Moon landing pictures question

[G-MAN2004]

No, not a crazy conspiracy thread!

Anyway, how come when you look at a picture on the Earth, for example the one below, the horizon is really far away...

...but on pictures of the moon landing, the horizon seems just a small walk away?

Or is my eyesight poor?

 

[Makunouchi]

The moon is much smaller, you must know this Also it's pretty flat and uniform making it harder to distinguish the distance to the horizon in that picture.

 

[MrRoper]

its a lot smaller

 

[cHk4]

I'd guess because it's smaller.

 

[Felix Da Housecat]

That's because the moon is smaller than the earth.

 

[G-MAN2004]

I know it's a lot smaller, but can't be that small that the horizon appears a 30 second walk away surely?

 

[TheCenturion]

The moon is much smaller, you must know this

That's because the moon is smaller than the earth.

I'd guess because it's smaller.

its a lot smaller

I think it's because the moon is smaller.

 

[MrRoper]

 

[ChroniC]

Its dark? Thats as far as the lights are lighting?

 

[Andr3w]

It won't be a 30 second walk away, it will be a few KM's away

 

[Felix Da Housecat]

30 seconds, how do you know this? Have you been there?

TBH it's a picture, the lens could make it appear closer or more distant, and also due to the light it may also appear closer than what it is.

 

[G-MAN2004]

It won't be a 30 second walk away, it will be a few KM's away

So it's my dodgy eyes then.

30 seconds, how do you know this? Have you been there?

So it's my dodgy eyes then.

 

[Lysander]

Its dark? Thats as far as the lights are lighting?

Must be harder to see what you're doing on the computer.

 

[manic_man]

Smaller plus lack of defining features effectively.

We aren't *that* great at judging great distance, you can only do so in the Earth picture because you already know roughly the size of things you can see such as the mountains in the background, the plants etc.

Find a decent picture of a desert on Earth with very few distinguishing features that you can see the horizon in, you'll see something similar.

We understand the world around us primarily because of experiential "close-up" learning. At some point we have examined something in detail and considered its proportions, this "classification" gets stored in our mind and we can apply it to similar objects we then see in the future. This provably has a great effect on our ability to understand the dimensions of our surroundings. A nice neat example of this is the "Ames Room" (Google image search should help here).

 

[Raikiri]

It's roughly half that of Earth given the same height, along with the lack of reference points makes distance hard to judge.

 

[stulid]

The back drop of the filming set is closer?

 

[Cosimo]

The lens used to take the picture on the moon may have also foreshortened the horizon.

 

[DBT85]

I know it's a lot smaller, but can't be that small that the horizon appears a 30 second walk away surely?

The moon pic gives you no frame of reference. If there was a house on the horizon you'd be better able to judge how far away it is. With it just being all flat and dusty you have no real idea how far away it is.

Also as others have said, the moon is just over 1/4 the size of earth in circumference. In addition is the ground the astronaut is standing on perfectly flat? or is he standing on a bit of a rise? The sun is quite low in that image so it wouldn't take much more than a few feet in hight in the right place to make it look like the moon isn't really there.

Now please ask why there are no stars.

 

[stulid]

Now please ask why there are no stars.

ask why one of the cross hairs disappears behind a rock?

 

[Felix Da Housecat]

Also that image would not have been taken at head hight, more likely to have been chest or lower as the camera was mounted onto the space suite.