Why, oh why, should the manned lunar landings of Project Apollo have been fake?

From The Moon
Revision as of 20:34, 11 April 2018 by Api (talk | contribs)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search

Why can't 99.9 percent of the human population comprehend the existence of a grand technological project such as this one?

A very gentle person's thoughts on people who won't accept the existence of NASA's epic era of lunar exploration

A very gentle person... (cough). Anyway, his entire SOUL is anchored in this page!

I hate to say it, but... since I watch'd the first manned lunar excursion of Apollo 11 on telly during the summer of 1969 (age 5), I felt the gradually increasing indifference and ignorance of the people around me. At that very young age I already thought: people can't think much further than football and bread-n-circuses.
It all started at school. The minds of most kids were hopelessly stuck in movies or TV series in which warfare in the Roman Empire was hot topic. The kids played "centurions" on the schoolyard, because the teacher brainwashed them. Imaginary weapons in their hands, fighting against imaginary enemies. At the schoolyard you could already see what would become of most of them once they would be adults several decennia later. They would somehow re-enact those schoolyard battles of the Roman Empire at their computer screens, in some virtual reality (those dreadful computer games of today).
I'm not surprised to hear that most people don't want to believe te existence of mankind's exploration of earth's natural satellite (and even the existence of the International Space Station in orbit around earth). They want to believe the imaginary battles of the Roman centurions which happened on their childhood's schoolyard.
I despise the sort of teachers who are fond of the so-called superiority of the Roman Empire. I knew an example of these educational emperors during my days at school. It was the year 1977, but this gentleman's thoughts were still stuck in a society which flourished many centuries ago. In his eyes, the exploration of space was a waste of time. He said: "The plaque of the naked man and woman aboard the interplanetary Pioneer probe is one of the most absurd things I have ever seen".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque

"Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire couldn't conquer the blue sky" (Weather with you, Crowded House).

It's too bad, but the way American people are, now that they have all this capability, instead of taking advantage of it, they'll probably just piss it all away.
Lyndon B. Johnson on Project Apollo

Say, do you want to tell me that you believe all of this? (NASA's manned lunar landings)
Really, this was a frequently heard question, ask'd by all sorts of people who visited the public observatory in my hometown.

It's just Old School
And what was the Roman Empire? Very Old School ?

IF they really landed on the moon (I say IF), what did they do up there except singing "I was strolling on the moon one day"?
Fist of all, searching a good spot to install the diversity of scientific instruments called ALSEP (Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package). Today, the existence of the ALSEP stations of the three scientific J-series missions (Apollo 15, 16, and 17) is something which is completely forgotten. It's as if it never happened. Up to 1977 the three ALSEP stations tele-transmitted all sorts of scientific measurements to earth, such as gentle moonquakes, probably caused by meteorite impacts somewhere on the moon.
See: Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP).
Of course, several astronauts could not resist the urge to SING on the moon. Keep in mind the very important fact that astronauts were (and still are) HUMAN.

Was Bart Sibrel right when he said that all of this never really happened?
Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin of GEMINI 12 and APOLLO 11 was right when he launched a well-focus'd punch straight at Bart Sibrel's perplexed face.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_Sibrel

Those Apollo astronauts give weird answers whenever you ask them about their adventures on the moon
Among many of the Apollo astronauts, Edwin Aldrin of APOLLO 11 knows the terrible fact of living in a world full of nincompoops such as Bart Sibrel. Edwin's answer to the question "Were you really on the moon? " is sometimes "No, not at all ". It must be a burden for Edwin Aldrin (and each one of the other Apollo astronauts) to know that whatever answer you give ("yes" or "no"), there shall never be someone who's really listening to what you say (especially about the scientific part of the lunar excursions). Most narrow-minded people just want to know if the Apollo astronauts returned home as crazy men. The Apollo astronauts are tired to be confronted with a wall of utter stupidity.

All of the footage of those so-called lunar excursions of Apollo was the work of Stanley Kubrick, right?
Stanley Kubrick made movies such as Lolita, Dr.Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, 2001 A Space Odyssey, The Shining, etcetera...
Most people don't have the intuition to see the difference between real NASA footage and Kubrick's cinematography.

