Lan Fleming
LanFleming@aol.com
To view the images and text below in their intended
postions, please increase the width of your browser window to the maximum
extent possible.
In 1966, NASA released a photograph taken by Lunar Orbiter 2 of a region
on the western edge of the Sea of Tranquility that showed several objects
casting unusually long shadows. A few scientists at the time speculated that
the shadows were too elongated to be cast by common lunar boulders or ridges.
Among them was William Blair, reportedly of the Boeing Institute of of
Biotechnology. Blair noted that the objects casting these shadows appeared
to be arranged in a subtly regular fashion that, together with the seemingly
anomalous height of the objects, suggested an artificial origin. These objects
came to be known as the Blair Cuspids. While there is some evidence that
NASA was at first interested in the unorthodox possibilities raised by Mr.
Blair and others, an official explanation was quickly settled upon that
attributed the elongated shadows to a very low sun angle. A brief account
of the discovery of the Blair Cuspids and how they came to be dismissed
as the product of "uncritical" thinking is
here.
.
When the photograph was released, the NASA public affairs office identified
it according to a numbering system that has since become obsolete, so there
was no way authenticate the image or to access the photographic support data
listing the sun angle at the time and place of the photograph. This information
on the illumination geometry is of critical importance in evaluating the
validity of the official explanation of why the shadows were so long. Thanks
to the efforts of Fran Ridge of the Lunascan Project, Mike Lomax, and
the espcially to the kind assistance of the National Space Science Data Center
(NSSDC), the correct frame number, LO2-61H3, was located a few months ago.
Knowing the frame number, we were able to acquire copies of the 8X10 inch
black and white negatives directly from NSSDC. Figure 1 below shows the small
section of Frame LO2-61H3 containing the Cuspids and their shadows. The numbers
in the photograph reference five of the objects that will be discussed in
more detail here.
Figure
1. The Blair Cuspids and the Rectangular Trench. This JPEG
shows a section of LO2-61H3 with each pixel 2/3 the size of the smallest
resolvable feature at a 3:1 contrast ratio. A larger GIF version (345K) with
each pixel 1/2 times the smallest resolvable feature can
be downloaded by clicking here
The quality of the negatives is greatly superior to the old washed-out
photographs that have appeared in a few books in decades past.
With the correct frame number, we were also able to quickly reference the
photographic support data in the Lunar Orbiter 2 catalog to find the angle
of sun light illuminating the objects in the photograh. The catalog data
showed that the sun was in the East at an angle of 79.1 degrees from the
lunar vertical, or 10.9 degrees above the lunar horizon. While this sun angle
is in fact low, it is by no means low enough to support the claim that the
shadows were cast by common boulders. From the support data, it was also
determined that this region is located at lunar coordinates 15.5 degrees
East, 5.1 degrees North. In close proximity to the main group of "Cuspids,"
is an unusually regular rectangular depression. The shadow of Cuspid #5,
the longest by far of the Cuspid shadows, falls across this trench and ends
almost at the southern edge of the partially-shadowed interior.
Figure
2. The Trench. The contrast has been increased by 40% in this image,
making the darker region of the trench nearly black to reveal the unusual
rectangular shape of this depression. The corner of the trench
at the one-o'clock position is an almost unnaturally well-defined right-angle.
When an unusual feature such as this trench is found in close proximity to
other unusual features of an entirely different kind, such as the "Cuspids",
it is reasonable to suppose that the possibility for an artificial origin
of all the features is substantially increased. This is so because a common
geological explanation is made more difficult and an appeal to improbable
coincidence becomes more necessary to support a natural origin for the disparate
features.
But how different are these Cuspids from garden-variety moon rocks? What
should be a reasonable - albeit tentative and approximate - reconstruction
of the Cuspids' appearance as viewed in profile is shown in Figure 3
below.
Figure 3. Strange Shapes In Profile. These profile
images are really negative images of the shadows of the 5 objects indicated
by the numbers in Figure 1. The background
has been blacked out by hand to emphasize the overall shape of each object.
In Figure 3, the shadows have been compressed in the direction of their length according to the simple trigonometric relationship between an object's height, H, the length of its shadow, Ls, and the tangent of the sun's elevation angle, A, above the surface on which the shadow falls. This relationship is:
H = Ls tan(A)
Because the first four cuspids appear to be situated on a fairly horizontal
surface, the value of angle A was taken from the NASA support data to be
the sun's elevation above the horizontal, 10.9 degrees and the images of
the shadows were compressed by the value of that angle's tangent, 0.193.
A greater compression, corresponding to a sun angle of 8 degrees (tan(8)
= 0.14) was used for the profile of Cuspid 5 because its shadow falls over
the surface of the rectangular "trench", which is sloping downward away from
the sun, thus effectively decreasing the sun's elevation above the surface.
The problem of the uncertainty of sun angles and the
rationale for the ones selected for these profile images is discussed at
length here
