Super cool shuttle photo

Alex Moon · Post by **Alex Moon** » 2003-03-05 01:08am

From the Columbia. It's nighttime descending over Europe.

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/ ... guest.html

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2003-03-05 01:08am

Looks beautiful...

Post by **Gandalf** » 2003-03-05 01:12am

That is beautiful.

Kintaro · Post by **Kintaro** » 2003-03-05 01:18am

Wow, that's one of the best Earth shots I've seen.

Post by **Vympel** » 2003-03-05 01:34am

You go to Rush Limbaugh.com?

Why?

Nice photo.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-03-05 01:38am

Nice pic, and great for photoshopping. Just add an emblem of some nation or dictator into the middle of the dark area. Possibul with some arrows

Raptor 597 · Post by **Raptor 597** » 2003-03-05 01:41am

Very pretty. Nice contrast aswell.

Enlightenment · Post by **Enlightenment** » 2003-03-05 01:46am

Further proof that Limbag is an idiot...

That's not a photo.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2003-03-05 01:52am

Enlightenment wrote:Further proof that Limbag is an idiot...

That's not a photo.

How so?

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2003-03-05 01:58am

Shinova wrote:
Enlightenment wrote:Further proof that Limbag is an idiot...

That's not a photo.
How so?

Upon closer examination, I think he's right... There's the lights which are doubtful, then the snow... One has to doubt wtf the Colombia was doing over Africa... It probably wouldn't have been too hard to photoshop... Add a black layer, overlay mode, some lights...

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2003-03-05 01:59am

It's a fake.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/sunset.asp

I thought as much, since that's not how Earth looks from space.

Alex Moon · Post by **Alex Moon** » 2003-03-05 02:02am

Vympel wrote:You go to Rush Limbaugh.com?

Why?

Nice photo.

I just saw a link to the image from another site and posted it here 'cause it looked cool.

Shaka[Zulu] · Post by **Shaka[Zulu]** » 2003-03-05 02:10am

oh, definitely a fake... subsea terrain features are typically not viewable in the visible spectrum to the degree seen in that image -- it looks surprisingly like the 'blue marble' earth terrain maps, which are composites of the entire planet, taken at different times to eliminate cloud cover, and in variying spectral ranges to accentuate desirable features. I have some pretty large full-planet bitmaps (day & night -- including lights) that Ive applied to make some pretty cool images in MAX. wanna see?

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-03-05 02:10am

I thought it looked like a Photoshop job. Either that or someone was playing with XPlanet.

neoolong · Post by **neoolong** » 2003-03-05 02:20am

Kinda funky looking because of the editing, but it still looks kinda cool.

Raxmei · Post by **Raxmei** » 2003-03-05 02:21am

The complete lack of any cloud cover over the entire surface of the planet rang warning bells even before I saw the picture.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2003-03-05 02:23am

Raxmei wrote:The complete lack of any cloud cover over the entire surface of the planet rang warning bells even before I saw the picture.

*smashes head against a steel bulkead*

Gosh, why didn't I notice that...should've been blindingly obvious....

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-03-05 02:27am

No cloud cover at all rang a bell for me, plus the image just looks too clean.

neoolong · Post by **neoolong** » 2003-03-05 02:29am

TrailerParkJawa wrote:No cloud cover at all rang a bell for me, plus the image just looks too clean.

The water looks odd too.

Enlightenment · Post by **Enlightenment** » 2003-03-05 02:31am

Shinova wrote:How so?

1. Europe is not cloudless at this time of year.

2. There are no lighting effects (highlights, shadowing, etc).

3. The terminator line (sunset) is has the wrong angle and radius for an orbital shot. The terminator is, however, right where one would expect for an image taken from a program written to show the ground track of the sunrise/sunset line.

4. Deep subsurface ocean details like the mid atlantic ridge are not visible from above.

5. STS-107 was in a 20-something degree orbit. This inclination is not high enough for Columbia to have passed over Europe to take this image from overhead.

6. NASA doesn't use films with a sufficiently wide dynamic range to capture both night and day details without washing or blacking out.

This is such an obvious fraud that I'm amazed anyone fell for it.

Enlightenment · Post by **Enlightenment** » 2003-03-05 02:45am

For comparison this is a real shot of a small chunk of Europe at sunset taken from STS-105:

The Great Unbearded One · Post by **The Great Unbearded One** » 2003-03-05 07:50am

One word : Fantastic!

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2003-03-05 08:01am

Enlightenment wrote: 6. NASA doesn't use films with a sufficiently wide dynamic range to capture both night and day details without washing or blacking out.

I don't think such an imaging device with the required dynamic range exists other than the human eye (and that of most animals).

Xenophobe3691 · Post by **Xenophobe3691** » 2003-03-05 11:28am

Edit: Double Posts suck.

Xenophobe3691 · Post by **Xenophobe3691** » 2003-03-05 11:29am

Here's another thing. From Space, the shadow of the Earth never forms the Sine curve you see in that picture. It's always a curved line, since you can only see half of the planet at one time. If any of you have used LunarCell, you would see this fraud in an instant.

Here's an example: