow on Earth, you would still be visible. Light diffuses through our heavy atmosphere and shadows can be all sorts of colours (vide Goethe: 'colour itself is a degree of darkness').

On the Moon, shadows are as black as Hades. Although reflection from the lunar surface will still illuminate objects in shadow, if you go deep enough into one, for example, under a boulder overhang or in a crater, you can be invisible to observation.

You're also cold. The temperature in shadow drops markedly.

In a battle with human protagonists, terrestrial instincts may lead you far astray.

But let's move on from this gloomy topic and get back to the archaeology.

One thing the astronauts from the Apollo missions brought to the Moon was new shadows, shadows that were cast by machines and bodies and flags and rovers, in an interplay of movement and stillness. The speed of the shadows differed depending on the activity being carried out. Some were solid black and some were textured. They crossed and uncrossed with the angle of the sun and the movement of the astronauts around the tiny landscapes that constituted their lunar experience.

The shadows were captured and frozen in many, many photographs of all Apollo missions; in these photographs, they became a different type of artefact. I would be curious to know if anyone (apart from conspiracy theorists) has analysed the shadows in these images.

Apollo 12 ALSEP instrument package. Image courtesy of NASA

Apollo 14. Note the beautiful transparent shadow of the mesh antenna, like a flattened sea creature. Image courtesy of NASA. 

And then some shadows left, never to return, and other shadows stayed to be swallowed by the lunar night and to emerge into day again. The shadows of the flags, descent modules, rovers, cameras, and other equipment are now cast over the lunar regolith until something causes the object to decay in tens, hundreds or thousands of years. The objects left behind don't move, but their shadows circle them in diurnal devotion, sundials without a mission.

The shadows may, however, be of more than passing interest in considering the taphonomy of lunar sites.  There's some evidence to suggest that dust levitates as the terminator passes over, due to changing electrical potentials. There may be small-scale surface dust movement as shadow boundaries change, creating sub-millimetre electrical fields that cause dust particles to accelerate and collide with each other (NASA 2011). So the dust environment of the objects left on the Moon may be not static, and we don't know what the long-term impacts on material degradation are.

Now, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter uses the shadows to detect the presence of these orphaned items of material culture.

Apollo 15, photographed by the LRO. Image courtesy of NASA.

There's only one way to finish this post: with a quote from Cat Stevens' classic hit Moonshadow:

Did it take long to find me? I asked the faithful light.
Did it take long to find me? And are you gonna stay the night?


References
NASA 2011 NASA’s Recommendations to Space-Faring Entities: How to Protect and Preserve the Historic and Scientific Value of US Government Artefacts. Human Exploration and Operat6ions Mission Directorate, Strategic Analysis and Integration Division, NASA

Note: updated 16/12/2014 to include paragraph on photographs. Updated on 21/1/2015 to include paragraph on dust levitation.

Skylab: the conspiracy theories

I do love a good conspiracy theory. And I'm working in two fields where they abound, archaeology and space exploration.  

Today, having completed the final revisions to my Skylab paper for the Journal of Australian Studies (and can I just add how nice it is that the Australian government have scrapped the stupid journal ranking system they recently introduced), I am thinking about everything I had to leave out, and everything I could explore in the next thing I write on this topic.  The following newspaper article, from the Lewiston Evening Journal (on July 12, 1979, p 19) is full of themes that would be great to explore further:  authenticity, US-Australian Cold War relations, feelings of neglect and abandonment, and the Aussie larrikin.

Skylab piece just a hoax

Melbourne, Australia (AP)

An Australian golf course groundskeeper told reporters he found what he thought was a pretzeled piece of Skylab, and he packed a bag for America. Then a metalworker came forward and said it was just a hoax.

The motive: practical joking, but also spite against American space officials. 

The groundskeeper, John Rowe of the southwestern Australian town of Albany, told his story to a local newspaper, a local radio station, and a Perth television station and was hoping to get to the United States in time to collect $10 000 from a San Francisco newspaper.

Then William Hall, 54, told reporters that he had planted the piece of twisted metal on the golf course earlier this morning. 

"I wasn't the only one involved, and we did it partly in retaliation against the American space scientists as we didn't appreciate them deliberately deciding to put Skylab down in Australia," said Hall. "After talking about Skylab on Wednesday night and finding that no-one had been hurt we decided to plant the metal as a joke".

Many thought that the US decided to save their own citizens and sacrifice Australians; there was a sense of indignation at our supposed allies undervaluing Australia.  Feeling deceived, William Hall and his mates decided to deceive in their turn; but it wasn't a member of the NASA recovery team who found the piece, it was the groundskeeper who got all excited thinking about the reward offered.  So they came clean.

I wonder how they decided to make the twisted metal look authentic?  Did they look at other bits of Skylab? Did they just imagine what would happen to metal under that heat and acceleration?  Were they relying on the fact that no-one really knew what space junk looked like?

My esteemed colleague Dr Lynley Wallis comes from Albany ....... perhaps I can send her out to do some oral history interviews for me .......

Is the U.S. Flag From Apollo 11 Still Standing?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/07/17/is-us-flag-from-apollo-11-still-standing.html

Is the U.S. flag planted on the moon 40 years ago still standing? That's just one of many questions researchers hope will be answered this year by new pictures of old Apollo landing sites.

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Museum tackles 'moon hoax' believers

April 9, 2007 - from The Age, Melbourne

A museum honoring the first man to walk on the moon is not afraid to confront conspiracy theorists who argue his 1969 lunar landing was a hoax.

"If it takes a controversy to get them here, that's fine with us," said Andrea Waugh, an education specialist at the Armstrong Air & Space Museum, named after Apollo 11 astronaut and hometown hero Neil Armstrong.

