What's this unusual Lunar feature, showing in Google Moon?

[ZenGalacticore]

Hmm... It looks strikingly similar to an aerial view of an ancient Roman villa/latifundia. Or perhaps a monastery. Boy, THOSE monks really did want to isolate themselves from the world. The Order of the MoonMonks!

Romans on the Moon!

 

[Wellington1114]

What evidence do you have for top secret US space projects?[/quote][/quote]


I never said I had evidence of any top secret space project. If there are top secret space projects, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't know anything about it......Ya know cause of the Top Secret part.

 

[SpeedFreek]

Surely it has to be a whole series of photos, in order to have so many different views, at any angle you like and at varying altitudes from about 3,000 metres or lower, doesn't it?

No, these things are usually generated using one high-resolution image texture. All the different views, angles and altitudes are generated by the software working with that single image texture.

 

[Smersh]

Hmmm ... ok SpeedFreek if that's how it's done in Google Moon, then a fake would be a lot easier. It would still have to be somebody faking it at Google or NASA or wherever though (unless somebody hacked into the image database of course.)

If somebody at Google Or NASA is responsible, then they need a jolly good smacked bottom, in my opinion. :evil:

 

[CalliArcale]

That is definitely how Google creates its maps. No "if" about it.

It would still have to be somebody faking it at Google or NASA or wherever though (unless somebody hacked into the image database of course.)

I doubt it's somebody at NASA, and to be honest, I'm more inclined to think "software screwup at Google" than an intentional fake. I'm not kidding when I say I've seen weird artifacts on Google Earth; they look intentionally faked, but they're not. I have a hunch this spot is at or near the intersection of two or more source images. Most of the artifacts relate to the Google software trying to be smart about stitching images together and smoothing out the edges so you don't notice. Sometimes it's obvious in Earth pictures, like when a region abruptly changes from midsummer morning to midwinter afternoon. Other times, not so much. If it's not a heavily-populated region, people willb e less likely to notice the artifact and bring it to Google's attention. (They can -- and do -- manually correct some of these. You might want to inquire on the Google blogs. They can probably tell you more.)

 

[JonClarke]

Surely it has to be a whole series of photos, in order to have so many different views, at any angle you like and at varying altitudes from about 3,000 metres or lower, doesn't it?

No it doesn't, it could be on one image which you zoom in on. Since there is not change in image texture as you zoom in I suspect this is the case.

The pictures have "NASA" "Selene" "ASU" etc stamped on them.]

Actually no. the particular feature is in an image (or set) that says NASA/ASU.

Ok my mistake - NASA and ASU are the same. Selene is an orbiter owned by the Japanese though.

NASA and ASU are not the same. ASU is Arizona Sate University, which has a strong planetary program. Some Google Moon images are from SELENE (Kaguya), some are from NASA.

Who says it is a fake? There are plenty of ways erroneous features can be generated without deliberate fakery.

I agree. But this object isn't like a data drop-out glitch, or bits of black that appear in some places on the lunar surface, or terrain that gets repeated like a wallpaper pattern in some places in Google Earth or Moon. It's a single, large object with a definite shape to it so I'm not sure how a simple data glitch could put it there.

There are other ways of generating image defects that don't involve data drop outs. For example there are excellent images of the Moon from the Lunar orbiter program. These were shot on film which was developed on board, scanned, and transmitted back to Earth. Some of these images contain a range of defects, including bubbles, holes, scratches, and small bits of debris. These are all real objects in the images, except they are not on the Moon but in the camera. If these were used for Google Moon they would have been be scanned to convert them to digital imagery. This can introduce further defects through objects on the scanner glass or lens. Again real objects, but not on the Moon. Lunar Orbiter wasn't the only film camera to be used in lunar orbit. The Apollo CSM on almost all missions carried a range of film mapping cameras of varying resolutions.

This is why it is important to know which image this feature is on and its history, and whether it appears in other copies of the image. If it appears in all copies then it is likely to be something in the orginal camera (or even on the Moon), if just on Google Moon then something that was accidentally created in the process they used to create it.

