Debunked: Alien Base on the Moon, Triangle of Dots [photo artifact]

Mick West

Administrator
Staff member
In Google Earth , at 22°42'38.46"N 142°34'44.52"E on the Moon, we see this strange image:


Now in isolation this looks a little suspicious,. Seven dots forming a perfect V shape. But look around at the surrounding area, look at all the vertical and horizontal areas. Notice how they all line up in a grid.

What we are seeing here are individual pixels from a low resolution image, which have been greatly enlarged and filtered in a way that gives this grid-like effect. All it took was a few pixels in the right place to give this effect.

But it's a little more complex than that. These pixels don't even appear in the original image.

Look at the image closer to its original resolution by zooming out:



If we use an unfiltered zoom on this, we see this:

Notice the seven dots are not there.

But, if we zoom in a little more on Google Earth, we see:


Note you can now see the dots. If you zoom in on that, you see:


Why can we suddenly see these dots when the zoom has changed slightly? Not only that, but a whole bunch of other dots has suddenly appeared scattered all over the image.

The answer is that Google stores multiple resolution image tiles, and uses a different set of tiles depend on how much you are zoomed in. Here it is just switching from one set to another. While both set of a tiles are derived from the same image, the higher resolution tiles (used when more zoomed in) have some filters applied to them, to make them seem sharper. Unfortunately it seems these sharpening filters have created some noise along the boundaries between light and dark regions, and that is what has created these dots.

Why is it a perfect triangle? Just luck. There are tens of thousands of craters on the moon, and only a few possible configurations of dots around the edge at this resolution. Some of them are bound to have a more geometric shape than others.

Look at these nearby craters, where we are not zoomed in enough to see the artifacts:


Then zoom in slightly:


Notice the dots suddenly appearing inside all the craters? That's the exact same thing. Notice a few of them are in lines. It's just random. If you look around for a while, you can probably find some even more interesting examples. But it's just a few random pixels from a poor choice of image sharpening algorithm.

The bad pixels also appear to be transparent. What we are looking at here is a photo overlay. Photo overlays are not affected by the lighting system that Google Earth uses to simulate sunlight. However the surface of the moon IS illuminated. It's done incorrectly on a 24 hour cycle, basically because they just re-use the lighting system for Earth. It's not really a solar-system simulator.

Here you can see the illuminated surface of the moon through the partially transparent corrupt pixels as the time is altered in Google Earth (note you have to turn on the "Show Sunlight" option to get this slider).


In the animation below, the triangle is in the lower left, and I've tilted the view so you can see a large area of lunar surface in the background. Also notice all the other dots doing the same thing.


We can prove it's transparent, and not actually lighting the pixels by adding a polygon underneath the image overlay:



Then when you zoom in, you get:


This highlighting of the pixels makes them much easier to see, so we can look for other interesting accidental patterns. Here's a face, at 21.764747,143.748972


The original image overlay comes from the Japanese SELENE "Kaguya" satellite

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/display.cfm?Category=Planets&IM_ID=15543

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You might also be interested in a similar debunking of an image artifact on Mars:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-alien-base-on-mars-bio-station-alpha.166/
 
Last edited:
You can see in this picture that the small crater slightly above it in the image also has a similar (albeit less pronounced) pattern caused by the image processing as well.

 
HD Image of the actual crater,
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread816050/pg2#pid13612969


And comparison:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread993464/pg1#pid17439412


You can access this directly, however the current version has rather poor lighting that blows out the details. You can see the other craters don't have the little dots in though:
http://bit.ly/1dGXgiu
Yeah-but in the Above Top Secret forum the comparison convinces people the lights are a ship because they have flown away in the picture on the right. It's Scott Waring (http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/) level reasoning.
 
Last edited:
"Here's a face, at 21.764747,143.748972"

So the aliens know how to use Adobe Flash. We're doomed!

In all seriousness though, you know you are losing it when a few, blurred pixels cause you to scream "Aliens!"
 
"Here's a face, at 21.764747,143.748972"

So the aliens know how to use Adobe Flash. We're doomed!

In all seriousness though, you know you are losing it when a few, blurred pixels cause you to scream "Aliens!"

I'd not say "losing it". A lot of people just really really want there to be aliens. So it's kind of a strong interpretation bias. Rock falls off the wheel of the rover? Aliens! Unidentified object? Aliens! Because aliens are fun and cool.
 
Yeah, at the end of the day, you do have to admit that some of these theories are just too awesome to be true. I'm a pessimist, so I guess that explains my knack for skepticism.

Also, sorry if my post was a bit brash. I'm kind of new...
 
