east is complemented by the descriptive text embellishments of former Smithsonian geologist, and author/writer, Andrew Chaikin.

As I looked at the many paintings in Bean's book, I couldn't help but notice that his artistic treatments are, to say the very least, "intriguing." And as I continued to peruse this wondrous collection of visual images -- painted by a man who had actually walked on the surface of the Moon -- I recalled something crucial about what I was viewing: in a dialogue between Richard C. Hoagland (of the "Enterprise Mission") and Art Bell, of late night radio's "Coast to Coast AM" several years ago, Richard reported on, among other things, the 1996 Washington Press Conference. It was there that he, as well as other lunar researchers and scientists, released the results and stunning evidence of an extensive 7-year investigation into "lunar glass structures" found on NASA photography, to the Washington Press Corp. Part of this late night radio discussion (after Washington) included the probable first-hand observation of "gauzy, crystalline glass," seen in the lunar sky and around the moonwalkers themselves -- including astronaut Alan Bean. Hoagland related a question that had been posed to Bean by a major news magazine in 1995: "What does space look like from the lunar surface?" Bean's fascinating answer …

"Black Patent Leather Shoes !"

Hoagland correctly observed that "the vast expanse of space, as seen by Bean or any other moonwalker from the lunar surface, should be a 'velvet black', not a 'patent leather SHINY black ...'" Hoagland went on: "Bean was likely remembering the vivid visual impressions of what he had seen and stored in his subconscious -- namely, the shiny, crystalline, glass artifacts and structures still arching over Oceanus Procellarum!"

And in 1998, on page 29 of his book "Apollo," Bean -- again! -- insisted on bringing up these "patent leather skies …" But more than that, he insisted on placing these remarkable, glittering glass structures into lunar horizons of paintings in the book that depict scenes from other Apollo missions , apart from Apollo 12. This really lends credence to what our lunar team has verified time and time again, with one important difference: that similar artifacts seen on NASA photography are not just "subconsciously" recalled, but are indeed very obvious, 3-D lunar structures -- capable of refracting sunlight and yet now almost but not quite totally transparent.

The moonwalkers have even taken close-up pictures of each other standing in front of surface features that clearly show the refractivity and reflectivity of these astonishing glass artifacts; Pete Conrad, during the second EVA on Apollo 12, shot a photo (AS12-18-7071 -- below) of Alan Bean, that unmistakably shows the intricate, translucent geometry of "something" that shouldn't be there -- complete with a shadow -- hanging some fifteen feet above the lunar surface, neatly reflected in Bean's visor!

Bean's textured, stylized painting called "Lunar Grand Prix" (below), shows Apollo 16's Commander, John Young, taking the Boeing "lunar rover" through its paces. What is astonishing to see is what is in the lunar skies behind him, in this (and other) Bean lunar compositions: these are not merely "decorative support objects!"

What we see are ice blue "pyramidal" and "domical-shaped" structures above this "Bean horizon." In other renderings, like "Hadley Rille" (below), by contrast there are filamentary "angled geometric stringers" that provocatively "catch the light" in his pigment and texture treatments; while still others show the equally unmistakable evidence of artifacts through subtle color changes in his black and blue, glistening "patent leather" skies.

Could it be that Bean -- not through his 30 years of statements as a "faithful NASA astronaut," but through his art -- is finally "telling us the truth" about what he really saw … walking on the Moon?!

Art is a "reflection" of perception … "perception" for the artist being the embodiment of all his (or her) prior life experience. Bean's work is objective. We can see that: everything is in its place -- astronauts, lunar hills, Apollo instruments, the Lunar Module itself -- and we don't have to guess what each shape is supposed to represent. He is very specific in the use of his "Monet-esc" impasto technique in rendering these familiar objects in his paintings; so, what are we to think when he extends this same technique to depict the equally-familiar artificial shapes and colors that describe his lunar skies?!

Given the context, we are probably supposed to think that -- like the NASA objects that he paints sitting on the lunar surface -- what he's depicting arching overhead is also real. Because -- these incredible "glass-like" shapes we see in Bean's "patent leather skies" aren't just relegated to his personal expressions on a piece of canvas …

"Pinpoint for Science" is a 1969, official NASA post mission film depicting the objectives and results of the successful Apollo 12 journey to the "Sea of Storms." But, as with all official NASA documents over the past 40 or so years, it ultimately ducks the question: just why WAS Apollo 12 sent to (in Latin) the "Oceanus Procellarum" region of the Moon? Looking at the film in a darkened room, everything looks relatively "normal." But take a frame or two out of the film, computer-enhance them a bit (below) … and we dramatically, objectively, begin to see exactly what came out of Bean's subconscious, to be spread across his many striking canvases!

