Moon photo mystery solved

Chris, vernon , B.C. — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:28:22 GMT

You know if sapce agencys are stupid enough not to learn from other mistacks 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 mistack fix it and dont try to hide it

Moon photo mystery solved

Julie Mayfield — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 01:08:30 GMT

It is really lead paint !

Moon photo mystery solved

Timothy Bryant — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 01:50:42 GMT

Just another anomoly among the thousands involving our nearest neighbor. NOW will some one please explain to me how the ISLAMIC crescent moon symbol has a star in the dark portion of the moon? Gee, one would naturally think either this bright star imminated from the surface of the Moon or was in SPACE between EARTH and MOON. So just how exactly does the ISLAMIC world explain this curious symbol? Is this religion based on alien artifical intelligence? Whew!

Moon photo mystery solved

Ralph Baum — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 02:17:31 GMT

Hey mistakes are made stitching photos together, especially if you live in a country where poisonous lead is ingested because you have no concern for safety of the population.

Moon photo mystery solved

Ron Pitts, High Point, NC — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 02:33:05 GMT

The Chinese Strike again! Good sluething though, I grew up with the space program and like this stuff.

Moon photo mystery solved

Hell, New Mexico — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 02:42:40 GMT

you are all bunch of racist arrogant Americans. China employed 17,000 staffs and 4 years of hard work and this is the BEST explanation an amateur woman can come up with? Anyone care to debunk another asian orbiter taken by the Japanese? Moonlanding is widely accused of being fake anyway but I do not see any of you trying to explain that rumor.

Moon photo mystery solved

Brown, Hays KS — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 02:56:48 GMT

Chris, vernon , B.C.: It's mistake not mistack. So I think that you need to look over your post and fix those mistakes befor posting to anymore blogs. Don't try to hide it loser.

Moon photo mystery solved

David Hicks, Ashford, AL — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 03:07:36 GMT

whoop-te-do!!!! A new crater or not....it has no relavancy to our life on earth...right? So what's the big deal?... And who REALLY cares, anyway?

Moon photo mystery solved

david pettyjohn,tucson, AZ — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 03:16:31 GMT

They did not make a mistack

Moon photo mystery solved

Dennis McClain-Furmanski, Dalworthington Gardens, Texas — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 03:16:32 GMT

Timothy Bryant says:

> Just another anomoly among the thousands involving our nearest neighbor.

For those not familiar, NASA has cataloged 500 years worth of observations of visual anolalies on the moon. See NASA document R-277 at http://www.mufor.org/tlp/lunar.html

> NOW will some one please explain to me how the ISLAMIC crescent moon symbol has a star in the dark portion of the moon?

Easily. It's the same explanation for why stars on the U.S. flag have five points, while we know stars to be spherical. You said it yourself: "symbol". These things are not maps, much less photographs.

Moon photo mystery solved

ceejayoz — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 03:23:26 GMT

"So just how exactly does the ISLAMIC world explain this curious symbol?"

Uh, artistic license?

You don't think the American Founding Fathers were under the false impression that stars actually have five points, right?

Moon photo mystery solved

Shafiqul Kabir — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 03:32:41 GMT

Timothy can I know why you talked about ISLAM in this situation? Actually what do you know about ISLAM? Take it as suggestion: donot talk about something that you do not know. First try to learn and understand ISLAM then talk about ISLAM.

Moon photo mystery solved

McG, Iheart, Humanity — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 03:35:08 GMT

Way to turn this into a culture bashing session, guys. Next you'll be saying that China's slipping all of these chemicals into our products in some sort of international chemical/biological/psychological (poor puppies!) warfare conspiracy.
Keep perpetuating the madness! Its sure to help us all out in the long run . . .

Moon photo mystery solved

Terry B., Austin, Tx — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 03:49:59 GMT

We have even made mistakes before. So, lets not make a big deal out of something that tends to be common in the space field. And with the lead problems with the toys. Well we only have to look at our own water we drink and what is put into it before we drink it.

Moon photo mystery solved

Neville Gonnahavearedmoon — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 03:50:40 GMT

Good thing the Chinese weren't selling those pictures....Mattell would have ordered them, Walmart would have sold them and we would have bought them.

As a matter of fact I'm going to run up to Walmart now and pick up one of those Chinese Lunar Probes.

Moon photo mystery solved

Wayne, Krakow, WI — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 03:59:14 GMT

If relocating a crater on the surface of the moon were the only environmental mishap the Chinese were responsible for, the world would be a much better place !