Here's a page that explains how Google Moon works. This is an extract from that page:

We've included four different types of data in Google Moon:
Visible - A mosaic of images taken by the Clementine mission. This is a black-and-white version of what you would see if you were in orbit around the moon. This composite imagery was prepared by the USGS.
Elevation - A lunar terrain map generated by the USGS in conjunction with the The Unified Lunar Control Network 2005, and shaded using an airbrushed shaded relief map. This map is color-coded by altitude, so you can use the color key at the lower left to estimate elevations.
Apollo - A collection of placemarks that tell the story of the Apollo missions that landed on the moon. This includes stories, quotes, images, panoramas, audio clips, and links to videos of the astronauts' adventures on the lunar surface.
Charts - A collection of geological and topographic charts of various regions of the moon ...

The problem is that is inaccurate, or at best incomplete. There is no mention of of the Kaguya imagery, for example.

Every image of the Moon has a unique image number. The same with every image of the Earth, for that matter. I know in Google Earth you can find the specific base images used, I found this out by accident one day and have not been able to get it back. You should be able to do the same on Google Moon. Once you have the image number you can get it from other sources.

I called the Daily Telegraph news desk yesterday and followed up with an e-mail giving the co-ordinates and a link to this thread. The papers have printed stories in the past about anomalies in Google Earth (such as that "Atlantis" thing for example) so maybe they'll be interested in this.

I wish people would not use "anomalies" in this way. An anomaly is simply something that stands out from the background. Unfortunately the woo woo crowd use it to mean "evidence for aliens, grand unified conspiracies, and things of that sort".

The trouble with senduing such stuff to the newspaper is that they will generally either ignore it if there is no story, or sensationalise it.

I also just sent an e-mail to NASA, giving them the Google Moon co-ordinates and a link to this thread as well. I asked them to forward my e-mail to USGS, Google or any other experts as neccessary. Maybe we'll get an answer from somebody soon.

You could also contact Google. That should be the first step, as they created the image you see in the first place. That is what NASA or the USGS would do if they follow up your request. They would need to find out the base image number from Google and proceed from there. Or you could contact the astrogeology program at ASU.

edited for clarity & spelling

 

[JonClarke]

I never said I had evidence of any top secret space project. If there are top secret space projects, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't know anything about it......Ya know cause of the Top Secret part.

You aserted there might have been such missions. You said: but that just leaves more to the imagination to what the good ol' US of A have been up to with the Top- Secret project

Unless you have any evidence for secret missions to the Moon is just baseless speculation to asert there might be. Since you have no evidence why bother making the assertion? It just muddies the waters.

We do know about top secret projects. They have funding allocations, project names and numbers, contracts. It is just the details that are secret. There are a whole range of highly classified military space projects of which only the broadest details are known. We do know they exist, however. And once they have been launched they are even harder to hide. Amateur satellite trackers are very good at identifying these secret missions. Let alone intelligence agencies from a dozen or more nations with space tracking capability.

There were no secret missions to the Moon outside fiction.

 

[jim48]

Hmmm ... ok SpeedFreek if that's how it's done in Google Moon, then a fake would be a lot easier. It would still have to be somebody faking it at Google or NASA or wherever though (unless somebody hacked into the image database of course.)

If somebody at Google Or NASA is responsible, then they need a jolly good smacked bottom, in my opinion. :evil:

I would vote for someone at Google faking it. Sort of like the kid who was supposedly on the silver flying saucer balloon a couple of months back. Smersh, over here in good old USA we have a saying: If something seems too good to be true then it probably is. We have another saying: Too bad the British never learned how to cook. :lol:

 

[JonClarke]

Hmmm ... ok SpeedFreek if that's how it's done in Google Moon, then a fake would be a lot easier. It would still have to be somebody faking it at Google or NASA or wherever though (unless somebody hacked into the image database of course.)