That flag could never have stand this way, because there's no wind on the moon
This is the case of the overlooked horizontal strut on which the flag is hanging down.
AS11-40-5905.jpg (the Stars-and-Stripes of Apollo 11).
Perfect close-up of the horizontal strut in the Stars-and-Stripes of Apollo 17:
AS17-134-20466.jpg
Note: the horizontal strut of the flag of Apollo 12 was broken, which means: only on photographs of Apollo 12 one could see the lack of the supporting role of the horizontal strut.
Images of the flag of Apollo 12:
AS12-46-6737.jpg
AS12-46-6752.jpg
AS12-47-6897.jpg
AS12-47-6954.jpg
AS12-47-6983.jpg
AS12-47-7019.jpg
Note: since december 1972 there are six Stars-and-Stripes flags on the moon. Alas, most people only know the flag of Apollo 11. And only a very small percentage of the world's population has the intuitive intelligence to accept the true existence of that flag's location on the moon, and also of the five other flags.

Walter Cronkite (CBS) and Apollo 11
I've noticed in the reporting that those under 16 want to know about escape velocity and they want to know about the lunar trajectory velocity, and those over 30 or so say, "Don't tell me all that, I just don't understand. Tell me when we get there."
See Norman Mailer's MOONFIRE - the epic journey of Apollo 11, page 151.

All those photographs look so sharp, there are no bloopers among them, they must have been made in a specially arranged studio here on earth
WRONG!!! There are LOTS (HUNDREDS!!!) of bloopers among those photographs, but... only the sharp looking photographs are printed in books and magazines.
Two typical bloopers are frames 7009 and 7010 from the mission of Apollo 12. Try to find out what has been photographed here:
AS12-47-7009.jpg
AS12-47-7010.jpg
One of those many unsharp (and because of that, very unknown) photographs was made during the mission of Apollo 16:
AS16-117-18827HR.jpg
Take a look in Kipp Teague's Full Hasselblad Magazines from every Apollo mission, and you shall see whole series of bloopers! (remember: astronauts are also human).
http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo_gallery.html

The so-called "proof" of the "impossibility" of the wrong shadows in APOLLO 16's panoramic image made at Flag and Plum craters
A 180° or a 360° panoramic image (as it is printed in books or on posters) is always looking like a flat sheet without curvature. Such panoramic images should always be seen as half or complete circles. You have to stand in the centre of such a semi-circle or complete circle, and by doing that you should immediately see the correct positions of the astronaut's shadows related to the sun's location in the sky!
40_A16Plum.jpg
(Mike Constantine's assembled panorama of Apollo 16's twice appearing lunar module pilot (LMP) Charles Duke near Plum Crater, with the so-called "wrong shadows").

The so-called "proof" of the absence of the real sun in Hasselblad photographs made on the moon (the "studio floodlight" syndrome)
In photography there's the optical phenomenon known as Catadioptric effect, which shows a reflected ghost image of the real sun, appearing as a so-called "studio floodlight" just above the lunar horizon. Catadioptric effects are multiple reflected images of lightsources, created between the lenses of a camera (in this case, of only one lightsource: the sun). Several nocturnal photographs made on earth also show Catadioptric effects, most of those photographs are erroneously seen as "proof of the existence of flying saucers".
The APOD of July the 22th, 2017, shows an excellent photograph of Apollo 11's LMP Edwin Aldrin and two bright (slightly spectral-colored) catadioptric effects created by the optical system inside Neil Armstrong's Hasselblad camera:
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170722.html

The shadowed part of that astronaut's suit looks too bright! Not normal!
That's because of the optical phenomenon called HEILIGENSCHEIN (Retro-Reflection from the powdery lunar surface around the astronaut's shadow on the surface itself).
The most well-known photograph of the Apollo program (Buzz Aldrin's portrait) shows the effect of retro-reflected sunlight (from the regolith) very well. There's also some yellowish cast from the gold-colored LM's Descent Stage and from one of the LM's legs.
See also the fish-eye reflection in Aldrin's gold vizor!
AS11-40-5903HR.jpg
One of the many photographs which show a photographing astronaut's own shadow on the regolith-layer with powerful retro-reflection of the sun's light around the upper part of the shadow: (aka the Dry Heiligenschein effect).
AS11-40-5882.jpg