Moon photo mystery solved

Joe Q. Upstate, New York — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 04:10:03 GMT

It surprises me, NOT, that the Communist Chinese would fake a photo and then claim it to be the real thing. They can't seem to get their toy production or many of their other "consumer products" made without fudging the outcomes. They are consummate liars and will always be.

Moon photo mystery solved

zhnag — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 04:20:30 GMT

I don't think such a rough mistake would be made. If the crator is in fact the shift of the nearby one, other things along the seam might be shifted too, but from the picture I can't find

Moon photo mystery solved

MadEyeMooney — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 04:58:42 GMT

I'm so sorry to be SHOOTING off at the MOUTH... best said, " Better to let them think you a fool, then to open your mouth" -Shakespeare?

Moon photo mystery solved

Brian Z, Plainfield, Illinois, USA — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 06:29:50 GMT

Look, bottom line: If it's faked, then shame on the Chinese. If it's a mistake, then it's proof that the Chinese are not evil monsters, but simply human like the rest of us.

I just hope that the person who was responsible doesn't end up having to take his or her life for it like so many other Chinese figures have done in recent scandals. Harmful product recalls are one thing. Displaced lunar real estate is a completely different matter.

Moon photo mystery solved

darryl, edmonton, alberta, canada — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 07:18:01 GMT

haven't you all heard? the moon is an alien moon base. why don't you think we haven't bee back there in over 30 years? flying that hunk of junk they call the space shuttle around the earth for scientific study. what a waste of taxpayers money. we're all doomed anyways. who cares about some stupid crater. religion and faith will consume us all. it's been nothing but a war machine for centuries. it's time to respect your fellow human being and we'll all live in peace.

Moon photo mystery solved

jason ,london,uk — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 08:46:23 GMT

I think that the surface had been struck by a meteorite or other celestial body in the last two years.

Moon photo mystery solved

Big T, Omaha, Ne — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:13:54 GMT

I think we should move all the craters to the dark side and then we'll have a smooth surface to shine back at us and a clear place to land shuttles. Won't that be spiffy?

Moon photo mystery solved

steve smyth — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:54:07 GMT

RE star in the crescent moon...I once took a photo of Venus, apparently within the crescent of the Moon...looks just like the flag...some sort of optical/photo delusion, I guess...someone else must have seen this phenomenon...way back when...don'tcha think?

Moon photo mystery solved

David Broerman, Cincinnati, Ohio — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 11:49:05 GMT

Commenting on a article is fine, but criticizing other contributors for typos or even their opinions is rather juvenile.

Moon photo mystery solved

jac middle of nowhere, wi — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 13:05:53 GMT

hey all, wasnt this about china and its moon mission,it isnt about lead paint,religion,or stars on a flag. lets just stick to the storie and leave out all the stupid cr#@! ok.

Moon photo mystery solved

Glenn, NYC, NY — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 13:23:00 GMT

MadEyeMooney - I believe the quote is "It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." But there's no definitive author. It's been attributed to Abraham Lincoln, George Eliot, Groucho Marx, Albert Einstein, among others.

But I agree with others who say if it's a mistake, hey, it's a mistake. But if they're not willing to admit it's a mistake, it's not unusual for virtually all governments to not admit mistakes. We just need people like Emily Lakdawalla to check things out.

Moon photo mystery solved

Joseph Lamas — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 14:05:10 GMT

The Chinese photo proves that having to lie about the moon establishes the need to moon hoax any evidence that could prove an alternative reality regarding the moon and our inability to travel there. This fakery is the same as what NASA puts out with impunity and does nothing to establish any real scientific fact.

Moon photo mystery solved

Bill, Albany, NY — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 14:19:35 GMT

@ hell
How is the dispute over a foreign nation’s mistakes and reluctance to admit them racist? A nation by the way that has repeatedly expresses hatred towards us and our allies and makes militaristic feints towards these allies ( a little place call Taiwan)?
Let’s take a look at the organ farming going on over there. Maybe reports of Tibetans being kidnapped, executed for ‘political’ crimes, and then sold for parts flies against the moral values of this ‘racist’ country? [...]

I find it interesting that the results were not verified and peer reviewed prior to being released. I worked with imagery for years and it is common practice to verify anything that fell on a seam for accuracy. If the images were not 100% and we had to make a call, we would ask for another flyover. Barring that, the images always overlap each other by a good margin; they can release the original and let the rest of the scientific world take a look.

In the end it is an example of sloppy work. I just hope the rest of the imagery is valuable to the world.

Moon photo mystery solved

J.C., East Brunswick, NJ — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 14:55:42 GMT

What would they gain from faking a photo of the moon in the first place? Just to prove they actually put a probe in space? Why do people have the need to create conspiracy theories about EVERYTHING! Get a life already.

