Another way to have good-looking images in a post would be for TypePad to finally just eliminate the ridiculous section offering to 'Display your image at full size, scaled to the width of the column...' I find it hilarious that the very first tip offered is NOT to choose that option. I've been fighting TypePad for five years to eradicate that ludicrous 'default' which hideously distorts images. Who would want that as a default setting? Why is it even offered as a default setting? Who thinks 'distort this image' is a brilliant default function? I thought Microsoft were the only company creating needless extra steps and extraneous settings. After the big switch to your new platform several years ago, I had to manually go back and fix hundreds of images originally uploaded as 'original size' which were then distorted by that 'full size' setting. When will someone on the design team realise, 'Oh... this is a stupid setting providing no useful function, let's get rid of it?'

Having a hell of a time with comments going all wonky tonight. It's probably aliens. Anyway, the link that didn't show up in the above response should have pointed to this: http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ao/abstract.cfm?uri=ao-47-27-4981

Feel free to share! Personally I think the more people actually looking at these things, the better. I'm certainly not above being corrected if I'm wrong, because the truth is more important to me than ego. Although, in this case, I think I'm reasonably right. And, unlike Hoagland and Bara, at least I try to back up my argument with some sort of validation so others can examine it for themselves. A few years ago I had the chance to get to know, and chat pretty extensively with, a NASA employee called Grant Matthews. Given his physics and optics background - and you can get a sense of it from this article he published - he would have been the one to ask. Plus he thought Hoagland was 'a nutter' anyway. Unfortunately I have no current contact information for him and I don't believe he's still with NASA. I wish I could answer your question better, but until very recently I never really thought I needed a hard, scholarly, scientific background for photography. I've typically relied on my own gut instinct of 30+ years experience on the subject and the Occam's Razor approach which says the simplest answer is generally the correct one. There may well be other explanations for some of the things seen in the NASA/Apollo images - very simple, mundane, ordinary explanations - beyond just lens flares. But certainly not an ancient set of geometric glass-like domes! And my name really is Geo... :)

Esteban, Back in 2008 when I first did a Frankenstein's monster of a 'review' of Dark Mission, I used that very image. You can link to it here, about the middle of the page... http://misanthropaea.typepad.com/misanthropaea/2008/08/is-that-lipst-4.html I still stand by my assertion that it's lens flare, especially when you can see the haze being cast from the sun (out of frame to the right) hovering in the middle of the image. But why vertical? That I honestly don't know. It's something to do with the physics of optics and I just never got that involved with the science of refraction/reflection. I only know, from 30-odd years of photography, what it does, not precisely how it does it. Don't get me wrong: I've got a fair idea how it works, but could I tell you in hard and complicated scientific language? No. I can tell you in layman's terms. And my best guess about the verticality is that, if you look at the shape of the sun haze in 9301, which is also vertical, it tells me the light is being bounced off the film gate or the edge of the shutter - which is vertical. The sun is so harsh and so direct in the adjoining frame that I suspect the light is hitting the left edge of the shutter area and creating the vertical blue flares. Why blue? Again, that's a physics question no doubt concerning the Doppler effect and the blue shift of approaching photon particles/waves which I'm not able to answer. I understand the Doppler effect, naturally, but can I explain how it works when light is bouncing round inside a camera housing? No. You've got multiple layers of glass in the lens; a screen, a mirror, a shutter, a gate - all inside the body of the camera - and that strong light simply ping pongs everywhere. But the primary colour being refracted through the camera is white and blue, so it would follow, to my way of thinking, that the lens flare would also be blue. If the light is bouncing towards the lens at time the image was taken, that's blue shift, so... In most images I've seen - or taken - if there's lens flares, they are generally consistent with the colour of the available light source. And a lot of lens flares and light specks in so many of the Apollo images are blue and white, consistent with approaching light. Look at Hoagland's 'domes' image - AS15-88-11896 - and that blue line on the right side of the image. Is it an artefact from scanning the negative? Could be. Is it light coming from the left and hitting the right edge of the film gate? Very likely. That probably doesn't answer your question, but it's what I've got for you at the moment!

Hey, Esteban: I check out The Emoluments of Mars quite a bit and think Expat does a fantastic job of highlighting the lunatic claims of Hoagland and Bara. I think he was pretty spot on about the images he posted recently, but if you had specific ones in mind, I'd be happy to take a look at them again. Thanks!