Why these spots are blinking at a frequency of every 12 hour if length of a day at moon is equivalent to 29 earth days ? There are many spots blinking at the same time Check it out on google earth by changing time.
 
Why these spots are blinking at a frequency of every 12 hour if length of a day at moon is equivalent to 29 earth days ? There are many spots blinking at the same time Check it out on google earth by changing time.

It's because the dots are transparent, and you are seeing the moon surface underneath the satellite image overlay.





The time/sun animation is for the earth, and is being incorrectly applied to the moon in Google Earth. You can see this if you zoom out
 
Last edited:
Nicely done, Mick! To add to this debunking, here is a png file of the original Selene image data for that region which was used to create the texture for that region in Google moon. I exported the original .img file (which is an actual image file, not a disc image, and requires special software to view) into a more standard .png file using default settings (different tonal settings will yield different contrasts in exported images):
http://dropcanvas.com/bv99x

https://www.metabunk.org/files/DTMTCO_03_01221N230E1428SC_TCO.png



As you can see, there's nothing in the crater, it's entirely an artifact of Google moon as you correctly pointed out. Here's an overlay of a crop of the original image exported from LISM viewer onto a screen capture of Google moon:
https://www.metabunk.org/sk/b1z.gif
The “perspective” shifts because google moon is projecting the image onto a 3d model of the terrain and rendering it, using the image as a texture, but you can see by the identical shadows in the craters that it is in fact the same image data.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yeah-but in the Above Top Secret forum the comparison convinces people the lights are a ship because they have flown away in the picture on the right. It's Scott Waring (http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/) level reasoning.
Scott Warring is a [...] I used to go to that site for entertainment only, but it got to the point that his bunk was making me physically sick. He [...] really does a disservice to any real UFO believer, even though there is very little, if any, hard evidence of UFO and ET's. Please do not give him the pleasure of visiting his site because of this he relishes every hit and possibly makes money.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
This was an excellent and most convincing analysis, Mike.
I am a skeptic regarding UFOs but am even more reluctant to believe that if that was a real UFO we'd be told the truth either by NASA or the government.
And am also convinced that there would be an even more ardent effort to "scientificly debunk" a real sighting...
 
This was an excellent and most convincing analysis, Mike.
I am a skeptic regarding UFOs but am even more reluctant to believe that if that was a real UFO we'd be told the truth either by NASA or the government.
And am also convinced that there would be an even more ardent effort to "scientificly debunk" a real sighting...

The thing about science though is that any fake scientific debunking is generally detectable.

I look at claims of evidence. I try to figure out if they are valid claims, or bunk claims. If they seem like bunk, then I explain this. That's debunking.
 
I accidentally made a new thread a while back with this same claim. Thankfully a link was given for this. Great informative post Mick!
 
these are the crops from the same area on the far side of the moon, nothing has been altered but a slight hue added, do you consider these to be a "pixelization artifacts"? take a good good look. note, all shots are looking W > E as that is the direction in which original shots were taken. all the images contain coordinates so you can check the locations yourself in the google moon. i would appreciate your opinions. cheers.




[Admin: several similar images removed]
 
Last edited by a moderator:
these are the crops from the same area on the far side of the moon, nothing has been altered but a slight hue added, do you consider these to be a "pixelization artifacts"? take a good good look. note, all shots are looking W > E as that is the direction in which original shots were taken. all the images contain coordinates so you can check the locations yourself in the google moon. i would appreciate your opinions. cheers.

These are all exactly the same thing as described in the OP. Transparent pixel introduced during the filtering of zoomed images.

The quickest way to verify this is to toggle the "Global Maps/Colorized Terrain". And you will see the pixels are transparent. Transparent pixels can only indicate an image processing error.

 
"transparent pixels"? so if certain tones are made transparent by the software, nothing to see there, right? these transparent pixels account only for the minority of the "anomalies" anyway. and you say you are not a shill? LOL
 
"transparent pixels"? so if certain tones are made transparent by the software, nothing to see there, right? these transparent pixels account only for the minority of the "anomalies" anyway. and you say you are not a shill? LOL

I looked at every image in your post, and all I saw was out of focus, over-blurred (from excessive zooming in).

There are no "alien bases" .... perhaps a fair amount of pareidolia, though.

BTW, why is it you only posted images from Selene, and didn't include any from the LROC? Or more specifically, WHY do you think a mashed-together, low resolution compilation of images that are hosted by Google Earth are "proof" of anything at all???