The museum in western Ohio set up a display on Saturday featuring some of the talking points that conspiracy theorists make in books and numerous Web sites to try to back up their claims that NASA staged all of its moon landings from 1969 to 1972 in a movie studio.

Claims that the lunar landings were fake can be easily debunked with facts and science, Waugh told visitors.

For example, a favorite conspiracy argument is that it is impossible for a US flag photographed next to Armstrong and fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin to be fluttering in a lunar environment that lacks wind or an atmosphere.

The flag had a horizontal bar attached to it at the top to keep the flag from hanging limply down the pole, Waugh said.

And distorted shadows that appear next to astronauts in some of NASA's photographs - another sticking point with nonbelievers - are the result of sunlight reflecting off the lunar landscape, she said.

The museum's explanations were enough to convince Janet Rosengarten, who drove from nearby Sidney to see the exhibit.

"I've never had any question about it," she told local newspaper The Lima News. "I saw Armstrong land on the moon when I was 7 and I have no doubt it happened. But it's still fun to see the things people say who doubt it all."

The museum includes one of Armstrong's Apollo-era space suits and other artifacts from his career and childhood.

Speaking of ancient astronauts .......

Erich Von Daeniken space park needs down-to-earth sponsor

Long ago, astronauts from outer space visited earth to lay the foundations for human civilisation, controversial Swiss writer Erich von Daeniken has always insisted.

Now, Von Daeniken hopes for a visitor with enough down-to-earth money to save his Mystery Park theme park in Interlaken from financial collapse.

The park, set up by the author of bestsellers such as "Chariots of the Gods" and "The Gods were Astronauts", has failed to attract enough visitors and needs more than $3,08m in cash to stay in business.

The park’s attractions — which showcase giant drawings in the Peruvian desert that may once have been "traffic" signs for visiting spacecraft, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and more — may close forever if it does not find the money.

Mystery Park’s shares have risen sharply in heavy volumes recently as investors speculate about its future and the stock now changes hands well below the levels they stood at before 2004.

The group said today it had asked a court for protection from creditors to win time to propose a restructuring plan to a shareholder meeting in May.

But the company will be declared bankrupt if the plan does not get approved and the days of Mystery Park will be numbered. Unless some higher power intervenes, that is, financially or otherwise.

Source: Reuters and Dave Reneke's Astronomy Media Services

Astronautic rock art

This week I have been entering data from fieldwork recording rock art on the Burrup peninsula, Western Australia. I've always wanted to find an Aboriginal rock art astronaut, and suddenly there one was! On a rock panel recorded by my esteemed colleague Phil Czerwinski, a little anthropomorphic figure appeared to have a fish-bowl-like helmet on its head. Bingo! But seeing this figure as part of a whole art tradition, and with a personal acquaintance with the art of the Burrup, it actually required a new headspace to give it the ancient astronaut interpretation. Lines like that encircling the head of the figure occur in all sorts of contexts, around limbs, on animals, as isolated motifs. It could have been a work in progress, where the artist would have filled in the circle to make a bigger head eventually. Everything else depicted on the panel was routine in terms of Burrup engravings. I'm not a rock art specialist, so this was an interesting thought process for me. It gave me a glimpse of how the amateur may interpret rock art and perceive such things - a la Erich von Daniken.

A spacey New Year

Happy New Year to all and sundry. I have had a few computer problems since I last posted, but a new operating system has made all the difference.

Did anyone watch the documentary on the moon landing conspiracy theory last week? I was pleased to see the ease with which they debunked the main arguments. James Oberg, who was to have written NASA's book on the subject, figured heavily. But I wonder if such solid evidence convinces the die-hard conspiracists?

I have a friend who is 'undecided' on the issue. When we discussed it, she was unaware that (1) there are research programs and publications and experimental results on moon rocks brought back from the Apollo missions - an enormous effort to fake all of it - and (2) that the moon has, obviously, a radically different geological history and composition to the Earth. It would also be hard to fake moon rocks!

Flying Saucers at Woomera

Well. Yesterday I got my hands on the formerly secret UFO file from Woomera. I did not have to wait for it to be retrieved from the National Archive stores as the file was already out - a UFO researcher had been using it the day before. (Who are they? I am dying of curiosity).

The file is very interesting reading and not what I was expecting. I'm not sure what I expected, really. There is a 1953 letter from the Air Force to the Superintendent of the Long Range Weapons Establishment (the organisation which ran the rocket range at Woomera), asking the the LRWE appoint a liaison person to talk to the president of the Australian UFO Society, Fred Stone. Stone and his colleagues were concerned that legitimate UFO sightings could be confused with launches from Woomera. As I learnt from Bill Chalker's book on Australian UFOs, societies like this one were just being set up in the early 1950s. There are also accounts of several UFO sightings at Woomera.

There is no hint that the observers were subscribing to the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis of UFO origins. But these people were ballistic and aeronautical scientists, accustomed to observing aerial and high atmosphere phenomena on a regular basis. It does make you think. (Can I really be saying this?) And there were security issues that would make the unidentified appearance of aerial stuff of concern.

Tomorrow I will complete my work on the file and move onto the more relevant topics of Woomera's participation in Project Vanguard.

An unusual occurrence

I have been searching the National Archives of Australia in preparation for some research. On the top of my list is the file entitled "Unusual Occurrences of Flying Saucers at Woomera".

With the heavy traffic of sounding and research rockets, which released all kinds of things from grenades to chalk dust, it would be surprising if someone had not seen a UFO.  Rocket experiments at Woomera were often visible over hundreds of miles.

I'm also going to check out the activities of the Communist Party of Australia, my old friends the Natural History Society, and the Moonwatch group.

And tomorrow morning - the collections of A.B. Jay, a Native Patrol Officer in the Woomera Restricted Area. These are held at the South Australian Museum.