Apollo 11 Ascent From Tranquility Base - rotation-corrected for proper "horizon up" viewing

LunaCognita wrote:

This presentation shows the 16mm Data Acquisition Camera (DAC) footage that was shot during the Apollo 11 ascent from Tranquility Base. In this ascent footage, the DAC motion picture camera was mounted in the right side forward-facing (LMP) window of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module "Eagle", providing us a view looking down at the Moon's surface as the LM ascent stage fires and sends the spacecraft on its way back up to lunar orbit for rendezvous and docking with the CSM "Columbia".

Rather than just showing the raw footage here as it is cataloged in the NASA film archives, I instead show the footage in a rotation-corrected format in order to always keep the scene in it's proper "horizon up" viewing orientation throughout the duration of the clip. This proper "horizon up" perspective can be established based on some simple visual criteria, with the goal being to ensure we are viewing the footage with the lunar surface being shown so that the Moon's horizon that is closest to the camera's current principle point always remains aligned and level towards the top of the field-of-view (even if the horizon itself is not actually visible at the time). This ensures that the surface scene you are viewing can be accurately interpreted.

As you can see in this footage, the rotation correction to align the scene to the "horizon up" viewing perspective is an absolutely vital adjustment that must be applied first in order to be able to even begin attempting to analyze and interpret scenes such as this one accurately. Because the DAC camera was hard-mounted in the window of the LM during liftoff from the lunar surface, this meant that the standard locked display perspective that NASA provides in their archive clips showing the Apollo ascent footage is ALWAYS displaying the lunar surface scene below in an inaccurate perspective. For over 40 years, the public has actually been watching ascent footage like this from the various Apollo missions where the lunar surface after liftoff is being shown essentially upside down (between 135 to 180 degrees off of the "horizon up" viewing perspective).

The point to this simple presentation is to merely serve as a reminder to everyone who is interested in doing their own analysis of ANY of the Apollo DAC footage or still frames of the lunar surface to always consider the question of "what is the proper viewing perspective for each scene?" The ugly fact is that the vast majority of the Apollo DAC footage and still frames, as they are archived by NASA, are not presenting their lunar surface scenes to you in anything close to the proper "horizon up" viewing orientation that our eyes expect to see. Obviously, unless this improper viewing perspective is corrected for first, you have very little chance of being able to analyze the scenes you are looking at with any degree of accuracy at all.

In addition to the rotation-correction, I also was forced to make several frame-rate adjustments to this Apollo 11 DAC footage, and the reason for that is because just before the four-minute mark after liftoff, the 16mm DAC camera suddenly alters it frame exposure rate, switching from 12 frames-per-second (the proper declared setting for filming the liftoff and ascent) down to 6 fps. I have no idea how or why this sudden frame-rate setting change occurs, because adjusting the DAC camera's fps setting "on the fly" was certainly not one of LMP Buzz Aldrin's checklisted duties during ascent, and I see no mention in the Apollo 11 mission and post-mission reports to account for this anomalous occurrence. The Apollo 11 ascent footage, as it is archived by NASA, makes no attempt to correct for (or even draw attention to) this sudden step-down in frame-rate, which results in the raw archive footage appearing to suddenly show a doubling of the playback speed. In addition to this, NASA typically renders their HD digital DAC archive at 29.97 NSTC, resulting in further interpolation stretching being introduced in the digital footage. I have attempted to correct for this effect here in order to ensure that the playback rate of the DAC footage accurately matches the accurate timeframe that I was able to establish using the accompanying raw mission audio track and flown liftoff&ascent charts - essentially using the accurate audio timeline to re-synchronize the inaccurate video playback rate so they match up correctly for the duration of the nearly 10-minute complete sequence of footage showing the Apollo 11 ascent from Tranquility Base.

Cheers everyone,
LC

LunaCognita wrote:I will definitely check that comparison you mentioned of the Apollo ascent in reverse with the descent and landing footage. The descent footage is overexposed, and I think there are a few things in it that point to obfuscation and fakery as well. I think it is LMS simulator footage personally.

Great job posting up those maps, because they do add to the interpretation of the video. On this site here you linked to - http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/A11_des-asc_photomap.htm - if you take the pic labeled as "Entire Descent Monitoring Photomap" and rotate it counter-clockwise 90 degrees, you can then follow the ascent trail and pick up some of the landmarks right up to APS shutdown. Look how butchered that chart/photomap is too, with massive edit crops all over the place as they cobbled it together from different imagery. BellComm was capable of ensuring the A11 crew had far better maps than that one they claim is a copy of the flown chart. They butchered that chart to cover up things they did not want us to get a clear view of. All the descent and ascent photomaps for all the missions are like that.

LunaCognita wrote:Here is that rendering of the Apollo 11 ascent footage, shown in reverse at 4x playback speed, just to give another way to look at this sequence. This now gives the impression of flying down into Tranquility Base, approaching from the west, rather than the actual ascent to the west. I like to render these off as well because I think it can help when examining the lunar surface scene, allowing us to see the objects in the distance as they get closer and larger, rather than the original format showing the objects appear close then slowly shrink as they back away from the camera.

I did not make this video as part of my public channel, but am using Youtube's "unlisted" feature here, seeing as how I did not include any background info about the video at all. Hope it works!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUl-x7THAkI