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

[aphh]

I didn't bother to read the whole thread (too much inane rubbish that really does not belong here to my opinion), so pardon me if this question was already asked and explained, but it says in the very first image that "image by JAXA / Selene".

Is this material from Selene? Because if it is, it may be a radar based 3D model and rendering instead of an actual photograph. JAXA radar mapped or laser altitude mapped the entire surface of the moon with high precision to produce very realistic 3D renders of the surface of the moon.

If this can be confirmed, that it is a 3D rendering based on the altitude data, then the feature is on the surface of the moon.

 

[jim48]

I didn't bother to read the whole thread (too much inane rubbish that really does not belong here to my opinion), so pardon me if this question was already asked and explained, but it says in the very first image that "image by JAXA / Selene".

Is this material from Selene? Because if it is, it may be a radar based 3D model and rendering instead of an actual photograph. JAXA radar mapped or laser altitude mapped the entire surface of the moon with high precision to produce very realistic 3D renders of the surface of the moon.

If this can be confirmed, that it is a 3D rendering based on the altitude data, then the feature is on the surface of the moon.

That's the best explanation I've heard thus far.

 

[JonClarke]

But all this is a degression. Rather than playing games, why don't you determine whether the feature in the OP is actually there? That would actually be useful.

I'm truly surprised I have to read and participate in discussions like this here on space.com, but since the same style seems to prevail on numerous other places these days, perhaps it is not so surprising after all.

Yers, it is pesky when people ask for evidence to back up your assertions, isn't it?

There is hardly a way to obtain data about the feature, or other similar interesting features on the Moon, without a mission to actually go there and get the data. For this I have suggested a Moon mission by the citizens, that would observe interesting features not recognized by the existing missions.

It's a lot cheaper find out whether the feature is real first. It would be a shame to spend a lot lot of money sending a mission to the Moon to check out something that terms out to be somebody's dandruff on the platen glass.

I made estimations about the cost and some very preliminary planning in the other threads. Unless such mission can be done, it is pretty pointless to continue the debate with nothing but just conceptual evidence.

Not pointless at all. Is this image really in the data or not?

Also, the lack of such mission funded directly by citizens tells me we can safely say there is a government monopoly on moon missions, which may affect the reporting about the missions to be one-sided.

Since there are many governments involved it is not a monopoly. What evidence do you have that reporting is one sided?

 

[JonClarke]

Sorry, you are still getting things round the wrong way. It is mischieveous to continually suggest that there have been secret missions in the absence of any evidence.

Actually, I'm getting everything the right way and I'm always careful trying not to make claims I could not back. If there was evidence for a secret mission, it wouldn't be secret, now would it?

You are assuming that just because something is secret there is no evidence for it. It is like saying that there are invisible cats in your garden and then when asked for evidence saying there isn't any because they are invisible.

When you systematically deny possibility of a secret mission using autohoritative argumentation...

In the absence of evidence for such missions, and the presence of good evidence that there can be no clandestine launches without someone finding out, there is good reason fopr such statements.

especially in the light of all the black projects and wrongdoings of governments of the world over the centuries...

We are not talking about general wrong doings by governments, or even Grand Unified Conspiracy Theories(TM), but a specific case for which I have asked repeatedly for evidence a request you have repeatedly avoided and obfuscated.

and not even admit the possibility that there might have been something secret that we're not allowed to know, it does sound like you have a vested interest in doing so.

The possibility is not the issue. The issue is the evidence. Where is it?

When we systematically deny something, we also want to achieve something.

Such as?

We want to achieve that what is being denied is not even allowed the possibility to exist thus effectively ruling out one valid path of research whether something existed or not.

I am denying it because there is no evidence. What's your evidence?

You can not say something did not exist just because there was no evidence for it. This is why research is made, to find out conclusively whether something exists or not.

The difficulty of demonstrating a negative is why I have been repeatedly asking you for evidence of your secret missions.