Myth Busters
When both the sensation-scientists of MYTH BUSTERS tried to re-create the conditions of a real Apollo landingsite, they didn't think about the addition of the powerful retro-reflection of the lunar regolith (the layer of powder on the moon). The result: the shadowed parts of the LM and the model-astronauts look'd too dark.
P.S.:
Why are there so much explosions in Myth Busters? Can't they do a show WITHOUT blowing up things? Is THIS science? A cascade of explosions?

Where are the stars? It's just blackness!
Many people expect to see millions of stars on the black sky-sections of these photographs. To make these stars visible, each one of these photographs should show over-exposed lunar surfaces, in other words: bright white lunar surfaces and perhaps (PERHAPS) some of the brighter stars near the upper margins of the frames, although I think these photographs would look just... white...
The astronauts didn't have enough time to make long-exposure photographs of the starry sky up above. The only time such (telescopic) photographs were made was during the mission of Apollo 16 in april 1972. Commander John Young operated a small telescope which was standing in the shadow of LM Orion, to prevent the direct bright light from the sun.
See: AS16-114-18435.jpg
And: AS16-114-18439.jpg

An introduction to Flemish slang and insanity
Frequently heard during the evenings at the public observatory of the university in Ghent - East Flanders:
- Kun je de peetjes zien rondlopen?
Which means:
- Is it possible to see the little manikins running around up there?
Yes, the moon seems to be a place where some sort of little manikins or goblins are running around. Astronauts? Never heard of those. Astronauts on the moon are impossible, because spaceflight isn't that advanced, we hardly reach the upper layers of earth's atmosphere.
Believe it or not, several Flemish public observatories have experienced a very irritating wave of visits from some stubborn nay-sayer and his colleagues who claimed the impossibility of spaceflight! According to him and his entourage, since 1957 mankind isn't capable of going further than, say, 10 kilometers up, that's all...

Well, where are they? Could we see them running up there? Is it possible to see Louis Armstrong play his trumpet and Lance Armstrong ride his bike?
The moon and Armstrong...
Whenever your name is Armstrong you are (or were) on the moon. That's what I frequently heard during my evenings at the public observatory. I told the visitors about the astronaut Neil Armstrong; the commander of Apollo 11 and first human being on the moon in july 1969, and also about Gene Cernan; the commander of Apollo 17 and last human being on the moon in december 1972. "Gene Who?".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Cernan

And Yuri Gagarin, wasn't he on the moon?
Sigh... when you are (or were) a cosmonaut, or a spationaut, or a taikonaut, or even a juggernaut, you are (or were) ON THE MOON.
In other words, the destiny of all sorts of "nauts" is (or was) somewhere on the moon.
On the other hand... ASTRONAUTS on the moon... that's impossible, or perhaps... very, VERY difficult to comprehend!
Cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are not just in orbit around earth, they are GOING TO THE MOON...
To most people, "SPACE", "THE MOON", "WAY OUT THERE", "BETWEEN THE STARS", "PLUTO", "UP ABOVE OUR HEADS", is all the same...
Remember Sputnik 1? (60th anniversary in october 2017) (most people think it landed somewhere on the moon, or perhaps on Mars, or perhaps it's stuck between the gaseous filaments of the Orion nebula...).

From what I've heard... there seems to have been a third guy aboard that capsule. What did he do while those other two walked on the moon?
Not just sitting and watching.
During the almost completely forgotten scientific missions of Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17, each one of the Command Module Pilots (CMPs, the "third guys") had to operate the High Resolution photocameras (Fairchild - Itek) aboard the Scientific Instruments Modules (SIM-bays) located in the Service Modules of the Apollo spaceships. These HiRes photocameras made whole series of images of the lunar surface, they were very much like the cameras aboard espionage airplanes.
Worthwile to explore:

The Fairchild camera frames

Apollo 15's orbital Fairchild camera photographs: (metric frames) (SIM-bay instruments operated by CMP Al Worden)
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/metric/mission/?15
Apollo 16's orbital Fairchild camera photographs: (metric frames) (SIM-bay instruments operated by CMP Ken Mattingly)
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/metric/mission/?16
Apollo 17's orbital Fairchild camera photographs: (metric frames) (SIM-bay instruments operated by CMP Ron Evans)
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/metric/mission/?17

The ITEK camera frames

Apollo 15's orbital ITEK camera photographs: (panoramic frames) (SIM-bay instruments operated by CMP Al Worden)
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/pan/mission/?15
Apollo 16's orbital ITEK camera photographs: (panoramic frames) (SIM-bay instruments operated by CMP Ken Mattingly)
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/pan/mission/?16
Apollo 17's orbital ITEK camera photographs: (panoramic frames) (SIM-bay instruments operated by CMP Ron Evans)
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/pan/mission/?17

The Command Module Pilots (CMPs) of Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17

CMP Al Worden from Apollo 15:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Worden
CMP Ken Mattingly from Apollo 16:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Mattingly
CMP Ron Evans from Apollo 17:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Evans_(astronaut)

Say, they could see the Chinese wall from the moon, then it should be possible to see some sort of artificial lunar structures from Earth
Sigh... some journalist invented the so-called "astronaut's observation" of the Chinese wall (as seen from the moon). Apollo astronauts didn't had a telescope such as the gigantic Keck reflector up there, which means... naked eye observations of the Chinese wall (from the moon) were (and still are) IMPOSSIBLE!!!
And... there are no artificial structures such as buildings on the moon. The largest artificial structures on the moon were (and still are) the six Descent Stages of the Lunar Modules of Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17. They are TOO small ! They are only detectable on High-Resolution photographs made by orbiting probes such as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

These moonwalkers must have been on the booze. Pete Conrad of Apollo 12 was a typical example. He was yelling his way into the Surveyor crater
Try to imagine yourself on the lunar surface. How would you behave? Like a boy scout?

Alan Shepard of Apollo 14 went to the moon to hit a golf ball. What else did he do up there?
First of all, trying to get to the rim of Cone crater. See the article The Climb Up Cone Crater by Alice J. Hall in the National Geographic of July 1971.

When James Irwin of Apollo 15 walked on the moon, did he really felt the presence of god?
I think each one of the 24 astronauts of Project Apollo had some sort of religious experiences. Don't underestimate the psychological impact of a journey to the moon! It's not something like going to the grocery store.

What? Twenty Four of those astronauts went to the moon and back? I thought there were only two or three!
Indeed, between November 1968 and January 1973 Twenty Four NASA astronauts observed the moon from orbit. Twelve of them walked on the moon.
See list:
Aldrin, Edwin (Apollo 11) (walked on the moon, July 1969).
Anders, William (Apollo 8) (in orbit around the moon, December 1968).
Armstrong, Neil (Apollo 11) (walked on the moon, July 1969).
Bean, Alan (Apollo 12) (walked on the moon, November 1969).
Borman, Frank (Apollo 8) (in orbit around the moon, December 1968).
Cernan, Eugene (Apollo 10/ Apollo 17) (in orbit around the moon, May 1969) (walked on the moon, December 1972).
Collins, Michael (Apollo 11) (in orbit around the moon, July 1969).
Conrad, Charles (Apollo 12) (walked on the moon, November 1969).
Duke, Charles (Apollo 16) (walked on the moon, April 1972).
Evans, Ronald (Apollo 17) (in orbit around the moon, December 1972).
Gordon, Richard (Apollo 12) (in orbit around the moon, November 1969).
Haise, Fred (Apollo 13) (in orbit around the moon, April 1970) (should have walked on the moon).
Irwin, James (Apollo 15) (walked on the moon, July-August 1971).
Lovell, James (Apollo 8, Apollo 13) (twice in orbit around the moon) (should have walked on the moon during Apollo 13).
Mattingly, Thomas (Apollo 16) (in orbit around the moon, April 1972).
Mitchell, Edgar (Apollo 14) (walked on the moon, February 1971).
Roosa, Stuart (Apollo 14) (in orbit around the moon, February 1971).
Schmitt, Harrison (Apollo 17) (walked on the moon, December 1972).
Scott, David (Apollo 15) (walked on the moon, July-August 1971).
Shepard, Alan (Apollo 14) (walked on the moon, February 1971).
Stafford, Thomas (Apollo 10) (in orbit around the moon, May 1969).
Swigert, John (Apollo 13) (in orbit around the moon, April 1970).
Worden, Alfred (Apollo 15) (in orbit around the moon, July-August 1971).
Young, John (Apollo 10/ Apollo 16) (in orbit around the moon, may 1969) (walked on the moon, April 1972).

