[Tron]

Hi All,

It's been a while.  I couldn't help but take this most recent photo of the dark side of the moon by NASA's DSCOVR satellite very seriously. 



This satellite orbits more than a million miles above earth's surface and this is there first public photo.  What's strikes me most is the apparent size of the Moon and Earth.  Most photos from the moon show the earth as a small dot.  Obviously, within this photo the moon looks smaller and nearer to earth. I think this fits well within the Flat Earth notion of the cosmos.

Here's a good article by HuffPost with more details above DSCOVR:  https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nasa-photo-moon-dark-side_n_55c23d3ae4b0138b0bf4abb5

[stack]

This satellite orbits more than a million miles above earth's surface and this is there first public photo.  What's strikes me most is the apparent size of the Moon and Earth.  Most photos from the moon show the earth as a small dot.  Obviously, within this photo the moon looks smaller and nearer to earth. I think this fits well within the Flat Earth notion of the cosmos.

Why wouldn't it look like that from 1 million miles out?

[astroman]

I couldn't help but take this most recent photo of the dark side of the moon by NASA's DSCOVR satellite very seriously.

So there is absolutely no chance that this sort of photo could have been produced by Photoshop?  Take an image of the Earth taken from space by a satellite and then paste a photo of a grey disk that looks kind of like the Moon and plant it on top of the image of Earth.  You could then resize the image of the Moon to whatever you wanted.

I couldn't help but take this most recent photo of the dark side of the moon

Don't you mean 'far side' of the Moon because through the course of a month the entire Moons surface gets illuminated by sunlight.

Most photos from the moon show the earth as a small dot

Care to provide a link to such a photo?  As seen from the Moon the Earth has a diameter on the lunar sky of 2.5 degrees or 5x the apparent diameter of the Moon as seen from Earth.

[DuncanDoenitz]

Obviously they are using a lens with a long focal length, so distant objects look closer to each other.  Its the same reason that Formula 1 cars look closer together and travelling slower when the TV camera zooms in to the far end of a long straight.  And how do we reconcile a satellite at an altitude of "several million miles" with a flat-Earth dome? 

Also, I think you mean the far side of the moon.

There is no Dark Side of the Moon really; as a matter of fact, its all dark. 

[astroman]

And how do we reconcile a satellite at an altitude of "several million miles" with a flat-Earth dome?

Absolutely. On one hand you have the FEers who seem happy to talk about satellite images of the Earth taken from an L point and then  on the other you get others who deny that satellites even exist but are just some sort of projection onto this non-existent dome.

So which is it?

[Tron]

Okay, here's the photo i'm referring to that is pretty common in space media:

Earth Rise

You can read more about "Earth Rise" Pictures here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise

As you can see, the earth is much smaller compared to the moon as opposed to the very large earth compared to the moon in the new DSCVR shot. 

Stack, using your image (which is great btw) it looks like if somebody was standing on the moon, they would be dwarfed by a very large earth which you don't see in the "Earth Rise" picture above.

Astro it's definitely possible that the whole thing could be photoshopped to some level.

Dunkin, I think you have the most reasonable counterargument...   Using a long focal length lens or something similar you can produce an image like this based on research.

Regarding the 1 million Mile Mark, I am more interested in showing you the relative distance Dscvr is from the earth and moon - like Stack's image illustrates.

Any of the above theories have some elements of truth but none can be ruled out I feel.

[astroman]

I found this sequence of images of the Moon transiting the Earth as seen from the Dscvr satellite.  Of which your image is one frame.

https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/galleries/2015/lunar_transit

This is exactly what you would expect to see surely given that the Earth is much bigger than the Moon. How does this image in any way provide any evidence to suggest the Earth is flat?

As for your other image, this was taken obviously very much closer to the Moon compared to the Earth at over 380,000km away so again no surprises there.  At such close proximity to the Moon it would look a lot bigger than the Earth.

Seems to me that you are seeing what you want to believe rather than perhaps what the photos are actually showing you.

Regarding this comment you made earlier...

This satellite orbits more than a million miles above earth's surface

There is really no direction as such in space so what makes you say 'above' Earths surface rather than simply a million miles away from Earth?

[Tumeni]

Okay, here's the photo i'm referring to that is pretty common in space media:

Earth Rise (IMG)

As you can see, the earth is much smaller compared to the moon as opposed to the very large earth compared to the moon in the new DSCVR shot. 

Stack, using your image (which is great btw) it looks like if somebody was standing on the moon, they would be dwarfed by a very large earth which you don't see in the "Earth Rise" picture above.

Astro it's definitely possible that the whole thing could be photoshopped to some level.

Your earthrise is not an original single-frame photo. I really don't care if it's "pretty common in space media", all you've done is lift it from Imgur, according to the image address; there's no provenance to  it, and nothing to suggest that NASA claims any ownership of it. It has no worth in terms of drawing comparison between DSCOVR and Apollo photos.

[stack]

As you can see, the earth is much smaller compared to the moon as opposed to the very large earth compared to the moon in the new DSCVR shot. 

Stack, using your image (which is great btw) it looks like if somebody was standing on the moon, they would be dwarfed by a very large earth which you don't see in the "Earth Rise" picture above.

Astro it's definitely possible that the whole thing could be photoshopped to some level.

Dunkin, I think you have the most reasonable counterargument...   Using a long focal length lens or something similar you can produce an image like this based on research.

Regarding the 1 million Mile Mark, I am more interested in showing you the relative distance Dscvr is from the earth and moon - like Stack's image illustrates.

Any of the above theories have some elements of truth but none can be ruled out I feel.

I'm not sure I follow. The Moon is allegedly approx. 1/4 the size of Earth. The Moon is allegedly approx. 240,000 miles from Earth, give or take.

