The Umpeen-Millionth Way You Know We Really Went to the Moon

Moon hoax conspiracultists are an odd bunch. They invest endless energies making and parroting Internet claims about complex topics they don’t understand, but none at all investigating the actual world they live in.

A case in point is the fairly recent claim that images like this “prove the hoax” by showing “film crew credits for those filming the Apollo missions”:

Yeah…no.

If you actually look at the images, you can plainly see they are not “credits,” but are in fact quality control slides of the sort widely used in film photography then as now. The image is even clearly labeled “Image Density Measuring Panel” and dated July 11, 1969, five days before Apollo 11 launched.

The panel is labeled with the date, operator, and auditor for the test along with the mission, the serial number of the Maurer DAC camera used, the serial number and F-stop (exposure) setting of the lens, and the magazine serial number and code letter.

The Maurer camera was handy for collecting engineergin data on Apollo missions because it took a rectangular film magazine designed to be easily swapped in the field. The film magazines had serial numbers, but to make it easier to keep track of them in flight, each magazine was assigned a code letter printed on a large adhesive label. The test panel is labeled with both (the manufacturer’s serial number and the code).

There screenshot above came from magazine S/N 1080 (I). Here’s a photo of the magazine before that one, S/N 1079 H:

These test panels appear at the start of all the film magazines used in the Maurer 16mm movie cameras carried by Apollo missions (the Data Acquisition Cameras). The panels were filmed using each camera and each lens. Doing so checked out the equipment, ensured a gap between mission footage and the zone of “burning” (actually overexposure caused by light leakage during loading) common near the leader of a roll of movie film, and provided an optical reference noting any anomalies in color and detail rendering of that particular combination of equipment for use in later photo analysis.

Motion picture film reels of the era usually started with a “clapper” recording the production, scene and take, along with a sharp “clap” to help technicians synchronize the sound during editing. Apollo missions didn’t need any of that since the Maurer camera had no sound and was used to record engineering data, but the test panels served a similar role, recording information useful in later analysis—for example a color bar that could be used to correct the color when making prints.

You can see one of these films (From Apollo 10) here:APOLLO 10 16MM ONBOARD FILM 1