images from china's "chang'e 1"...

Originally posted by internos
China says moon pictures not faked from NASA

Now we just made that comment a few days ago that it "looked like it might be a copy" here at ATS...

And I just did a google for "china moon image faked" and I find almost every major news service carrying the news that China says its not faked...

Seems we were not the only ones to notice the similarities to NASA images... but it sure got them wound up... That is one heck of a reaction publically to a few 'fringe loonies' ideas. It means we (all the fringe loonies) must be getting through to someone for hem to make this announcement. We need to save this and document it This is a historical occasion

Yet still they only show ONE PICTURE....

This is going to get very interesting. Nice work Internos


But hey guys can we all agree to pick one of these threads and keep it there? would be a lot easier...

I kinda favor this location but copernicus did start it in the other thread


[edit on 3-12-2007 by zorgon]

Couple of Questions....

From the Telegraph....

"But in a response to public scepticism unusual for such a token of national pride, internet bulletin boards began pointing out the similarity of the photograph to one published by NASA, the American space agency, two years ago."

Published TWO YEARS ago by NASA... anyone know which spacecraft took the NASA one on the left?...

From Fox News...

"Although almost all the features of the two images match, the Chinese image does shows an additional small crater overlapping a larger one near the middle of the photo."

Such an addition could have been Photoshopped in...."

www.foxnews.com...

Okay so why did the Chinese take a picture of the exact same area?

From the Telegraph...

"But there does seem to be an extra hole in the Chinese version, which Mr Ouyang attributed to the possibility that the surface had been struck by a meteorite or other celestial body in the last two years.

Or, he added, the Chinese photograph might just be of better quality than the American."

www.telegraph.co.uk.../news/2007/12/03/wchina103.xml

Originally posted by Cuhail

Bwa ha ha ha ha

Jeez, has it come to that?

Well he asked... but isn't it funny that just after I say that the Chinese run to all the media to defend their picture...

I wonder if they have spies in here

[edit on 3-12-2007 by zorgon]

Originally posted by zorgon

It would be more a case of how many spies they have and who pays them. I find it hard to believe that this website would not be heavily monitored by the powers that be.

Originally posted by zorgon

Published TWO YEARS ago by NASA... anyone know which spacecraft took the NASA one on the left?...

SMART-1 was orbiting at the time, but this article asserts that the NASA photo compared to Chang'e 1's was probably a cropped section from the Clementine (1994) mission. This makes some sense, as you could crop a low resolution picture from pretty much anywhere on the moon from the clementine browser

The article goes on to postulate that the new crater seen in the Chang'e 1 pic is actually not a new crater, but rather a problem in lining up the mosaics that make up the pic. Seems plausible, but not conclusive.

www.planetary.org...

[edit on 4-12-2007 by Zarniwoop]

reply to post by Zarniwoop


Thanks Zarni good find... that hits it right on the nose...

Here is the conclusion from that site...

So, in a way, the story has come full circle. The Chang'e image isn't a fake as far as I can tell; my personal opinion, based upon the evidence I was able to dig up, is that the Chinese do have an orbiter at the Moon, and that it is producing really beautiful images that are a great improvement over Clementine. But the one released image is a processed product, and was altered slightly (the seams were blended away) to make it pretty. This alteration made it difficult for a scientist to realize that what appeared to be a new feature was in fact an artifact.

caption
"Not a new feature on the Moon
With a repair to an image seam in a Chang'e 1 image of the Moon, an apparently new feature disappears. Credit: CAST / Emily Lakdawalla"


As I said this is going to get interesting...

reply to post by zorgon

As I said this is going to get interesting...

Of course you did. You needed to lay the groundwork in advance so you could point to any blurry spec and call it a bucket excavator or something like that. By assuming the absurd in advance, it gives you the ability to say "I told you so" later on, foolishly believing this makes you appear to be some sort of all knowing prophet able to accurately predict a cover up of some of the foolish and absurd claims made in this forum.

All I can say, as much stuff as you guys say is on the moon, your still pointing at nothing but specs and blurry things claiming they are not what they are. I would imagine that we should be seeing super highways and condominiums in every picture the way you guys go on and on about this stuff. Go figure......

Originally posted by zorgon
reply to post by Zarniwoop

From the article:

"This alteration made it difficult for a scientist to realize that what appeared to be a new feature was in fact an artifact."

