Sometimes in arguing about this and that, we are reduced to absurdity by official truth: The view of the sky from the Moon was total blackness. Yes, I know, we are told that the cameras used by the astronauts had to be shielded from intense light and so were f-stopped down so that the surface was visible while the stars invisible. But honestly, folks, you would think that one or two of the guys who walked there would have said “Holy shit, Batman! It’s beautiful beyond belief! We gotta get a photo before we leave!”
The above image is said to be taken from the surface of Mars, and a commenter or two has noticed that Moon pictures are oddly lacking a night sky. OK, it’s NASA. They claim to have landed a rover on Mars, Curiosity, and this is the view. The panoramic view has all the colors of the rainbow, and I only grabbed what looked real, and I don’t buy all those colors, obviously doctored. This by itself is reward enough, if if is real. A big IF, as always with NASA. But we have all seen doctored images from Hubble, so we know it is amazing once we get out of Earth’s atmosphere, even after the Hubble doctors do their graphics.
By the way, I got back on Facebook after a few years absence, and have now four friends! I go by the name Iksrakot, and got past the censors. Facebook now has a feature called reels, and it runs a constant algorithm based on what I watch all the way through, feeding me more of the same. Today I listened to music, classical and contemporary, beautiful pieces like Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Dvorak’s 9th Symphony, Second Movement, and the theme from Dances With Wolves and Forrest Gump. These were all performed by major city symphony orchestras. There was some Andrew Lloyd Weber mixed in too. I am not one who looks back on the past with nostalgia. I think we live in the best possible times now. I would not go back to my fifties childhood for anything. I could never have spent an afternoon like today’s, not in the 50s, 60s, 70s or 90s … it was not better anytime in the past than it is right now.
Piece of Mindful 
Can’t buy this kind of entertainment.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/9957878897629948?fs=e&s=TIeQ9V&fs=e&fs=e
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Mark, I can hear NASA now explaining that the Mars sky photo was taken at night, while the Moon ones were taken in full daylight. They have an answer for everything, produced by experts and vetted by SNOPES. At least, in this best of all times, we are allowed to disagree and publish our disagreement.
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Are you being sarcastic, Tim? I don’t follow.
NASA doesn’t have to provide the answer – anyone with any clue would respond the same and it was the thought that came to my mind immediately.
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the most spectacular night sky i remember was Yosemite Valley in around 2000 in February when it was very cold, very dry air, with no light pollution in my cousins remote cabin. Im sure people who live at altitude in south America get to experience this all the time. Which was an incredibly spectacular sky full of light like i had never seen. I am sure the less atmosphere you have in the way and drier it gets the sky must increase in luminosity.
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Mark, I wonder if you would agree that investment in belief and prejudice make us stupid. When we are invested in our beliefs we:
— fail to pick up on and ignore items that contradict them
— make things mean what they don’t mean and don’t make things mean what they must mean
When we are invested in belief our reasoning powers are disabled, it’s almost like turning a switch.
When you have been banging on about the moon landings for as long as you have and written as many posts on the subject you should have somehow picked up that the reason there are no stars in the Apollo photos is that the astronauts were on the surface during lunar daytime … just as we don’t pick up stars in photos on earth during daytime.
This is about a basic a fact about the moon landings as you can get … and yet somehow you still haven’t taken it onboard.
Those in power know that investment in belief makes us stupid … and they prey on that investment.
I thank you though because you’ve inspired me to do some more research on the Phil Pollacia film and the two articles on Aulis by the “Russian scientists” … and guess what? you’ll never believe it but I realised Aulis is yet another spook site. I couldn’t help having a laugh over the Revelation of the Method that gradually dawned on me as I was reading the second article. And it would seem that ‘ol Phil might have got himself involved in the “we didn’t go” psyop too.
No one’s argued against what I’ve put forward so far … but you’re welcome to give it a go, Mark, of course.
https://petraliverani.substack.com/p/pollacia-footage-of-apollo-11-launch
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Petra it doesn’t matter if its daytime you would still be able to see stars in the sky. The reason you cant on earth is because of scattering in earths atmosphere from atmospheric particles and gas. Because those are not present on the moon you would get no scattering. The stars would be fully visible.
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But, Ray, you can see them at night-time on earth – the atmosphere doesn’t disappear at night-time.
As I say, investment in belief …
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I try, Petra, to maintain my sense of humour in these trying times. That includes the odd drop of sarcasm. But my words are never knowingly vicious although occasionally they can be viscous.
But to be totally straight and upfront, I observe that you yourself accuse NASA of major deceit, including with Apollo 1, Apollo 13, and the Challenger disaster. A lot of their broadcasts supposedly from inside the International Space Station look iffy to say the least. And they also have their grubby little hands on the global warming/climate change psyop. With a record like that, it seems reasonable to class them as untrustworthy to say the least.
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus is a Latin maxim meaning “false in one thing, false in everything.” I always bear that in mind when dealing with known liars. For me, NASA are always guilty until they’re proven innocent.
