Photo of crowd at Trinity. Is it really New Mexico?

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Photo of crowd at Trinity. Is it really New Mexico?

Postby FirstClassSkeptic » 03 Dec 2011 14:54

Here's the photo on Wikipedia?

Image

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trini ... ro_001.jpg

Notice the mountains are tilted. I tried straightening it up, and also playing with the contrast and brightness:
See Attachment below.

To me, this looks like a mountain with moderate to heavy vegetation, with some large rock outcroppings. I think they look more like the St. Gabriel Mountains, and this is the Los Angeles basin. But there could be many other possibilities.

It also looks to me like the photographers cranked up the contrast to hide that it was really a heavy overcast, or smoggy, sky. This would be an indication that the photo could have been taken in the Los Angeles basin, rather then in the desert of New Mexico. I was told once by a man that grew up in Los Angeles in the 1940's, that the smog was much worse then than now. Notice that on the ground, there are no shadows cast.

Image

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trini ... ndmark.jpg

Masons build a pyramid at the Trinity site. Notice the shadow!!!

Wiki article on Alamogordo. Notice the generally clear skies. I'm not saying, though, that it can't be cloudy. Just not likely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trini ... ndmark.jpg
Attachments
trinity groves.jpg
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Re: Photo of crowd at Trinity. Is it really New Mexico?

Postby rerevisionist » 03 Dec 2011 15:14

Image
Good observation. This other photo shows the ground more clearly - it has a crazed surface, like dried-up mud. Certainly not sand under intense sun. Or sand that's been rained on - that surface is clay-like. And not 'trinitite'!

That structure looks to me like the remains of a simple incinerator, a circle of metal uprights in which waste has been burnt, hence the pile of ashes. Not the base of a high tower which could support a very heavy bomb.
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Re: Photo of crowd at Trinity. Is it really New Mexico?

Postby FirstClassSkeptic » 04 Dec 2011 23:47

While planning the Trinity test, Los Alamos scientists were concerned about weather. Clear skies were necessary in order to observe and document the test. There was also concerns that rain immediately before or during the test would damage the electrical machinery and instruments. Another reason for being concerned about the weather was fallout. This was first suggested by Joseph Hirschfelder a few months earlier. High winds threatened to send the radioactive cloud over inhabited areas. If it began to rain too soon after the test it would cause concentrated amounts of fallout onto a small area. A meteorologist, J. M. Hubbard, was hired to pick the final day. He felt that the ideal dates were between July 18 and the 21st. The window of July 12 to the 14 was his second choice. On June 30 all division leaders had to submit the earliest possible date that their work would be ready. After a meeting on this day July 16th was decided as the final date.


https://toxipedia.org/display/wanmec/Tri ... New+Mexico

The test was originally scheduled for 4 a.m., Monday July 16, but was postponed to 5:30 due to a severe thunderstorm that would have increased the amount of radioactive fallout, and have interfered with the test results. The rain finally stopped and at 5:29:45 a.m. Mountain War Time, the device exploded successfully and the Atomic Age was born. The nuclear blast created a flash of light brighter than a dozen suns. The light was seen over the entire state of New Mexico and in parts of Arizona, Texas, and Mexico. The resultant mushroom cloud rose to over 38,000 feet within minutes, and the heat of the explosion was 10,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun! At ten miles away, this heat was described as like standing directly in front of a roaring fireplace. Every living thing within a mile of the tower was obliterated. The power of the bomb was estimated to be equal to 20,000 tons of TNT, or equivalent to the bomb load of 2,000 B-29, Superfortresses!

After witnessing the awesome blast, Oppenheimer quoted a line from a sacred Hindu text, the Bhagavad-Gita: He said: "I am become death, the shatterer of worlds."[6] In Los Alamos 230 miles to the north, a group of scientists' wives who had stayed up all night for the not so secret test, saw the light and heard the distant sound. One wife, Jane Wilson, described it this way, "Then it came. The blinding light [no] one had ever seen. The trees, illuminated, leaping out. The mountains flashing into life. Later, the long slow rumble. Something had happened, all right, for good or ill."[7]

General Groves' deputy commander, Brigadier General T. F. Farrell, described the explosion in great detail: "The effects could well be called unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous, and terrifying. No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever occurred before. The lighting effects beggared description. The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun. It was golden, purple, violet, gray, and blue. It lighted every peak, crevasse and ridge of the nearby mountain range with a clarity and beauty that cannot be described but must be seen to be imagined..."[8]


https://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/trin ... nity1.html

so, clear weather and skies were important, but it looks overcast in the pictures. Don't know when the pictures were taken, however.
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