If somebody at Google Or NASA is responsible, then they need a jolly good smacked bottom, in my opinion. :evil:

I would vote for someone at Google faking it. Sort of like the kid who was supposedly on the silver flying saucer balloon a couple of months back. Smersh, over here in good old USA we have a saying: If something seems too good to be true then it probably is.

Accusing Google of faking an image is a serious business. What is your evidence for deliberate intent to deceive? So far there is no evidence that it is a fake, as opposed to the possibility of a defect in the original image or in the uploading process.

 

[a_lost_packet_]

The most likely explanation is either a software glitch/corruption or something similar with the original data.

An intentional fake opens one up for liability, gets one fired and puts one up as a potential candidate for constant harassment by woos.

It doesn't look like anything I'd expect to see of a structure showing up in one of those photographs. The contrast is simply too strong and the details ("shadows" and "highlights"), at that resolution, too clear for my sensibilities. Looks like a big booger on a piece of film or a jumble of pixels that the software just lumped altogether in one section.

 

[Wellington1114]

I never said I had evidence of any top secret space project. If there are top secret space projects, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't know anything about it......Ya know cause of the Top Secret part.

You aserted there might have been such missions. You said: but that just leaves more to the imagination to what the good ol' US of A have been up to with the Top- Secret project

Unless you have any evidence for secret missions to the Moon is just baseless speculation to asert there might be. Since you have no evidence why bother making the assertion? It just muddies the waters.

We do know about top secret projects. They have funding allocations, project names and numbers, contracts. It is just the details that are secret. There are a whole range of highly classified military space projects of which only the broadest details are known. We do know they exist, however. And once they have been launched they are even harder to hide. Amateur satellite trackers are very good at identifying these secret missions. Let alone intelligence agencies from a dozen or more nations with space tracking capability.

There were no secret missions to the Moon outside fiction.

Ok. I highely doubt you would know for sure, even if you spent your entire life researching top secret projects. Their are many different levels of top secret, and you would only know about the ones that they want you to know about.

 

[a_lost_packet_]

...There were no secret missions to the Moon outside fiction.

Ok. I highely doubt you would know for sure, even if you spent your entire life researching top secret projects. Their are many different levels of top secret, and you would only know about the ones that they want you to know about.

...

YOU CAN'T HIDE A MISSION TO THE MOON.

There, said it.

It'd be like the old "Elephant in the Room." You couldn't avoid having it exposed. Every industrial nation with a eyeball and an interest at looking up would be able to see it, figuratively speaking. You'd have to cover it with another mission and the capabilities of those missions ARE well known. There is no way that any Moon mission could have brought along a few extra hundred tons of construction materials and equipment. It is simply not possible to "hide" a Secret mission to the Moon.

Simply declaring everything is possible by stamping "SECRET" on it doesn't make it so. You can not make a rational, legitimate claim based on NO EVIDENCE. That's what you are trying to do when you say that there were "Secret" missions and those are the cause of whatever phenomenon you're thinking about.

 

[Smersh]

... I wish people would not use "anomalies" in this way. An anomaly is simply something that stands out from the background. Unfortunately the woo woo crowd use it to mean "evidence for aliens, grand unified conspiracies, and things of that sort" ...

Perhaps I'm not a member of the non woo woo crowd but I still see no reason why the word "anomaly" should not be used to describe the object in question. Here's a dictionary definition of the word "anomaly" ...

–noun, plural -lies. 1. a deviation from the common rule, type, arrangement, or form.
2. someone or something anomalous: With his quiet nature, he was an anomaly in his exuberant family.
3. an odd, peculiar, or strange condition, situation, quality, etc.
4. an incongruity or inconsistency.
5. Astronomy. a quantity measured in degrees, defining the position of an orbiting body with respect to the point at which it is nearest to or farthest from its primary.
6. Meteorology. the amount of deviation of a meteorological quantity from the accepted normal value of that quantity.
7. Grammar. irregularity

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/anomaly

I would say that numbers 3 and 4 above are perfect for the strange object we're talking about, because it's something that one would not expect to be there, particularly as it's in the Sea of Serenity and therefore surrounded by a relatively flat and barren landscape. If it was in a mountainous region it would possibly blend in with the general terrain better and wouldn't immediately be apparent as an anomaly.