- There are also several Apollo astronauts who didn't made it to the moon, because they were involved in orbital Earth missions to test the Command-Service Module (CSM) and the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), and how to perform the rendez-vous and docking procedures
Walt Cunningham (Apollo 7)
Don Eisele (Apollo 7)
James McDivitt (Apollo 9)
Walter Schirra (Apollo 7)
Russell Schweickart (Apollo 9)
(David Scott of Apollo 9 was also involved in the mission of Apollo 15 to the moon)

All of those astronauts returned home as crazy men
That's what most people want to hear: how astronauts lost their brains once they were back on earth after their lunar missions, because space and the moon are forbidden places. People just DON'T want to know something like the manned exploration of space. It doesn't fit in their way of thinking. "Be a normal creature, spend your life as a common being among other common beings, stay with both feet on the ground, watch football and bicycle races, NEVER watch the sky because it's way above your head". If you don't watch football and don't like bicycle races you are an abnormal creature.

Ed Mitchell of Apollo 14 did something with Zener cards and ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) while he was out there in the neighborhood of the moon. Was he really Way Out ???
Ed Mitchell (1930-2016) wanted to explore the unknown fathoms of the human psyche, but the NASA officials were very sceptical (they simply didn't want to know of Ed's odd experiments). Several astronauts, however, were very interested and wanted to know if Ed's Apollo-14 related ESP-experiments dug up something rather unexpected from the realms of the human mind.
Ed also supported the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the involvement of that intelligence in our society, often misunderstood as "UFO mumbojumbo" by the media, and because of that he was seen by many as a crazy ex-astronaut.
About Apollo 14 LMP (Lunar Module Pilot) Edgar D. Mitchell:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Mitchell

The what? The Post Apollo Syndrome?
The Post Apollo Syndrome was the enormous and not-to-be-underestimated psychological void after an astronaut's Apollo mission. Most Apollo astronauts were involved in only one mission. Astronauts such as Edwin Aldrin (Apollo 11), Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14), James Irwin (Apollo 15), and Charles Duke (Apollo 16) knew very well the effects of the Post Apollo Syndrome. Life after Apollo was just an empty void. To try to fill in that void was a psychological struggle.
Few astronauts were able to deal with it, mainly because they knew the possibility of being involved in another Apollo mission. James Lovell was involved in Apollo 8 and Apollo 13. Eugene Cernan was involved in Apollo 10 and Apollo 17. John Young was involved in Apollo 10 and Apollo 16. Thomas Stafford was involved in Apollo 10 and ASTP (the Apollo/Soyuz-Test-Project of 1975), Charles Conrad was involved in Apollo 12 and Skylab 2 (Apollo Applications Program). Alan Bean was involved in Apollo 12 and Skylab 3. Other Apollo astronauts such as Ken Mattingly (Apollo 16) and Vance Brand (Apollo/Soyuz-Test-Project) were also involved in the Space Shuttle Project (STS - Space Transportation System).
A rather odd exception in NASA was John Glenn. He made the US's very first orbital flight aboard a Mercury capsule (1962), and many decades later a Space Shuttle flight as a not-too-young astronaut. His motto must have been: Never think you're out of it.