For, looking closely at Bean's work, we see eerily similar striated geometric patterns in the lunar skies to those actually photographed by Bean and Conrad above the lunar module "Intrepid" (above). Make no mistake: these striking patterns are clearly distinct and unrelated to his overall, textural impasto, color striated "paint-to-canvas" technique.

But there is something even more important we should say about Bean's "colors"...

Hoagland, on the Bell show that night in '96, having seen samples of Bean's amazing paintings long before the 1998 publication of his book, even then puzzled over the prolific use of "rainbow hues" that are another curious "signature" of much of Bean's depictions of the Moon. And he asked the crucial question: "Why the use of color ... to depict a colorless vacuum (or, more accurately, a dead gray lunar surface in a vacuum)?" Was it just a personal artistic initiative by Bean, to make "his" Moon appear more appealing to the viewer? Or ... could it be another "subconscious lunar statement" of what he really saw?

After all, for an astronaut facing away from the Sun, sunlight would enter a lunar glass structure from a point directly behind the observer, and would inevitably be refracted by the glass at its front surface -- yielding a "flash-spectrum" spread out across the lunar landscape … a rainbow! A series of lunar structures would yield multiple, overlapping spectra … and a veritable riot of "prismatic" color splayed out across the Moon!!

If we look at a common prism (above) -- which effectively breaks up (actually, "disperses") white light into its constituent colors -- we see that visible light is composed of a spectrum of colors, each with a distinct wavelength and associated frequency. A prism breaks these up by bending them by different degrees within the prism, much like water droplets refract sunlight into a full rainbow. In the lunar vacuum, all frequencies of light travel at the same speed; but when light is traveling through a material (like water or glass), that speed is reduced proportional to its frequency. This reduction causes the direction of the light beam to change and disperse systematically with wavelength, as it passes through the glass.

The lunar artifacts of glass that Hoagland and the rest of us have found are now mere remnants of their former grand magnificence: immense (and immensely battered) relics from literal eons of exposure to an incessant meteoric rain, "mere shadows of themselves" … But -- they still refract! Therefore, is it sheer "coincidence" that Alan Bean -- in his repeated depictions of what NASA has endlessly reiterated is "a dead gray lunar surface" -- insists on using practically every color of the rainbow in almost all of his paintings of Apollo?! Could this be another "not-so-subtle" indicator of his own subconscious memories of the real Moon ..?

Another key person provides additional "color" for this theory:

Ken Johnston Sr. has often, with Hoagland, publicly recounted his own remarkable experiences with NASA, starting with his over 3000 hours as consultant and test pilot for Grumman Aerospace during "the Apollo years." This intimate association with NASA then continued with his subsequent appointment as "data and photo control group supervisor" for Brown and Root-Northrop Corp., at NASA's "Johnson Space Center" in Houston. There, at the very heart of the Apollo program, he worked closely with the Apollo scientists themselves at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL), maintaining and distributing all over the world Apollo lunar samples and orbital photographs acquired during each Apollo mission.

But, according to Ken, even in those "Golden Years" all was not as has been repeatedly portrayed at NASA …

Among the many nefarious and blatantly deceitful acts that Johnston personally witnessed at the LRL, was the outright removal of suspicious "anomalistic" segments of NASA mission footage (not spliced -- but the careful substitution of whole reconstructed sections!) from the official, first-generation 16mm DAC Apollo 14 film. And what was equally if not even more astonishing: he saw the outright "airbrushing into oblivion" of entire sections of lunar horizons and surface areas on NASA "stills" -- the 70mm negatives taken by the astronauts. In answer to his obvious amazement, he was told specifically that they were "painting [doctoring!] the negatives to make it easier for people to keep from getting confused as to the REAL colors of the Moon --' black and gray.'"

Now, Hoagland had long predicted that any glass artifacts present on the Moon should -- nay, must -- produce "prismatic colors." He even thought that this additional visual evidence of "ancient lunar structures" might be apparent on the Apollo photography itself. But, after personally examining reams of Apollo color lunar photographs at NSSDC long ago, and determining that the expected colors seemed completely absent, Hoagland was forced to conclude that the glass is currently "too fragile and too transparent," due to the ever present meteoric "sandblasting," to refract colors strong enough to compete with direct lunar sunlight itself.