The trouble with senduing such stuff to the newspaper is that they will generally either ignore it if there is no story, or sensationalise it ...

My guess is they'll ignore it. The British MP's are all back in Parliament now so the silly season (when most of the fake UFO and crop circle stories etc get invented to fill up space) is over. If they do publish it though, at least we should get an answer from somebody at Google, the USGS or wherever quite quickly I would have thought.

... You could also contact Google. That should be the first step, as they created the image you see in the first place. That is what NASA or the USGS would do if they follow up your request. They would need to find out the base image number from Google and proceed from there. Or you could contact the astrogeology program at ASU.

Yes, I may contact Google as Google Moon is their programme of course and everyone else such as NASA, USGS etc are partners in that. Still I've sent a mail to NASA now anyway so I'll see if I get any response over the next few days.

 

[spodliska]

Smersh... VERY NICE POST!!!

It is nice to SEE that even though NO ONE has any ABSOLUTE answers to "what ever this is or is not"..... that it is STILL VERY MUCH OK to OPENLY DISCUSS such questions as this!!! VERY NICE!!

.. & from "hear say" (for what ever such may or may not be worth)... I heard of one such person who "said" he had been exposured to ONE such MOON related "BASE" by United States "intelegence" personel via the "COAST to COAST" readio program, yet I don't remember the person who suggested this and or if he named any REAL names so as to possibly validate and or "better pursue" where "this" information could lead to!!!!!! ??????

Anywho..AGAIN... VERY NICE POST... for OPENLY ASKING & EXPLORING more and more questions to potentially someday have "better" answers to WHAT THIS IS!!!

 

[jim48]

BROTHER SPODLISKA you are going to drive MeteorWayne crazy with YOUR WRITING style. In FACT YOU already are!!! KEEP UP THE good work!!! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[JonClarke]

Ok. I highely doubt you would know for sure, even if you spent your entire life researching top secret projects. Their are many different levels of top secret, and you would only know about the ones that they want you to know about.

Sorry, it does not work that way. You can't prove or disprove a negative statement, only positive ones. That is why if you think that there may have secret missions to the Moon it is up to you to provide evidence.

That said you can show on probabilistic grounds that the possibility of not only secret but completely clandestine launches are extremely unlikely and impossible to hide. Which is why even top secret missions are not hidden, just their details are classified.

You can't hide satellite launches. There are not many sites to start with, most of those are in or near near populated areas, launches from the few that aren't fly over populatedf areas on the way in orbit. The launches are visble over tens of thousands of square km, even to the casual public. Once in orbit the payloads can be followed by amateur satellite trackers who are really qyuite good with their hobby, let alone by the dozen or more nations (often antagonistic) with satellite tracking capability. An unannounced launch is a violation of international law, would be detected within minutes, and be denounced globally.

There have been no known clandestine missions to the Moon. Given the extreme unliklihood of such a mission being undetetced, and the complete absence of such missions there is no reason to think otherwise. And no reason for to assert that it might have happened.

 

[lildreamer]

well lets try another approach....
the features
Finsch 23.6 N 21.3 E
Deseilligny 21.1 N 20.6 E

are relatively close to your feature that is being discussed - can our community find low-res hi-res or any media/pictures of those features and the surrounding area...especially for Deseilligny - iv'e tried but come up short....
then see if that feature appears in those photos - simple no...

edit - spelling mistakes...

 

[Mee_n_Mac]

Hey guys

I saw that tonight on the Science Channel, there's a program on called "Tank on the moon". It's about the Us and Soviet race to the moon, it contains new information (supposedly kept as a secret, for one reason or another) that was released from russian archives about programs that put 2 remote control vehicles on the moon.

