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Yes, Frank!� I just caught�lack of the craters on the Moon's surface which 
immediately told me that it is not real photo.� But you brought a good point 
about the Moon's semidiameter and the effect of refraction.

Thank you,

Ark



----- Original Message ----
From: "frankreed@HistoricalAtlas.com" 
To: NavList@fer3.com
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 5:32:15 PM
Subject: [NavList 6993] Re: FW: The N )VA Crescent from a different angle


This image has been posted to the list before. Go here and scroll down to the subject "Moonrise":

http://www.fer3.com/arc/sort2.aspx?y=200603su

It's not a photo, or even a composite of multiple photos. It's pure digital 
art; a fantasy scene as you might find in a video game (ten points if you 
shoot down the Moon before the Giant Squid eats you!). This particular bit of 
digital art was created by a kid in Germany using software called "Terragen" 
which, IMHO, is the real 'work of art' in this story. Here's their web site: 
http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/. The image was picked up by the 
forward-hordes sometime back in 2005, re-labeled, and given the usual 
"forward to all your friends" chain letter treatment.

So how can we tell it's not real? I've got three clues...

1) The Sun is too small compared to the Moon. That's a big clue. But the image 
might be mis-labeled, so maybe we should set that aside for the moment and 
consider the possibility that it's actually an over-exposed image of a star 
or planet. 

2) If it's taken from any place on Earth, the only objects that can appear as 
crescents are the Moon and Venus. I can't think of anyway to get the water 
foreground in the same image if it's Venus, so we have to assume it's the 
Moon. We now have a scale. Figuring about 16' for the semi-diameter of the 
Moon, the altitude of the Lower Limb is about the same, 16 minutes of arc. At 
that altitude, it is physically impossible for the Moon to have a perfectly 
circular outline. It should be flattened by refraction. Yet it's perfectly 
circular. This is the killer.

3) Finally, there are no craters. At this scale, you will always find craters 
and isolated mountain peaks visible near the Moon's terminator.

In late spring 2006, the various "urban legend" sites wrote this up, too. 
Try here: http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/northpole.asp 
And here: http://www.hoax-slayer.com/north-pole-moon.html 
And also NASA's APOD site here: 
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060620.html

-FER






      

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