The lunar photography could be kosher for all I know, or it could have been shot in Arizona. As Harry Field Sr. said to Inspector Morse: “Fake only disappoints when found out.”
Mark, if you don’t know this scene, I’m sure you will enjoy it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7-1sdzkj6Q
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I don’t believe it’s possible to fake the completely alien conditions on the moon without signs in the amount of material provided, Tim, that is not my understanding of how reality works. The material provided all aligns with: black sky in day (thus brightly-lit vast expanses of terrain with no signs of multiple lights – all claims of multiple lights reasonably debunked), no atmosphere and 1/6th gravity. For me, unless someone can actually show me how they faked it, the fake hypothesis has zero weight … plus there’s a clear psyop saying “we didn’t go” that contains not a single word of truth that undermines the moon landings. If you need more evidence than that, OK, I don’t.
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It’s good that everything is all so clear to you, Petra. You have taken a lot of time and made a lot of effort to get where you are, wading through claim and counterclaim about the moon landings, and come to reasonable conclusions based on what you’ve found.
Most of us don’t make the effort to get to where you are. In truth, we are not that interested that we are willing to invest as much time and effort as you have. If we do come to conclusions, they are mostly intuitive, or based on general reasoning. “This looks real.” “That looks fake.” “This guy sounds credible/plausible/knowledgable/honest/unbelievable, etc.”
Why do people believe what they believe? There are lots of reasons, and most of them don’t involve much inductive or deductive reasoning or close examination of evidence.”
Most people are like, “It must be true; I saw it on the telly.” Even in 2026, most of my neighbors reason in this way. There’s absolutely no point in talking to them about global warming, 9/11, Covid-19, Apollo (which you claim includes some fakery), or fake events in general.
I am one of those rare souls who is quite comfortable to be agnostic about whether Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon. I will let the two sides argue it out and enjoy the sport. No need for me to commit myself to forming an opinion until the balance evidence is overwhelmingly on one side. And since I honestly don’t know, it would be intellectually dishonest to claim otherwise.
It must be frustrating for you that most of your opponents in this debate will not debate you honestly on your terms. I find this phenomenon is ubiquitous online. Everyone wants to have their say; no one wants to follow along with what other people want to say. Socrates always managed to find ordinary people in Athens who were willing to engage in debate with him. Nowadays, anyone trying to engage people in discussions like Socrates did is likely to be called a a-hole or a moron.
One point that I like to bring up when these discussions arise—”What difference, at this point, does it make whether they went to the moon or not?”
I think it’s a lot like the question, “What difference, at this point, does it make whether Dürer painted Bernini or not?”
And I should think the answer in both cases would be, No difference at all to most people.
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Actually i agree with you and am comfortable whether the moon trip was a hoax. I think it was a waste of tax money no matter what sunce it accomplished nothing as far as i am concerned. No moon bases, and nothing scientifically interesting except a bag of rocks.
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The only thing I noticed on second viewing was that the paintings in the background changed. No doubt there’s other stuff! It’s not unlike the kids passing basketballs as a gorilla wanders in and out of the frame.
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I didn’t see any gorillas in this one. But more interesting, I didn’t see the paintings changing when I watched this episode of Inspector Morse probably five times over the decades since it was released. It was only when someone online pointed it out a few years ago that my attention was drawn to the trick and I was able to perceive that the pictures were changing.
That leads me to ask the question, how much else am I not perceiving as I go through life mostly seeing what I expect to see?
This episode was entitled, Who Killed Harry Field?, and Harry Field Jr., who is killed early on, was an unsuccessful artist in Oxford, England, who scratched a living by cleaning paintings and creating fake genealogies together with coats of arms for mainly American customers.
His father, Harry Field Sr., was a successful artist in his own right, but also made a lot of money by forging old masters (or at least one old master) for a wealthy French collector.
Harry Sr. makes his point that “fake only disappoints when found out” while he is standing in front of a religious painting at the Christ Church Picture Gallery, Christ Church College, Oxford.
The changing picture in the frame behind him provides an excellent demonstration that most people are not very observant most of the time. I wonder how many viewers spotted the changes on first viewing?
The scene is highly deliberate for several reasons (as Google AI explains):
I think this has implications for the sort of mass media fakery you like to explore -including Apollo, of course. If we aren’t actively expecting or suspecting fakery, the chances are we won’t see it.
And most of us won’t accept that we’ve been taken in by fakery even after it has been pointed out to us. After you discovered that the same actor played Pete Hamm and Bill Maher, or the same actor played Martin Luther King and Don King, how many people are even prepared to consider that you may have been correct. None of the people I informed about your discoveries (all Americans) was the remotest bit interested.
Harry Field Sr., in the speech from which the above portion is taken, also makes the following observation about the old paintings on display in the gallery while gesticulating:
“How do you know any of them are real?
Because you are told!
lt is a matter of trust.”
Paintings, moonshots, terror events, famous people, it’s all the same. We are shown the exhibits and told they are authentic. And often they are, but often they aren’t.