An interesting book about the first manned lunar landing (Apollo 11) is Norman Mailer's MOONFIRE''.
See: http://the-moon.us/wiki/Moonfire

A much more interesting book is
A MAN ON THE MOON by Andrew Chaikin (with foreword by Tom Hanks).
Andy Chaikin is one of the world's most dedicated connoisseurs of NASA's manned explorations of the moon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Chaikin

The Apollo 20 hoax
Yes, YouTube seems to have been invented to amuse people who want to believe the existence of an alien needle-shaped spaceship on the far side of the moon.
Well, I went to the
LROC ACT-REACT QUICK MAP to try to locate that "alien spaceship". Guess what, I detected it! I detected the pinpoint location of that so-called spaceship. Alas, the appearance of the typical needle-shaped thing isn't a spaceship at all, it's just a coincidental ridge between two shallow hills...
Now, I could say that the folks of the LROC altered the Hi-Res NAC photographs to get rid of that spaceship, but... I'm an intelligent person, and I have an original kind of intuition which tells me that these folks don't do such things.
To get the location of that "
alien spaceship", see the page of crater GUEST (the most nearby one of the officially named craters) :
http://the-moon.us/wiki/Guest
About the Apollo 20 hoax:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_20_hoax

More to read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories_in_popular_culture

NON-APOLLO related misunderstandings


Is the moon real or is it just a sheet of paper hung up in the sky, the shape of a croissant?
Kindergarten did something to most people. Something terribly wrong. It created the childish perception of earth's natural satellite. Some sort of drawing of a croissant with a smiling face on it. In Flanders-Belgium it is called "Janneke Maan". Adult people still want to be toddlers when they watch the moon. It's a strange psychological syndrome.
I don't know if there's an English or American equivalent of the Flemish "Janneke Maan" (?). Perhaps it's something like "Little Johnny Moon". In France it could be "Petite Jean Lune", and in Germany: "Kleine Johann Mond".
Imagine: the astronauts of NASA's Project Apollo explored "Little Johnny Moon"...

It must be a Partial Lunar Eclipse, because there's only a tiny crescent of it to see
In most cases it's the commonly known very young Waxing Crescent Moon.
When there's a real Partial Lunar Eclipse, many people think it's the very young Waxing Crescent Moon, or the very old Waning Crescent Moon.

WHAT?!?! The Total Lunar Eclipse is over? Let it happen again!
Sigh... it's the odd story of that angry woman who was too late to enjoy the Total Lunar Eclipse...
As told by one of our dedicated telescope operators, that woman seems to have been quite agitated! She demanded to "turn the shadow of earth back on the moon".
Some visitors...

After moonset, where's the moon going to?
Yes, after moonset most people think the moon is just vanished. Gone. A large percentage of Earth's population has absolutely no sense of the globular shape of the world and the continuity of the westward movement of the whole sky related to our planet (in fact, it's our planet which is continuously rotating eastward). All the celestial objects (except the circumpolar stars) set at the western horizon, once in 24 hours, to rise several hours later at the eastern horizon.

Which one of the planets is this?
You really have to turn heaven and earth upside-down to try to explain the telescopic visibility of lunar crater Copernicus, often misunderstood as being one of the solar system's planets...

Say, is there a bloke inside that thing?
According to many people there's a "bloke" inside an interplanetary probe such as Cassini near planet Saturn. It's because space is just a dimension-less "something" up above their heads. Planet Saturn could be as near as the ISS, the moon could have the same distance as the Andromeda galaxy.
In Flanders-Belgium they say: "Zit er een peet in dat ding? ".
Explanation: The Flemish "Peet " (or "Vent ") is the same as the English "Bloke". A little bloke is "een peetje" or "een ventje".

Why can't you show us a real UFO? Your telescope must be worthless
Most visitors in public observatories want to see just one thing: a real UFO (a Flying Saucer). Alas... there's no such things as Flying Saucers...
One of the visitors threw his own telescope into a canal because... he was very angry. He wanted to observe Flying Saucers, but... they never came...

Is THAT a star? It doesn't look very much like a star!
People want to observe the classic star shape with the well known five sharp-angled appendages, such as those on flags etcetera...
When you show them a star such as, for example, Alpha Orionis (Betelgeuse), they can't comprehend the point- or dot-like appearance of it. They want to see a classic "star" instead of a point.

That must be the little bear, isn't it?
The open star cluster which is officially known as Messier 45, aka the Pleiades, is often seen as the "little bear".

