Apollo Imagery - Earth Cropping

LunaCognita wrote:Here is an Apollo NSSDC/NASA archive image of the Earth, shot during the Apollo 15 mission, where the blatant masking around the Earth is quite obvious. http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/a15_h_91_12343.html


http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/a15_h_91_12343.html

Here are two basic enhancements below that better highlight the masking ellipse which allowed the image processing/manipulation team to isolate the Earth.

LunaCognita wrote:Here is another one that shows blatant cropping areas in the sky above the Earth's limb.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/a16_h_118_18873.html




Not that it needs it, but here is an enhancement highlighting the obfuscation.

https://2img.net/h/i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk10/lunacognita/a16_h_118_18873CRblatantcropping.jpg


You can see in the image below, all I have done is apply a very basic six-point contrast increase to the raw NSSDC/NASA frame. That very slight contrast spike is enough to dark blend the entire sky and at least render the obfuscation undetectable without enhancement. See how easy it is for them to hide obfuscation like this in any other archive versions of the same frame? NASA's ALSJ archive for example uses this kind of simple contrasting obfuscative technique to "hard black" the sky in much of their lunar surface imagery, essentially darking out much of the evidence of cropping by blending it to blackness.


https://2img.net/h/i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk10/lunacognita/a16_h_118_18873Corrected6-pointcontrast.jpg

LunaCognita wrote:And here are some of the "Blue Marble" frames taken during the Apollo 17 mission (from the Apollo LPI archive), also showing masking being used to obfuscate half of the FOV.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/frame/?AS17-148-22679
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/frame/?AS17-148-22680
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/frame/?AS17-148-22681
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/frame/?AS17-148-22682
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/frame/?AS17-148-22685

And here below are some basic spikes (one of each frame), just to highlight the masking a bit better.

https://2img.net/h/i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk10/lunacognita/resizesmallAS17-148-22680LPICRBORDER.jpg


https://2img.net/h/i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk10/lunacognita/resizesmallAS17-148-22682CRBORDER.jpg


https://2img.net/h/i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk10/lunacognita/resizesmallAS17-148-22685CRdarkenforVegasBORDER.jpg


https://2img.net/h/i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk10/lunacognita/resizesmallAS17-148-22679LPICRBORDER.jpg


https://2img.net/h/i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk10/lunacognita/resizesmallas17-148-22681CRBORDER.jpg


Also, be sure to click on those links at the top of this post that lead to the original LPI archive versions of these frames. They not only link you to a screen where you can download the HR versions (the same frames I spiked above), but they also show these same "Blue Marble" frames as low resolution large-thumbnails. Look at how in the low-resolution versions of these frames, although they are only 450x450 compressed jpegs, you can still CLEARLY see there are PLENTY of small bright objects visible in the "outer space" portions of the FOV - the same areas that coincidentally have been masked out in the high-res versions so you could not get a good look at what was really there.

EDIT - As an example of what I mean, here is the low res LPI version of the last frame I show above - frame AS17-148-22681. Notice how in this low res version, you can clearly see bright objects illuminated against the blackness of space that have been masked out of the HR version.

LunaCognita wrote:Here is another shot of the Earth, taken during the Apollo 8 mission. This is frame AS08-13-2329, and the raw version of this frame I am examining here is the high res TIF file (5262x5122 pixels), which is available for download here - http://www.archive.org/details/as08-13-2329

Here below is a low res version of the frame.



Here is a close crop of the area in question, taken from the raw HR TIF file.





And here are a couple close crop enhancements of the area around the Earth's limb, highlighting the selectively obfuscated areas to the upper right of the Earth. You can see these areas have been smudged and buried under a noise/glare layer and are very difficult to see in the raw version, but are detectable in the enhancements.