I guess this happened leading up to the apollo missions, It reminded me of this discussion and the picture so I thought id spread the word.

The Lunakhods were during the Apollo program, not before. And they weren't exactly secret as they were widely reported in the media at the time and much scientific data published in peer reviewed international journals. Of course a lot of the specifications and background information was not public information until the post Soviet era.

Just to add a link to what JonClarke said ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_programme

Great work by the USSR !

 

[Mee_n_Mac]

As for the anomoly ... I'm gonna say it's a peice of Pompeii blasted to the Moon when Vesuvius erupted. Note the similarities to the below ;

I'd say that's pretty conclusive don't cha think ?





(either it's an ancient Roman villa or it's a Lego ... but I'm betting on villa)

 

[Wellington1114]

Hey all im saying is you can't be so sure. I gaurantee that there are top secret projects that nobody has any knowledge of. Not nescessarily space projects. Now of course I don't have evidence of that claim, if I did that would contradict everything I just said.

Im not suggesting they are keeping it from the rest of worlds powers. If anythingthey would only be keeping it from the public eye, with the aid of other governments.

 

[Smersh]

FYI - I haven't heard anything back from either NASA or the Daily Telegraph yet. I'll give it a while longer to see if NASA reply then if I've not heard anything I'll contact Google as Jon suggested.

I suppose I could give it to The Sun as it would be right up their street :lol: (although I'd be reluctant to give them my real name as they'd almost certainly misquote me. ) I can just imagine the story now ...

Alien Spaceship Found on Moon

Oooh-errr Missus - what ave we got 'ere??

Amazing evidence of little green men from outer space has been found on the Moon. Kevin Brinkthorpe, a 43 year old estate agent from Neasden, North London, was browsing through Google Moon yesterday when he came across this incredible object:

"I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this. I immediately showed it to my wife Hilda and she couldn't believe it either!" said Kevin, 56.

"This is indeed quite an astonishing find and needs to be investigated urgently," said Nick Pope, the 29 year-old former chief of the MoD UFO Investigations Dept. "What we have here is clear evidence of

(Cont'd on page 94)

:shock:

 

[jim48]

Looks like you got scooped, Smersh! Have you contacted these folks yet? www.enterprisemission.com

 

[JonClarke]

Hey all im saying is you can't be so sure. I gaurantee that there are top secret projects that nobody has any knowledge of. Not nescessarily space projects. Now of course I don't have evidence of that claim, if I did that would contradict everything I just said.

Im not suggesting they are keeping it from the rest of worlds powers. If anythingthey would only be keeping it from the public eye, with the aid of other governments.

In a movie or an airport novel perhaps such a thing is possible. In the real world even highly classified projects have appropriations and rfeview committees and paper trails, even if the details are secret. Sometimes relatively small things can be hidden within other line items, but a satellite program, especially a lunar probe, is so big that this can't be done.

But even if it were hidden from the process of governance you can't hide a satellite launch from interested members of the public, any more than you can hide a new comet or nova. Satellite trackers are just dedicated and independent as amateur astronomers and just as talkative. The Soviet Union could not hide any launchers from these trackers, the US certainly can't either, or China, or anybody else. Even if governments were all in on it, it couldn't be kept a secret.

Secret moon missions are entertaining but exist only in fiction. It is michievious to suggest otherwise.

 

[BoJangles2]

It’s probably just 2 craters close together that have been rendered weirdly by the stupid Google software.
I can tell you what it isn’t though…
It isn’t alien.
It isn’t top secret government stuff.
It isn’t secret in anyway.
It isn’t a moon base.

To think otherwise is silly.

 

[jim48]

It’s probably just 2 craters close together that have been rendered weirdly by the stupid Google software.
I can tell you what it isn’t though…
It isn’t alien.
It isn’t top secret government stuff.
It isn’t secret in anyway.
It isn’t a moon base.

To think otherwise is silly.

I wouldn't be so fast to rule out a moon base. Where do you think all those cats with lime peels on their heads come from?