posted 04-03-2011 01:55 PM               

In 1999 author, editor and publisher Robert Godwin created the first ever seamless digital panoramas of the Apollo lunar surface photography.

"New Horizons" expands on that early work and introduces an entirely new perspective to the historic photographs taken during the Apollo moon walks.

About the author

Robert Godwin is the owner and founder of Apogee Space Books. He has written or edited over 100 books including the award winning series "The NASA Mission Reports". Robert has appeared on dozens of radio and television programs in Canada, the USA and England as an expert on, not only music, but also space exploration. His books have been discussed on CNN, the CBC, the BBC and CBS 60 Minutes. He produced the first ever virtual reality panoramas of the Apollo lunar surface photography and the first multi-camera angle movie of the Apollo 11 moonwalk. His latest book "New Horizons" expands on that previous ground-breaking work.

• Apogee Prime, July 2011
  
• ISBN 978-1926837-12-3

posted 04-03-2011 02:06 PM               

The Canadian Press reported on Godwin's research for "New Horizons," but latched onto comments he made about a particular scene from Apollo 14 could fuel conspiracy theories.

One frequently used argument is that video of the Stars and Stripes planted on lunar soil appears to show the flags blowing in the wind -- even though there's no atmosphere on the moon.

Godwin says two frames of film taken from the Apollo 14 lunar lander in February 1971 may lead some people to believe that's true.

In one frame, the American flag is pointed to the right, while in another frame, it's pointing in another direction -- to the left...

He tried to stitch together a composite picture to show the entire view out the window of "Antares", the Apollo 14 lunar lander, using some photos.

Godwin said one still image was missing -- but, fortunately, the astronauts had filmed it with a movie camera from almost exactly the same location.

"So I went to grab the final part of the missing panorama from the 16-millimetre movie and in the process of doing that I realized there was this interesting disparity between frames on the 16-millimetre film," he told The Canadian Press.

"My first reaction was: 'What's going on here? How is it possible that the flag can turn around 120 degrees?'."

Godwin says he also noticed that the shadow of the big antenna that astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell used to communicate with Earth disappeared from one frame to the next.

"That's a pretty big thing to have disappear," said Godwin, who has written or edited more than 100 books and is the founder of Apogee Books.

Godwin says that on further investigation, he discovered that the American flag had also been flipped around on the Apollo 12 mission.

And that's when his concerns about the flapping flag were put to rest.

"In fact, it had happened on Apollo 12, that 55 minutes before liftoff, part of their procedure was to test-fire the thrusters on the lunar module," he said.

"That's basically a pretty big rocket engine -- just above where the flag is located -- and when they did that, it blew over the antenna that was communicating with the Earth and it rotated the flag about 120 degrees."

The same thing happened with the Apollo 14 thrusters.

posted 04-05-2011 02:39 PM               

Firstly, before people go any further off the deep-end, OF COURSE THE MOON LANDINGS WERE REAL! The story as reported on some news websites chose to either twist the details of my interview or delete the conclusions altogether.

As reported accurately by The Canadian Press, during the course of piecing together some images I noticed an interesting disparity between images on a roll of film taken during Apollo 14. This disparity had in fact been noticed by other researchers, but I happened to mention it to a reporter because it makes for a fascinating case study in how images can be misinterpreted if you don't pursue the facts.

The Apollo moon landings were one of the greatest accomplishments in human history. This has been my position since the founding of this company and will continue to be so.