It is extremely difficult to hide a space mission. Because of this the absence of evidence is also positive evidence that such missions did not occur.

If you want to propose such Moon missions, when were they launched? Where were they launched? What booster did they use? How were they tracked and communicated with? Who built them? What was their mission? How were they funded? What agency managed them?

Without microscope you would not know whether bacteria exists, yet you might want to deny the possibility of the existence of a bacteria, because it suits your purposes.

Without evidence for bacteria disbelief in them would entirely justified. However without images of bacteria we could still deduce their presence on epidemiological grounds. This is what put people on the track of viruses.

In the absence of evidence for secret missions you are like somebody arguing for witchcraft as a cause of disease.

If you are being honest, you will atleast admit that. An opinion is still just an opinion, not a fact, no matter how much conceptual evidence you might have gathered.

Opinions are not equal. You have not produced any evidence for secret missions. Whereas there is good evidence that no secret mission would go undetected. Which bit of "I should provide evidence to support my assertion" do you not understand?

 

[aphh]

Without evidence for bacteria disbelief in them would entirely justified. However without images of bacteria we could still deduce their presence on epidemiological grounds. This is what put people on the track of viruses.

In the absence of evidence for secret missions you are like somebody arguing for witchcraft as a cause of disease.

Again you try to make it look like I insist there was a secret mission or conspiracy, when this is not the case at all. When you do that, this tells me you are not being entirely honest. You seem to have a reason to try to categorize myself and perhaps others as "woo-woos" or who knows what. We can only guess what the reason is.

Without a microscope you would be the one saying a curse or something else is making the food go rot, whereas I would be the one saying let's find out whether it's a curse or microbe and let's invent microscope to find the facts.

Opinions are not equal. You have not produced any evidence for secret missions. Whereas there is good evidence that no secret mission would go undetected. Which bit of "I should provide evidence to support my assertion" do you not understand?

There is no opinion or claim from my part, even if you insisted, so there is no need for evidence but research. I want to find out, not invent an ideology and then shove it down people's throats, as you are effectively doing. You may be well informed, or atleast better informed than some people here, but you need to learn to admit, that it is only unlikely there was a secret mission. Not impossible, just unlikely.

Saying this is not just factually correct, it is also polite and considers other people's opinions and leaves door open for alternative explanations. This is something that a grown up person without an agenda would do, and what I would expect from a moderator on Space.com.

I'm like Galileo, I want to know whether Jupiter has moons or not. I don't insist Jupiter has moons, as I have yet to invent the telescope. Without inventing the telescope first there can be no evidence for the moons of Jupiter, so there is no need to insist they exist.

Having said all this, I'm pretty much done with the conceptual debates, so we can continue research the feature itself.

 

[CalliArcale]

Monumental waste of money.

I’ve checked this feature in nasa worldwind moon images, and its nonexistent.

Let’s leave moon missions up to people who actually know what they are doing.

Thank you for doing that legwork; it's kinda what I suspected. Did you get to look at the actual source images or just other images of the same site? I'm vaguely curious at what point the artifact got in.

While doing some poking around for artifacts on pictures of Earth, I found this:
"Packing tape" in Kyrgyzstan

 

[kelvinzero]

I checked worldwind for my squiggle at 20° 9'0.18"N 19°50'20.22"E but it also appears to be missing. Still, I guess that is what everybody has been saying:

I saw snakes on a plain but it was rubbish.

 

[aphh]

Aren't you jumping into conclusions too hastily?

The very first image says: Image by USGS / JAXA / Selene and the second image that shows the feature from top says image by NASA / ASU.

This indicates that there is a possibility that the feature exists on 2 separate data sets. The first image suggests the feature has height, so we can assume that this data originates from Selene's altitude data.

If the feature does not appear on 3rd data set, what does that tell you? It tells me, that perhaps the feature was no longer there when the 3rd data set was produced.

We have 2 valid paths of research here, one where the feature is or atleast was on the surface of the Moon, and the other where the feature was added later in the post-processing of the data. That the feature does not exist in 3rd data set does not yet render the first path invalid, that the feature once might have been on the surface of the Moon and captured in more than just one data set.