I try to be a skeptic of moon anomalies and all, but what does using the term "artifact" imply?

reply to post by they see ALL

I see the triangle you're talking about. Very curious.

Originally posted by zorgon
From Fox News...

"Although almost all the features of the two images match, the Chinese image does shows an additional small crater overlapping a larger one near the middle of the photo."

Such an addition could have been Photoshopped in...."

Zorgon, the Chinese apparently have discovered a new crater on the Moon. As you might have realized from the Moon images, this celestial body is continuously bombarded by meterorites at a high rate, due to the absense of the atmosphere which shields other planets (such as Earth) from most of such impacts.

After looking at these pics in more detail, it's quite obvious to me that the Chinese simply did not 'glue' the mosaics together correctly.

Here's something I put together to illustrate (based on others' observations)
Simply shift the green square up a bit in the Chang'e 1 pic and you have a nearly perfect match to the Clementine pic.



This isn't all that surprising, considering the image is comprised of 19 separate images taken over two days, and CNSA is pretty new at this sort of thing.

I feel I should point out that calling this the "first image from Chang'e 1" is slightly misleading. This is no raw data product fresh from the spacecraft; this is a highly processed image comprising 19 separate swaths, each 60 kilometers wide (they must overlap a lot at this high southern latitude). The images have been reprojected, mosaicked, and blended so well that I can't find a trace of seams separating the swaths. It's a beautiful product -- clearly the Chinese wanted to put their best foot forward.

Source:
www.planetary.org...

Still, they should have done a little more analysis before stating it was a new crater


[edit on 4-12-2007 by Zarniwoop]

UPDATE...

Now we see all the parties lining up... as i said this is going to get interesting...


Moon photo mystery solved
Posted: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 5:30 PM by Alan Boyle
cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com...

In the week since the picture was released amid much fanfare in Beijing, there have been widespread rumors that the photo was a fake, copied from an old picture collected by a U.S. space probe.

The good news for the Chinese is that Planetary Society blogger Emily Lakdawalla's clears them of outright fakery. The bad news is, she found evidence that the photo was badly retouched for public release.

Okay so the image was cited by Fox as being a NASA image two years ago... here is the 'result'

[ex[Lakdawalla began her investigation by plowing through databases of lunar imagery and dredging up a U.S.-produced picture for comparison. It's not a NASA picture, as reported by the rumor mill. Instead, it's one of the tens of thousands of pictures taken by the Pentagon's Clementine lunar mapping orbiter back in 1994.

Its a Clementine Image... as we suspected... only problem I see here is that Clementine datasets are not available as photos of any one area you have to generate a specific area on the image mapper...

So how did we get an exact match with the Chinese one? Which came first the Chicken or the Egg...

The photo from China's Chang'e 1 orbiter is clearly a higher-resolution view, with sunlight streaming from the northwest rather than the north.

Well sure if you use the OLD data set... but if you use the later issued set or the color version this is not true. To bad no one is forthcoming with the coordinates of the Clementine image so we can go look ourselves...

And once you have stated its a Clementine... why further clarify its not a Lunar Orbiter image? (which it does look closer to )


So to further embarrass Bejing we get the exposure that the image (showing an extra crater) is a sloppy line up artifact...

"You know that there should have been seams in that image, and I just did not look for them carefully at the time," Lakdawalla told me today.

She said the Chinese must have blended together the seams between the strips - misplacing the crater. The picture may be pretty, but it's pretty much useless as a scientific product, Lakdawalla said.

True it may be... which certainly does not look good for China especially after all the hype...

Then up to the plate steps Phil Plait...

The detective work came in for kudos from other space mythbusters. "Go check out her really amazing sleuthing," said Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait. "This is how it's done, folks. Case closed!"

Next up to bat is James Oberg...

NBC News space analyst James Oberg, who has had his own experience with moon-hoax controversies, also saluted Lakdawalla's efforts. Even though the Chinese insist that the first picture from Chang'e is scientifically accurate, Oberg said he expected the Chinese to "be forced to backtrack a bit" once they see the full evidence.

With stuff like this at the beginning of the race... I would not be surprised if China did not release any more photos to us...

Perhaps this may even be the purpose of this recent soap opera... to distract us... but then... I am just a conspiracy nut

One comment from a reader on that site I thought was right on the money...

You know if space agencies are stupid enough not to learn from other mistakes they should stay on the ground. all it takes is one stupid blunder like this to throw all the respect for the program into the garbage, if you make a mistake fix it and don't try to hide it - Chris, Vernon, B.C.

cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com...