That was before he began a series of carefully controlled computer color enhancements of some original NASA photographs -- stored safely away from NASA's clutches for more than thirty years …

"Even at our most paranoid, we never really thought that the color images themselves would be doctored to remove this crucial evidence," Hoagland recently admitted. "There wasn't any considered reason for doing this, since we all 'knew' -- from the eyewitness 'testimony' of the astronauts, if not the proof of the photographs themselves -- that the Moon is 'stark, dead gray.' Right?"

The 16mm DAC cameras, and the Hasselblad EL's and DC's of Apollo, carried 70mm SO368 Ektachrome and Ektachrome SO368EF color reversal film to the surface and into lunar orbit. Translation: like Earthbound tourists, the astronauts took Ektachrome movies and 70mm color slides of their visits to the Moon. Of course, civilian computer enhancement technology was nonexistent in those days, when the press would receive later generation color prints (created in the NASA-Houston photographic lab itself) from these original "Apollo slides." Thus, there was no easy way for them (or anyone else -- but a select few within the Agency itself) to critically examine or "enhance" the true color balance of those 2nd generation NASA prints.

It was during the preparation of this piece, that Hoagland recalled some unique NASA "1st generation" images in his possession -- part of Ken Johnston's original 30-year-old untouched Apollo archive he had loaned to "Enterprise" many years before. Rather than repeat the endless contrast stretches and gamma corrections he'd done previously, this time he did a basic color enhancement of one of his original Apollo 14 frames, and voila --

PRODUCED A PERFECT "BEAN MATCH (below)!"

He then examined data retrieved direct from Eastman Kodak (below), re the filter (actually, "sensitivity") curves built into the 3-color layers of NASA's Ecktachrome lunar film. Thirty years ago, he realized, in the original NASA-Houston lab, to remove the surface color from the "2nd generation lunar prints" the NASA lab technicians would have had to, in effect, "reverse each color filter to produce a 'neutral gray.'" They would have had to painstakingly prepare several generations of these reverse-filtered "interpositives" and "internegatives," in order to ultimately eliminate the color from the lunar landscape … while leaving it unaltered in the images of the Apollo astronauts themselves, the array of equipment they brought with them, and of course the gold mylar-covered Lunar Module.

But, in looking at the Kodak filter curves, it was obvious that this "primitive" 1960's technology -- perhaps, best publicly illustrated by the painstakingly-prepared, multi-generations of film layers used to create the dazzling visual effects in the 1960's classic "2001" -- would, necessarily, have been less than 100% perfect. Because … the process would have been limited to using only analog darkroom photographic techniques (look, Ma, no computers!)

Today, through widely democratized digital technology, we are easily able to scan, amplify and display what we were not even able to see in 1970. We are now able to "reach down" into the original print layers and extract the original colors still lurking in these altered NASA films … to amplify them back to their original values -- which, incredibly, are strikingly similar to the colors Bean now uses in his current lunar scenes! And, when we look at the magenta color in Bean's Apollo 17 Cernan painting (below -- right), and compare the same color values seen in the distance behind Mitchell on Apollo 14 (below -- left), we see the full potential of this digital revolution!

The last painting in Bean's "Apollo" (p.175 -- below) is a dead giveaway to his entire "patent leather truth." Note carefully what Bean says in his own commentary on the painting, written 17 years after his November, 1969 Apollo visit to the Moon …

"The original idea for this painting came to me in 1986. I began painting what had taken shape in my mind but when it was nearly completed the painting just didn't feel right. I set it aside for several months but studied it every day or so. A new vision emerged that elicited happier and more exhilarating thoughts and emotions, ones closely related to how it actually felt. I was able to finish the painting."

Again, the colors!!!

Bean's self-portrait -- obviously, carefully-positioned as his last painting in the book -- is not your classic "white Apollo spacesuit." It is of a suit, yes -- Bean's own suit -- but one brightly lit by a refracted, spectral Sun -- a Sun obviously shining prismatically through sheets of suspended lunar glass!!

Hoagland, in pointing out to me the uniqueness of this painting, and it's overwhelming importance to Bean's "artistic truth," recalled seeing the first orbital color lunar images from Apollo 8 when he was advising Walter Cronkite over thirty years ago. Even then, he thought, "how unconventional" they looked. He said, "We'd been told -- by no lesser authorities than the Apollo 8 astronauts themselves, live from lunar orbit -- that the Moon's surface was a 'desolate, stark gray' … like 'dirty beach sand.' Yet, in those first close-up photographic images, the surface of the Moon as viewed from orbit was everything from a subtle 'salmon pink,' to a shimmering 'sap green!'"

"I remember wondering," he said, even in the incredible rush immediately following the unprecedented Christmas Mission, "that's the real color of the Moon?! Something must be seriously wrong in NASA's Houston film lab !