 

[SpeedFreek]

There is also the distinct possibility that the artefact was introduced when these datasets were inserted into Google Earth. This is the most likely scenario, seeing as the artefact does not match its surroundings.

 

[aphh]

There is also the distinct possibility that the artefact was introduced when these datasets were inserted into Google Earth. This is the most likely scenario, seeing as the artefact does not match its surroundings.

A prank by an employee is not out of the question.

 

[silylene]

I checked worldwind for my squiggle at 20° 9'0.18"N 19°50'20.22"E but it also appears to be missing. Still, I guess that is what everybody has been saying:

I saw snakes on a plain but it was rubbish.

Must've slithered away before the second photo was taken.

 

[Smersh]

There is also the distinct possibility that the artefact was introduced when these datasets were inserted into Google Earth. This is the most likely scenario, seeing as the artefact does not match its surroundings.

A prank by an employee is not out of the question.

That seems to me to be the most likely explanation. The object seems too well-defined to me and with a definite shape to it, to be dirt on the camera lens or a data glitch such as the Google Earth one that Calli linked from Kyrgyzstan.

 

[BoJangles2]

If it was a prank they did a lot of them, there are heaps of similar features in the same band. In my opinion this is not a prank, just unintentional artifacts either at the image level or the data processing level.

No moon bases, no pranks, no conspiracies, no moving objects, just a bunch of squiggles dots and blobs, case closed.

 

[jim48]

If it was a prank they did a lot of them, there are heaps of similar features in the same band. In my opinion this is not a prank, just unintentional artifacts either at the image level or the data processing level.

No moon bases, no pranks, no conspiracies, no moving objects, just a bunch of squiggles dots and blobs, case closed.

As the only real, genuine, bonafide, honesty-to-God scientist here at SDC, well, what he said! :lol:

 

[aphh]

As the only real, genuine, bonafide, honesty-to-God scientist here at SDC, well, what he said! :lol:

I have to admit, that when I first learned about the leaked emails and the unethical methods by the "leading climate scientists" this weekend, I instantly thought about Space.com and the angry "scientists" here. :lol:

The climate "scientists" were combating disinformation, but when they themselves produced it, that was business as usual. :roll:

 

[Smersh]

If it was a prank they did a lot of them, there are heaps of similar features in the same band. In my opinion this is not a prank, just unintentional artifacts either at the image level or the data processing level.

No moon bases, no pranks, no conspiracies, no moving objects, just a bunch of squiggles dots and blobs, case closed.

Squiggles, dots and blobs such as the ones you posted earlier are nothing like the same thing as this:

That is an object with a definite shape. Looks like a McDonalds drive in restaurant or something and that's what makes me suspect a prank by a Google employee as the most likely explanation. I don't see how that can be dirt on a camera lens or a random data glitch.

I downloaded World Wind last night and am trying to get the hang of it (I still need to read up a bit on the help pages though as it's not as user-friendly as Google Earth it seems.) Unfortunately, the lunar photos seem to be very dark and nothing like as clear as they are in Google Moon (but that might be because of my graphics card, as it's a pretty basic one.)

Can you post a picture of what shows at that same spot, or just describe what's there please? Is it just mostly flat ground similar to what surrounds the object in the picture I posted? Can you see the same, or similar craters nearby?

Thanks.

 

[aphh]

If I wanted to hide a real feature, I'd make sure the images or data contained "fake" features aswell, perhaps something that looked like scanning artifacts etc.

This way if somebody found a real feature that went unnoticed, there would always be fake features also to make it impossible to distinguish a real feature from a fake feature.