[edit on 7-12-2007 by zorgon]

Originally posted by IgnoreTheFacts "I told you so" later on, foolishly believing this makes you appear to be some sort of all knowing prophet able to accurately predict a cover up of some of the foolish and absurd claims made in this forum.

Well it was the 'skeptics" who said "wait till the Chinese and Japanese get up there... they will show you great images and prove you wrong..."

So far I am still waiting... and with whats going on right now with the Chinese photo I don't have to say "I told you so" Its all over main stream news... All I have to do is sit back and watch the soap opera and watch all the players jockey for position...

I am sure its good for book sales for Phil and James, certainly good for free press...

Originally posted by buddhasystem
Zorgon, the Chinese apparently have discovered a new crater on the Moon.

Thanks for the lecture on impacts on the Moon buddha... but in your zeal to hunt us down I guess you haven't been paying to the news... Even Oberg and Phil Plait see that this is an error of editing...

Please do try to keep up will you? Thanks

Zarni Internos Sherpa ArMaP...

Lets see if we can find that area on Clementine data set... I still want to know who first posted the comparison and where they took the exact area clipping...

If Emily Lakdawalla can find it we should be able too

Its also interesting how quickly this was discovered after the Chinese released their image...

Released: Monday, November 26, 2007 4:00 AM ET. BEIJING

China says moon pictures not faked from NASA. Sun Dec 2, 11:07 PM ET

It took just a matter of hours before bloggers started noticing uncanny similarities between the first images sent back by China's flagship lunar probe Chang'e-1 recently, and those taken by Nasa two years ago. For the conspiracy theorists, it was too good to be true. The bulletin boards were abuzz with indignant claims that the Chinese government had tried to pull a fast one. Far from triggering a renewed sense of national pride in China's fledgling space agency, the images prompted a response sufficient to force Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of the lunar exploration programme, to publicly repudiate the claims.

So within just HOURS someone already found the matching Clementine image... and the news spread worldwide...

Guardian UK

LOL I want that person on staff

Almost sounds like a setup... I wonder who was the first person to release the match ?




"For the conspiracy theorists, it was too good to be true."

Bubbly anyone? I feel like celebrating!! We just made main stream news!!




[edit on 7-12-2007 by zorgon]

One other piece of info that was interesting...

But faking a whole mission is not that easy, says Mike Hapgood, a space scientist at Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in Didcot, Oxfordshire: "The risk of getting caught is enormous." There are so many ways to track objects in space, particularly for US agencies such as Nasa and Norad.

However, if they did, they certainly didn't come charging to China's rescue by confirming the mission. According to Tim Fenton, spokesman for RAF Fylingdales, which tracks satellites and space junk in the Earth's orbit, China did indeed launch a probe into deep space in the general direction of the moon. Unfortunately, he says, the inability of Fylingdales to see beyond an altitude of 3,000 miles means that they can't confirm that it reached its destination.

www.guardian.co.uk...

Hmmm no confirmation they made it...

This is much better than TV

Originally posted by zorgon
Zarni Internos Sherpa ArMaP...

Lets see if we can find that area on Clementine data set... I still want to know who first posted the comparison and where they took the exact area clipping...

Ron, it has been used google map IMHO: it's the closest one, imho: it uses clementine dataset but the images have been joined in a different manner.
ArMap is very quick in finding the original "stripes" from Clementine.



and if who made the comparisons does not indicate which image has used by providing the link to the SOURCE...who knows what does he/she did? Just rotated the image or resized, stretched etcetera?
Anyway, no news crater have been discovered at all by the chinese:
if we compare their TC image with the 3d one, the two craters become one



IMHO the took that crater from elsewhere and putted there by mistake.
Of course, i could be wrong.
Let's see what will they show to us the next times ...

reply to post by internos



Well done inter, what took you so long ?, it's been 24hours since Z's request, you haven't been sleeping again have you ?

Don't you know that the serious investigator never sleeps.

Of course I would have posted myself but I wanted yo give you a chance

You know I'm just kidding

GOOGLE MAPS?????



Nice work Internos... don't pay any attention to that Tibetan guide

BTW Sherpa...

I was looking at some anomalies and spotted this....



Don't recall if I sent you this yet been a bit hectic with all the ISP problems

www.thelivingmoon.com...

[edit on 12-12-2007 by zorgon]