What color is the moon?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The speculations about the color of the moon are part of the immense theme of the "lunar conspiracy." It seems to some that the cement-colored surface that is present in the photographs of the Apollo astronauts is not true, and "in fact" the color there is different.

A new aggravation of the conspiracy theory was caused by the first pictures of the Chinese lander Chang'e 3 and the Yutu lunar rover. In the very first images from the surface, the Moon appeared more like Mars than a silver-gray plain in images from the 60s and 70s.

Not only numerous homegrown whistleblowers, but also incompetent journalists of some popular media rushed to discuss this topic.

Let's try to figure out what are the secrets with this Moon.

The main postulate of the conspiracy theory associated with the lunar color reads: “NASA made a mistake in determining the color, so during the simulated landing, Apollo made a gray surface. In fact, the Moon is brown, and now NASA is hiding all of its color images.”

I met with a similar point of view even before the landing of the Chinese lunar rover, and it is quite simple to refute it:

This is a color-enhanced image from the Galilleo spacecraft taken in 1992, early in its long journey to Jupiter. Already this frame is enough to understand the obvious thing - the moon is different, and NASA does not hide it.

Our natural satellite experienced a turbulent geological history: volcanic eruptions raged on it, gigantic lava seas spilled, and powerful explosions occurred, generated by the impact of asteroids and comets. All this significantly diversified the surface.

Modern geological maps, obtained thanks to the numerous satellites of the USA, Japan, India, China, demonstrate a variegated variety of the surface:

Of course, different geological rocks have different compositions and, as a result, different colors. The problem for an outside observer is that the entire surface is covered with a homogeneous regolith, which “dilutes” the color and sets the same tone for almost the entire area of the Moon.

However, there are some astronomical and post-processing techniques available today that reveal hidden surface differences:

Here is a shot by astrophotographer Michael Theusner that was captured in RGB multichannel mode and subjected to LRGB processing. The essence of this technique is that the Moon (or any other astronomical object) is first filmed in three color channels (red, blue and green), and then each channel is subjected to separate processing to express the color brightness. An astro camera with a set of filters, a simple telescope and photoshop are available to almost everyone, so no conspiracy here will help to hide the color of the moon. But it will not be the color that our eyes see.

Let's go back to the moon in the 70s.

Published color images from a 70mm Hasselblad camera mostly show us the uniform “cement” color of the moon.

At the same time, samples delivered to Earth have a richer palette. Moreover, this is typical not only for Soviet supplies from the "Luna-16":

But also for the American collection:

However, they have a richer set, there are brown, gray, and bluish exhibits.

The difference between observation on Earth and on the Moon is that the transportation and storage of these finds cleared them of the surface layer of dust. Samples from "Luna-16" were generally mined from a depth of about 30 cm. At the same time, on filming in laboratories, we observe finds in a different light and in the presence of air, which affects the scattering of light.

My phrase about moon dust may seem dubious to someone. After all, everyone knows that there is a vacuum on the Moon, so dust storms, as on Mars, cannot be there. But there are other physical effects that raise dust above the surface. There is also an atmosphere, but very thin, about as high as the International Space Station.

The glow of dust in the lunar sky was observed from the surface by both the automatic descent probes Surveyor and the Apollo astronauts:

The results of these observations formed the basis of the scientific program of the new NASA LADEE spacecraft, the name of which means: Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer. Its task is to study lunar dust at an altitude of 200 km and 50 km above the surface.

Thus, the Moon is gray for about the same reason that Mars is red - due to covering dust of the same color. Only on Mars, red dust is raised by storms, and on the Moon, gray - by meteorite strikes and static electricity.

Another of the reasons that prevent us from seeing the color of the moon in the pictures of astronauts, it seems to me, is a slight overexposure. If we lower the brightness and look at the place where the surface layer is disturbed, we can see the difference in color. For example, if we look at the trampled area around the Apollo 11 descent module, we will see brown soil:

Subsequent missions took with them the so-called. “Gnomon” is a color indicator that allows you to better interpret the color of the surface:

If you look at it in a museum, you will notice that the colors look brighter on Earth:

Now let's take a look at another snapshot, this time from Apollo 17, which once again confirms the absurdity of accusations of deliberately “bleaching” the Moon:

You can notice that the excavated soil has a reddish tint. Now, if we lower the light intensity, we will see in more detail the color differences in lunar geology:

By the way, these photos in the NASA archive are not accidentally called “orange soil”. In the original photo, the color does not reach orange, and after darkening, the color of the gnomon markers approaches those seen on Earth, and the surface acquires more shades. Probably something like that, saw their eyes astronauts.

The myth about deliberate discoloration arose when some illiterate conspiracy theorist compared the color of the surface and its reflection on the glass of an astronaut's helmet:

But he was not smart enough to understand that the glass was tinted and the reflective coating on the helmet was gold. Therefore, the color change of the reflected image is natural. In these helmets, the astronauts worked during training, and there the brown tint is clearly visible, only the face is not covered with a gilded mirror filter:

Studying archival images from Apollo or modern ones from Chang'e-3, it should be borne in mind that the color of the surface is also influenced by the angle of incidence of the sun's rays and camera settings. Here is a simple example, when several frames of the same film on the same camera have different shades:

Armstrong himself spoke about the variability of the color of the lunar surface depending on the angle of illumination:

In his interview, he does not hide the observed brown hue of the moon.

Now about what the Chinese devices showed us before leaving for a two-week night hibernation. The first shots in pink tones came from the fact that the white balance was simply not adjusted on the cameras. This is an option that all digital camera owners should be aware of. Shooting modes: “daylight”, “cloudy”, “fluorescent”, “incandescent”, “flash” - these are precisely the modes for adjusting the white balance. It is enough to set the wrong mode and now either orange or blue shades began to appear in the pictures. For the Chinese, no one set their cameras to "Moon" mode, so they took the first shots at random. Later we tuned in and continued shooting in those colors that do not differ much from the Apollo frames:

Thus, the "lunar color conspiracy" is nothing more than a delusion based on ignorance of commonplace things and the desire to feel like a ripper without getting up from the couch.

I think the current Chinese expedition will help to get to know our space neighbor even better, and will more than once confirm the absurdity of the idea of a NASA lunar conspiracy. Unfortunately, the media coverage of the expedition is poor. So far, only screenshots from TV broadcasts of Chinese news are available to us. It seems that the CNSA no longer wants to disseminate information about its activities by any means. Hopefully this will change at least in the future.