 

[aphh]

Smersh, do you find any resemblance of that feature to this feature I found in a old image from Copernicus crater:

The Google feature is about 10 degrees farther up North and about 40 degrees eastward, so it's not terribly far from Copernicus. Actually I should be able to calculate the distance between these two locations using basic spherical trigonometry, the formula is cos x = cos 41.1 * cos 9.7 * cos 19.6 + sin 9.7 * sin 19.6 = 40.9 degrees distance between these features, which would be roughly 1240 kilometers on the moon (pi * 3474 km * 40.9 / 360).

The features seem to be further apart than I originally thought.

 

[BoJangles2]

If it was a prank they did a lot of them, there are heaps of similar features in the same band. In my opinion this is not a prank, just unintentional artifacts either at the image level or the data processing level.

No moon bases, no pranks, no conspiracies, no moving objects, just a bunch of squiggles dots and blobs, case closed.

Squiggles, dots and blobs such as the ones you posted earlier are nothing like the same thing as this:

That is an object with a definite shape. Looks like a McDonalds drive in restaurant or something and that's what makes me suspect a prank by a Google employee as the most likely explanation. I don't see how that can be dirt on a camera lens or a random data glitch.

I downloaded World Wind last night and am trying to get the hang of it (I still need to read up a bit on the help pages though as it's not as user-friendly as Google Earth it seems.) Unfortunately, the lunar photos seem to be very dark and nothing like as clear as they are in Google Moon (but that might be because of my graphics card, as it's a pretty basic one.)

Can you post a picture of what shows at that same spot, or just describe what's there please? Is it just mostly flat ground similar to what surrounds the object in the picture I posted? Can you see the same, or similar craters nearby?

Thanks.

To view the feature in worldwind you’ll have to convert degrees to decimal to start with. It’s not as clear, but it should be visible.

Also this isn’t a unique artifact, there are actually many similar features in the same band on Google earth, I posted one earlier and called it Michael Jacksons moon base but unfortunately the picture was too large and got truncated on the page.

 

[phaze]

That's no smudge.... that's a starba.... err... I think it's a bank with a drive-thru.

I'd say there is a 99.9% chance that's a prank.

 

[MeteorWayne]

I think it's far more likely it's an honest mistake...a piece of debris photographed during the transcription from the original images (in whatever form) to the Google database.

 

[Smersh]

Smersh, do you find any resemblance of that feature to this feature I found in a old image from Copernicus crater:

The Google feature is about 10 degrees farther up North and about 40 degrees eastward, so it's not terribly far from Copernicus. Actually I should be able to calculate the distance between these two locations using basic spherical trigonometry, the formula is cos x = cos 41.1 * cos 9.7 * cos 19.6 + sin 9.7 * sin 19.6 = 40.9 degrees distance between these features, which would be roughly 1240 kilometers on the moon (pi * 3474 km * 40.9 / 360).

The features seem to be further apart than I originally thought.

I hadn't seen that one before Aphh, but from the picture you posted I can't see any resemblance. Have you found it in Google Moon as well, or just on the old photo?

 

[silylene]

...

That is an object with a definite shape. Looks like a McDonalds drive in restaurant or something and that's what makes me suspect a prank by a Google employee as the most likely explanation. I don't see how that can be dirt on a camera lens or a random data glitch. ....

Thanks.

Actually, after some pondering, I finally realized where I had previously seen this weird image artifact on the moon. It looks a lot like the Alamo in San Antonio Texas from an airplane. So much so, I think someone cut and pasted a blurred image of the Alamo onto the moon as a hoax:

 

[aphh]

I hadn't seen that one before Aphh, but from the picture you posted I can't see any resemblance. Have you found it in Google Moon as well, or just on the old photo?

Only in that old image from the 60ies. Unfortunately I don't have Google Moon installed at this point.

If I had the time, I'd email JAXA and ask if they could check from their raw data whether they can see the feature or not at that location. Also, I'd draw a line between the two features, this one and the one at Copernicus, and check the area surrounding the connceting line for possible features.

Unfortunately no time to do that research right now.

 

[Smersh]

For info, I've now sent an e-mail to Google about this, as I didn't hear back from either NASA or the Daily Telegraph.