Alongside Sherlock Holmes and Hercules Poirot, Harry Field Jr. is one of my most quoted heroes of detective fiction. It’s a shame he only appeared in one episode.
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i reckon nasa’s first administrator understood this being a feckin movie executive of course.
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the leo footage on the space stationship is feckin hilarious. Does mckeegan have a debunk for all the psilly mishaps on the space staionship?
his 911 debunk is good fun.
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Petra, you replied to Ray’s point “The reason you cant [see the stars] on earth [in the daytime] is because of scattering in earths atmosphere from atmospheric particles and gas” with the following:
“But, Ray, you can see them at night-time on earth – the atmosphere doesn’t disappear at night-time.”
This reply demonstrates a major misunderstanding on your part.
Ray was implying scattering of sunlight by particles and gas in Earth’s atmosphere. There is a lot of visible sunlight during the daytime, and the atmosphere reflects photons in all directions, creating a blue sky that is brighter than any stars and most planets. Although it is possible to see the Moon clearly in daylight depending on the conditions, and occasionally the brighter planets such as Venus and Jupiter.
The Moon has no comparable atmosphere and the very tenuous atmosphere it does have doesn’t scatter nearly enough light to create a bright “atmospheric” sky that outshines or masks the stars. In theory, the lunar sky should be as black and as starry in the daytime as it is at night.
Astronauts on the lunar surface should have been able to point their cameras straight up and capture starry skies. To minimize glare from the Sun, they could have moved into the shadow of the Lunar Module.
In six missions, not one astronaut bothered to attempt this. In six missions, not one astronaut bothered to describe the starry sky that they would have been able to see.
You can’t, as an honest researcher, continue to plead ignorance about this point.
Just pop the words “Why can’t we see stars during the daytime” into a Google search box, and learn about what Ray was trying to explain to you.
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Thanks Tim for clarifying. For Petras sake what that means is the moons daytime sky would look a lot like our night time sky from a place with no light pollution and clear air, except the sun would be the moon, except many times brighter. However that light is not scattered so if you looked at 90 to the sun for example the sky would be perfectly clear, as you can see the moon’s surface from the earth quite clearly.
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For the record, I responded at length at Petra’s Substack.
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First, I am highly skeptical that Curiosity is giving us shots from the surface of Mars. I suspect what we see is tribute to the advances in visual technology since the 1970s. There is some oddball footage scattered about showing vessels in the air and landing imprints in the foreground, all without comment. This is obviously meant to impress us about alien technology. Consider the source, Facebook, which was at the forefront of highly effective censorship during Covid, now giving it up? C’mon!
Regarding Pollacia and his Super 8, again you go with your RofM, which appears to me to be a mental figment on your part used to collect oddities that appear when evidence is scattered about in the debris of footage whose main thrust is to sell a fake event as real. When I was still in high school they were selling knives on TV made of space-age material, and showed a knife 1) cutting a nail in two, and 2) then slicing a tomato like butter. Except that between the two events, the hand in question flipped the knife from one edge to the other, right on the film. I asked other kids if they had seen the flip too, and none had. Keep in mind that these were ordinary kids, like me, all of them getting better grades.
It is one thing to notice oddities in execution of false events, which are unavoidable, and quite another to see something like the knife trick, easily explained by a TV station’s legal department insisting on honesty in advertising as a legal defense. I’ve often wondered about school shooting and events like Waco and Columbine, where no one died, and conclude that if people really did die, there would be legal ramifications, prosecutions, insurance companies having to pay out settlements, none of which happens.
That is not RofM, but merely reality poking through. Even the spooks that govern us do not, for whatever reasons, go about willy nilly killing people. In your case, you’re using RofM, a mental trick, to blind yourself to any evidence that contradicts your long foregone conclusion. You are impermeable to doubt as a result. It’s like you’re wearing a Playtex suit as armor. The simple fact is that in places without atmosphere, stars are visible in daytime as well as night. Since they could not fake those stars in the giant warehouses where the Moon footage was shot, lacking the CGI technologies now available, they simply said stars were invisible. That’s a revelation for sure, not of method but necessity in pulling off a hoax.
I’d be curious if astronomers, professional and amateur, could recognize stars from our own night sky in the Curiosity footage. It would be a sign of how far the technology has advanced.
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I think that f-stop rationale really puts them in a bind.. it’s admitting that the stars would be visible to the naked eye, and so a different film speed and f-stop, maybe standing in the shadow of the lander, it should be possible to capture them. And would surely be attempted over six missions, as Tim Groves says above. It does seem like maybe it was just too difficult to fake at the time, so they decided to blow past it and claim photographic technical issues if pressed..
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As they say, close enough for government work.
I have seen videos of the man on the street interviews asking them if they believed the moon landings, shortly after Apollo 11. They were clearly seeding the ground to mark anyone who doubted it as worthy of ridicule. I recall the doubters were poor and or black, so i.e. the disenfranchised as Mark puts it. So that anyone who doubted it would be lumped in with poor white trash.
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