Also, did you not notice each image with a credit on the bottom? Why is it that the Japanese space agency 'JAXA' and those who work at Arizona State University ('ASU') do not agree with the claims of "alien bases" on the far side?
 
where did you get images are "only from SELENE"? look at the images, most of them are signed NASA / USGS / JAXA / SELENE combined.

i didn't post images from LROC or any other source since we are analysing "anomalies" in Google Moon images here.

i didn't claim "evidence" of anything.

this "mashed-together, low resolution compilation of images" shows a lot to those with eyes to see. we both know this is a shill site and that you are not going to admit it, that's fine, i even find it entertaining.

i wish you good luck in your debunking affairs and if you recieve SyFy don't miss the Aliens On The Moon: The Truth Exposed that's premiering tommorow.


I looked at every image in your post, and all I saw was out of focus, over-blurred (from excessive zooming in).

There are no "alien bases" .... perhaps a fair amount of pareidolia, though.

BTW, why is it you only posted images from Selene, and didn't include any from the LROC? Or more specifically, WHY do you think a mashed-together, low resolution compilation of images that are hosted by Google Earth are "proof" of anything at all???

Also, did you not notice each image with a credit on the bottom? Why is it that the Japanese space agency 'JAXA' and those who work at Arizona State University ('ASU') do not agree with the claims of "alien bases" on the far side?
 
Since we're on the topic of aliens/alien bases on the moon, I watched a special last night on the SYFY channel that was recommended by someone above. There were several intriguing photos throughout the 2 hour special.

This one in particular deals with an object that left prints in the moon surface, and the amazing thing about this photo is if you trace the marks left in the moons surface back, you can clearly see that it came out of a crater and ascended up and over its edge. Now I don't know if a good explanation has ever been given for this, but could it be an asteroid or fragment from an asteroid that broke of at a shallow angle to the moon and rolled on the surface?

There's also an object above it as well but appears to be smaller


This next photo they claim "could be" an alien satellite dish, but it looks more like a crater to me. Could the light be playing tricks?


This next photo shows a structure thought to be a 1000 feet, and as the LRO made its next orbit you can clearly see smoke eminating from this structure. Like a poof of black smoke or something similar. I can't find the video footage which shows it happening in real time, sorry.
 
Last edited:
Wouldn't an asteroid (meteorite?) rolling across the surface post-impact (shallow angle) produce a trail like in photo #1? In fact isn't it visible at the end of the trail (RH side)?

Two objects from the same source would produce parallel trails.
 
Wouldn't an asteroid (meteorite?) rolling across the surface post-impact (shallow angle) produce a trail like in photo #1? In fact isn't it visible at the end of the trail (RH side)?

Two objects from the same source would produce parallel trails.
I agree, but I do have a reservation about the bottom trail. If an object that big had enough energy to roll that distance and up the side of a crater, shouldn't we expect to see a gap in the trail at the top of the craters edge, presumeably because the object might've had some "flight" as it ascended up the crater wall. And the crater wasn't flat prior to its outer wall, there looks like there's a smaller hill within the crater that the object went over before ascending up the perimeter wall as well. Just a thought, and I think if we knew the size and mass of the object that might help as well
 
The "rolling boulders" have been discussed and explained before.
http://www.universetoday.com/71067/tumbling-boulders-leave-trails-on-the-moon/

And, under the stark lighting conditions on the Moon, yes sometimes a crater seems to look like a "satellite dish"...there are many more optical illusions and tricks of the eye. (A crater can look convex, instead of concave for example. It's similar to the "hollow-face" illusion):


Just as there are sometimes optical illusions here on Earth, with our geography. Except those on Earth are more rare, since we are more adapted to them visually...being that we live here, and have other frames of reference!
 
I'd think that gravity has something to do with it ;)

What actually initiates the movement? Dunno. Can speculate that the alternate heating/cooling (thus, expansion/contraction) of some soil substrates might lead to a "tipping point" that allows a boulder that was on the verge to let loose.

Another theory is any minor "moonquake".

Interesting info: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/scitech/display.cfm?ST_ID=1149
What about this image; I can't find the video footage of the LRO orbitting over this area, but we can clearly see something being ejected from this object. Could this be related to the "heating and cooling" you discussed above.

upload_2014-7-21_15-16-27.jpeg
upload_2014-7-21_15-16-50.jpeg
upload_2014-7-21_15-17-10.jpeg
 
It would indeed be of some great scientific interest if it was found that there was geothermal (or, 'lunar-thermal'?) activity on the Moon.

I cannot find any definitive consensus on that.
 
not saying I agree with the site though

Good. It's mostly 'woo'.

And the image was filmed by Apollo 8, not the LROC. Also, there is certainly no "tower" there...again, a trick of perspective. IF that is actually a plume of something....sub-surface gases that indicate a thermally active Moon, then would be fascinating. But, certainly not 'ET'.
 