"But that was all: I thought they had a technical problem with the first color films returning from the Moon. In those days, suspecting that NASA wasn't giving us the whole story --- that's its astronauts would be telling us one thing, while its images would be subtly revealing a totally different version of Reality -- was just unthinkable!"

Thirty years later and (he hopes) significantly wiser, Hoagland now theorizes that the NASA censors during Apollo 8 belatedly realized they might in fact have a major problem with the Moon -- but only when the astronauts got back and the first close-up color films were rush-developed. In the "feeding frenzy" to get the first close-up Apollo pictures to the press, this totally unexpected lunar color (all previous unmanned NASA imagery had been done in black and white!) must have been a shock; for it would be a dead giveaway (to the technically sophisticated) of the presence of "a vast expanse of suspended lunar glass … glass unmistakable revealed by its refraction of sunlight in a dazzling array of "rainbow colors" on the lunar surface.

Because the discovery was so totally unexpected (Hoagland continued), with no careful pre-preparation of the NASA lab or films to "handle" it, there was literally no time to "carefully fiddle with the pictures" from Apollo 8 -- to produce a "neutral gray."

"So," Hoagland went on, "they punted: they deliberately released glaringly exaggerated color of the Moon … in those garish green and purple initial Apollo 8 films … in hopes that everyone (including me!) would 'blame it on the film, on the lab, on anything … but the real colors of the Moon.'

"And, it worked … for over thirty years!"

Only to be ultimately revealed by one of their own …

"… A new vision emerged that elicited happier and more exhilarating thoughts and emotions, ones closely related to how it actually felt …"

… And LOOKED!

Bean is telling us the truth!

Bean's helmet close-up (above) is another undeniable, dead giveaway ...

Note the translucent, rigid glass geometry depicted in the sky around the Sun, seen in Bean's own visor. This geometry, of course, could not exist naturally anywhere on or above the lunar surface. If we compare Bean's interpretation of this obviously artificial structure with official NASA photographs -- like the Surveyor 6 television image of the surface of Sinus Medii, taken in 1967, and first published by the Enterprise Mission as an artificial, glass-like lunar structure in 1996 (below) -- we see astonishing geometric similarities.

Taken an hour after local sunset, this remarkable Surveyor shot shows a luminous "grid" and highly mysterious "brilliant beads of light" strung out along a supposedly airless lunar horizon, in an area of the Moon where (we now know) much of this same anomalous structure has been independently photographed from overhead by both the unmanned Lunar Orbiter and subsequent manned Apollo missions. The image explicitly shows a tilted, glass-like, elevated geometric structure -- eerily like that shown in Bean's own helmet close-up … a structure obviously back-lit by scattered sunlight coming from below (and beyond) the visible horizon.

As noted earlier, Bean's helmet "stair-like" glass geometry also now confirms astonishing photographic evidence from Bean's own lunar landing: Hoagland's analysis of some of the Apollo 12 stills several years ago (below) revealed equally startling, obviously highly eroded, sloping glass geometry … where no geometry should be …

Through our own years of continuing investigation, we have found repeated, stunning photographic confirmation of widespread "patent leather artifacts" all across the Moon ... not only vindicating Hoagland's earlier imaging analysis, but extending it to now include a significant portion of the lunar surface. Much of this has come from painstaking research on the photographs taken on the subsequent, manned Apollo missions -- including Bean's Apollo 12.

Alan Bean's obvious memories of his own anomalous "reflections and refractions on the Moon," are clearly now expressed in his striking painted backgrounds in "Apollo." I believe these convey (as they were intended to convey) what he really did see on the surface of the Moon: the now shattered lunar remnants of glittering, crystalline, geometric artifacts and domes …

After thirty years of silence, it is through his paintings that Bean has obviously, and at long last, chosen to communicate what's really on the Moon. Of all the astronauts who once actually walked upon that ancient, dusty surface, his legacy will be unique: the first to clearly make a "between the lines" confession -- choosing at last to tell us all The Truth …

But only through his art.

We can only hope, for the sake of the United States and all the rest of us, that others within NASA will soon join him on this crucial Last Apollo Mission ….

POSTSCRIPT:

Steve Troy's artistic critique of Bean's paintings is, in part, a result of his training as an artist and educator. Troy graduated with a BA in studio art and art history from the University of Iowa in 1968, and a BS in Art Education K-12 from Southwest State University, Marshall, MN, in 1983 -- where he stayed on as Adjunct faculty in the Art Department there, facilitating Art Education methods courses K-12 from 1986-1995. Steve is currently a mural artist, part time educator, as well as a lunar researcher.

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