It's bright... which means... it's the pole star...
The brightest star in the sky, Alpha Canis Majoris, aka Sirius, is often seen as the "pole star". The real polar star (Alpha Ursae Minoris, aka Polaris) is not at all an eye-catching star. When the International Space Station (ISS) is noticeable above the western horizon to start its transit across the sky, it is often seen as... the "pole star". The bright headlights of a distant airliner... the "pole star"...
The bright planet Venus... the "pole star"...

Well, where are those bottles of milk on the Milky Way?
The milky way... who invented that name?

You live here in that dome?
Visitors in a public observatory have no idea how the operator of the main telescope has a life like almost everybody else: work, eat, sleep, eat, work, eat, sleep, eat, work, eat, sleep... and... every now and then going to the bathroom to deliver something...
When I was an operator of the main telescope in my city's public observatory, many visitors thought that I was some sort of bat, hanging upside-down below the upper concave part of the dome, only awake when visitors came in to have a look through the "tube".
Reminds me the movie The Ladies Man with Jerry Lewis, in which he (as Herbert H. Heebert) is disturbing the enigmatic Miss Cartilage (Sylvia Lewis) who's hanging upside-down in her completely white room, and is slowly descending to perform her main act: entertaining and dancing, and running after a frightened Jerry Lewis, accompanied by the swinging music of a suddenly pop'd up Big Band. Great movie!

Is it possible to watch clouds through the telescope?
Certain terrestrial clouds are indeed observable through telescopes. The most suitable kind of cloud is the Cumulonimbus (read: the sharp looking edge of the typical cauliflower-shape of it, which is constantly "boiling" or "growing" its way across the telescope's field of view).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulonimbus_cloud
About the typical shape of the Cumulonimbus cloud:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauliflower

Could you show me those rovers crawling around on Mars?
Public and professional observatories don't have SUPER-telescopes. Even the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in orbit around earth can't show these Martian rovers.
The APOD (Astronomy Picture Of the Day) of July the 21st - 2017, shows a perfect photograph of Mars made through the Hubble Space Telescope. In this photograph, one of the Martian moons (Phobos) is also captured. Some of the larger craters on the surface of Mars are also visible, but... no rovers... (too small !!!).
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170721.html

Is it possible to show us a black hole?
Sure, I only have to put the protective cap on the telescope's upper main lens, and... observe! Shows nothing else than pure blackness.

Dear telescope operator, have you ever observed an armageddon?
When visitors of public observatories ask this question, they expect to see a cataclysmic baptism of fire. Most of these people are fond of watching all sorts of exaggerated Sci-Fi movies (mostly whole series of explosions, fire, more explosions, more fire, and at the end a big burned hole in the film itself). Then it's up to the telescope operator to explain the joy of (what I call) "Dry Astronomy". Most people can't sit a whole evening behind a telescope to observe (for example) the slowly progressing terminator across the moon's cratered surface, or the contrast-colored components of binary stars such as Gamma Andromedae, or the rich starfield known as Messier 11.
Pure amateur astronomy is just TOO boring for this sort of thrill-seeking visitors.
P.S.:
The lunar terminator, dear people, is NOT Arnold Schwarzenegger who's strolling around on the moon. The lunar terminator is the day-night boundary, always moving westward across the moon's cratered surface.

You always try to watch the very end of the universe through your upward aimed tube. Could you tell me something about the meaning of life?
Many visitors of public observatories want to know the answer to the question What's the meaning of life?, because... intellectual cosmologists and intelligent astrophysicists should know all about it. Alas, they know not much more than everybody else here on our little blue marble... In other words, we know just nothing.
American composer Charles Ives already realized that mankind knows just nothing. His composition The Unanswered Question was (and shall always be) the most suitable example of this awareness.

This page is a product made by Apollo connoisseur and rebel Danny Caes, Ghent - East Flanders (P.S.: John Moore told me I should create a special page to destroy a whole series of generally accepted misunderstandings which pop'd up many years after the conclusion of Project Apollo).
http://www.wikispaces.com/user/view/DannyCaes