I can't find the video footage of the LRO orbitting over this area
maybe?? http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/lunar_smokestack.html

[/One of the BABB regulars, who goes by the name R.A.F., actually has a copy the NOVA program on tape. He watched the show, and quickly determined that the "footage" is actually not a video or a movie film, but a still image. Evidently, the NOVA director had the still photograph put up on an easel or frame and then zoomed in on the image. That creates an illusion of motion, when of course you cannot get real motion from a single photograph.
Content from External Source
original photo here AS08-14-2393 : http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/70mm/mission/?8

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Good. It's mostly 'woo'.

And the image was filmed by Apollo 8, not the LROC. .

The sequence is shown on the SyFy program with the claim it is 16-mm cine film with camera motion providing perspective. The scene pans right and zooms in, giving the impression of moving across the surface of the moon. That is obviously false because the Earth disk grows at the same rate as the lunar surface, showing that it's merely a zoom on a still image. The black smudge could equally be debris on the plate when the original film print was digitally scanned, I'm guessing. The location could be easily found in lat/long and investigated on newer hi-res digital imagery, but if it's not there, the woo-woo explanation will be that it flew away, proving it was a UFO.
 
These links may provide helpful context for the SyFy program:

There are a number of write-ups over the last few decades of bogus stories, many of which reappear vampire-like in this show. You will recognize them in several chapters of my 1982 book UFOs and Outer Space Mysteries", especially "Myths and Mysteries of the Moon" Chapter 4.
http://www.jamesoberg.com/ufoosm-myth-myst-of-moon.pdf (large PDF - 7mb)
It addresses centuries of stories: Gruithuisen's 'Moon City' (1823), NY Sun's moon men (1835), the vanishing crater Linné, psychic predictions of the moon's hidden side, the vanishing "Soviet Mountains" of the Luna-3 images (1959), towering moon spires ("Blair Cuspids"), Joseph Goodavage's articles (1970's), Apollo-16 moonwalkers buzzed by UFOs, "Our Mysterious Spaceship Moon" by Don Wilson (1975) including Gordon Cooper's Mercury-9 UFO report and the moon's hollowness [based on a satirical prank Soviet story by Vasin and Shcherbakov], George Leonard's "Somebody Else is on the Moon" (1976), William Kaysing's 'Apollo hoax' theory, the books of Morris Jessup, and others.
In greater detail re the first moon landing, The Apollo-11 UFO Incidents , Chapter 3
http://www.debunker.com/texts/apollo11.html
It identifies grocery store tabloid that fabricated the Apollo-11 “aliens lined up on the crater rim” hoax
Two particular testimonials I found unworthy of belief, with explanation of my reasons.
Debunking vito saccheri’s story
http://www.jamesoberg.com/saccheri.vito.pdf
Also, Donna Tietze Hare (claimed witness to photo alteration)
http://www.jamesoberg.com/hare.donna.tietze.pdf

Pay special attention to all the NEW stuff she has suddenly remembered for this show, thirty years later. I don’t recall her ever describing lunar photo forgeries before this interview.
Neither I, nor any crew I was on (I was on three Apollo crews), received any briefing before or after flights on UFO events, saw anything in space suggesting UFOs or structures on the moon, etc. We did it just like we said in official reports.
http://www.jamesoberg.com/Ed_Mitchell_on_space_UFO_sightings.pdf
ken Johnston
http://www.jamesoberg.com/ken_johnston_nasa_moon_photo_manager.pdf
 
maybe?? http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/lunar_smokestack.html

[/One of the BABB regulars, who goes by the name R.A.F., actually has a copy the NOVA program on tape. He watched the show, and quickly determined that the "footage" is actually not a video or a movie film, but a still image. Evidently, the NOVA director had the still photograph put up on an easel or frame and then zoomed in on the image. That creates an illusion of motion, when of course you cannot get real motion from a single photograph.
Content from External Source

Sorry, I didn't see your earlier note when I posted mine. So Syfy stole the fake 'motion' sequence from Nova? Then the supposed 'perspective shift' of the 'plume' is at least an illusion, at worst a deliberate artistic fabrication?
 
Sorry, I didn't see your earlier note when I posted mine. So Syfy stole the fake 'motion' sequence from Nova? Then the supposed 'perspective shift' of the 'plume' is at least an illusion, at worst a deliberate artistic fabrication?
I have to be honest with you Jim, great post by the way, in the SYFY show they showed this scene in both color and black and white and could swear they said it was the LRO while in orbit around the moon. It must have been spliced very well because it looked authentic. But I whole heartedly trust your opinion and what you wrote in your book. I read the attached above, great read by the way. Love it, thanks..
 
Back
Top