Now standing on the Moon, start walking another 760,000 miles away from the Earth. Turn around and look back at the Moon in front of the Earth. What would you expect to see?

[astroman]

I am not in any way any kind of conspiracy theorist but I am pretty experienced when it comes to being an amateur astronomer. That Earthrise photo that Metatron has posted just doesn't look right. The large crater just left of centre looks suspiciously like the crater Copernicus for example which has a diameter approaching 50 miles. That being the case those footprints to the right of the crater are truly enormous!

So something just ain't right there...

[stack]

Apparently, giants on the moon. If you do an image search using the image posted, you get all sorts of, shall we say, artistic renderings. Probably one of the more famous "Earthrise" images is the one from the wiki page cited:



Taken by Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders on December 24, 1968, at mission time 075:49:07 [8] (16:40 UTC), while in orbit around the Moon, showing the Earth rising for the third time above the lunar horizon. The lunar horizon is approximately 780 kilometers from the spacecraft. Width of the photographed area at the lunar horizon is about 175 kilometers. [9] The land mass visible just above the terminator line is west Africa.

[Pete Svarrior]

The "Earthrise" image MetaTron posted is a stock image from Getty. It is obviously not meant to be taken as a photograph.

[AATW]

The earth's diameter is 12,742km
The moon's is 3,475
The distance from the earth to the moon is 384,400
And the satellite is at a distance of 1609344 (I just converted 1,000,000 miles to km)

Using this angular size calculator: http://www.1728.org/angsize.htm

Angular size of earth from 1609344km = 0.45364 Degrees
Angular size of moon from 1,224,944km (1609344-384,400) = 0.16254 Degrees

0.45364 / 0.16254 = 2.79

So the earth should be 2.79 times bigger than the moon.

If you look at the image, earth is 380 pixels, the moon is 140.
380 / 140 = 2.714

Given that the resolution is quite small, I've taken a rough Googled number for the distance to the moon and assumed the satellite is exactly a million miles away, which I doubt is the case, I'd suggest that 2.79 and 2.714 are close enough that this is pretty much what you'd expect to see from this distance.

[AATW]

What's strikes me most is the apparent size of the Moon and Earth.  Most photos from the moon show the earth as a small dot.  Obviously, within this photo the moon looks smaller and nearer to earth. I think this fits well within the Flat Earth notion of the cosmos.

Using the same angular size calculator, the earth from the moon should have an angular size of 1.9 Degrees.
A bit more than a dot but yeah, pretty small. But you're comparing a photo of the earth from the moon with a photo of the earth and moon from a distance.
That's not a valid comparison. If you do the actual maths (see previous post) you'll see that the photo in terms of the moon and earth's relative sizes is what you'd expect.

[Tron]

I'm not sure I follow. The Moon is allegedly approx. 1/4 the size of Earth. The Moon is allegedly approx. 240,000 miles from Earth, give or take.

Now standing on the Moon, start walking another 760,000 miles away from the Earth. Turn around and look back at the Moon in front of the Earth. What would you expect to see?

 When you travel farther from Earth or any other object you expect it's image to get smaller.   From 240,000 miles away Earth looks smaller then the image DSCOVR shot from 1,000,000 miles away..

[AATW]

So I drew this all out, to scale. Far too big an image to post, but here's the link:

https://i.ibb.co/fnjLFyM/MoonPic1.jpg

The satellite is on the left, the earth to the right. Moon in the middle (nearer the earth than the satellite, as I said it's to scale - not perfectly, but good enough).
I drew the sight lines from the satellite to the moon and earth, this is the relevant section:



That represents what you'd see from the satellite. The inner dotted lines go to the moon, the outer ones extend to the earth, but you can take this section and it would be the relative sizes of what you'd see. I then took the image in the OP, very badly amended it so the moon is in the middle of the earth (to match my diagram), then resized and rotated the section above to match and overlaid it.
Et voila:



All pretty rough but it matches up fairly well. So, along with my maths above, the OP picture is pretty much what I'd expect to see from a million miles.

[Dual1ty]

The real question is: How gullible do you have to be to believe the data used to generate that image really came from 1 million miles away?

The answer is: Pretty much as gullible as a 5 year old who believes Santa is responsible for his presents.

[AATW]

The real question is: How gullible do you have to be to believe the data used to generate that image really came from 1 million miles away?

The answer is: Pretty much as gullible as a 5 year old who believes Santa is responsible for his presents.

If you have evidence for fakery then present it, otherwise you're just doing this:

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/personal-incredulity

[Dual1ty]

The real question is: How gullible do you have to be to believe the data used to generate that image really came from 1 million miles away?

The answer is: Pretty much as gullible as a 5 year old who believes Santa is responsible for his presents.

If you have evidence for fakery then present it, otherwise you're just doing this:

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/personal-incredulity

LOL. The onus is on the ones making the claims. If the claim is that the data came from a million miles away, you need to prove that I'm afraid. "Because NASA says so" is not proof I'm afraid.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority

A globe defender talking about fallacies is always the funniest.

[Realestfake]

You are asked to get proof you went to the moon.
You go to the moon, take pictures, take rocks back home, get video, measurements, perform experiments. You thoroughly explain how it‘s done and televise it globally.

You are again asked for proof, despite having exhausted all means of providing proof. The onus is no longer on the party that claims to have gone to the moon.

If the claim is that the data came from a million miles away, you need to prove that I'm afraid.

What, exactly, is the problem with data coming from a million miles away? I find it perfectly understandable. Maybe instead of looking for an easily digestible single fact, consider the gestalt of spaceflight and its history. For most people, the sheer breadth and depth of the industry and its achievements is more than enough proof. For some people it’s not enough, sure. I’m sure the people actually doing shady business are happy that people are wasting their time looking into space being fake.