Moon photo mystery solved

J Lewis, Savannah, NY — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 15:10:08 GMT

I think it's an effort to hide the secret Nazi bunker planted there at the end of WWII. Everyone knows the Apollo missions were just for resupply, right? The Nazi's got the technology from the alien dinosaurs they thawed out in antartica.

We get our imperial and metric measurements wrong and crash probes, they don't get their graphics stitching programs quite right. People make mistakes, that's why the robots will take over.

Moon photo mystery solved

Todd, Billerica, MA — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 15:11:54 GMT

I thought it went more like this, "Better to let them think you a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."

The Chinese should come out and say it was a mistake. It is not a sin. Many others have made mistakes when related to the moon.

Moon photo mystery solved

Brock Barton, Dallas, TX — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 15:32:12 GMT

I don't agree that the two pictures shown in this story are of the same area on the moon. They differ by much more than just one misplaced crater. Many, many features are different. Details in the left-hand one do not appear in the right-hand one, and vice-versa. How about getting a real expert to look at this again?

Moon photo mystery solved

John Barr, Syracuse NY — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 15:38:12 GMT

Crater.
WMD.

Which government fake would you prefer?

Moon photo mystery solved

Phil, Los Angeles — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 15:43:49 GMT

I love the comments. Here you all are bitching about religion and political conspiracies. It's just a frickin picture folks. Lighten up, then we can all put our nukes away. Oh and congrats to Lakdawalla for her time spent on researching this in an effort to uncover the truth. To Brian Z. Well said.

Moon photo mystery solved

Randy W, Salt Lake City, Utah — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:05:45 GMT

Stitching together satellite imagery is an extraordinarily difficult and time consuming process. This type of “mistake” is common, and is hardly a big deal except that it distorts the accuracy of the image. The explanation given is not only perfect but professional.

Moon photo mystery solved

Ian, Philadelphia — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:07:53 GMT

As with almost EVERYTHING that EVER gets posted or discussed, it comes down to racism, religion, anti-americanism and fakery. Someone is insulted, and feels they are entitled to defend that insult, no matter how insignificant or stupid it was. A tiny speck in the universe, thats all any of you are. Realize that, before you are on your deathbeds. Ridiculous.

Moon photo mystery solved

Woody Pope — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:16:19 GMT

Maybe the NASA shot it faked and not the Chinese one?
Could we be hiding what's really on the moon?

Moon photo mystery solved

Kurt — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:27:26 GMT

she is no amateur, she has a master’s degree in planetary geology from Brown University. also, you can see larger photos in the links above. do some reading before you comment, people.

Moon photo mystery solved

JustAGuy, Stillwater OK — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:35:36 GMT

MadEyeMooney, that's Mark Twain, not Shakespeare.

As for the photo, who cares?

Moon photo mystery solved

Jeff, London, Ontario, Canada — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:33:18 GMT

"Just another anomoly among the thousands involving our nearest neighbor. NOW will some one please explain to me how the ISLAMIC crescent moon symbol has a star in the dark portion of the moon? Gee, one would naturally think either this bright star imminated from the surface of the Moon or was in SPACE between EARTH and MOON. So just how exactly does the ISLAMIC world explain this curious symbol? Is this religion based on alien artifical intelligence? Whew!"

It's a logo, [...] not a star chart.

Moon photo mystery solved

Michael Kent,oh — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:56:38 GMT

Did any of you read the article or the link to the actual analysis in it? It clearly says that the image was real and that the "new crater" was a artifact of stitching together the strips the camera takes on each orbit. The fact is,we should all congratulate china on a job well done. This may be something we and the soviets did 50 years ago,but its still an quite an accomplishment.

Moon photo mystery solved

curiouscarbon — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:03:32 GMT

wheres the chinese pictures of all the stuff we left on the moon?

Moon photo mystery solved

Alan,Tampa,Florida — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:39:53 GMT

sounds like they could have avoided this whole thing if they used a valid copy of Photoshop instead of their pirated one :-)

Moon photo mystery solved

phantompoodle — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:59:17 GMT

Gee, anyone can make a mistake, but not everyone can make a mistack!

Moon photo mystery solved

Jeremy, Virginia Beach, VA — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:18:00 GMT

Screw the pictures...lets start landing and mining for resources; the moon is relatively close compared to Mars and asteroids, other possible sources of raw materials. Logic would dictate that some type of settlement/mining establishment would be within our current capabilities, would it not? At the very least we should be exploring. Why send robots to Mars but no the moon? NASA is out of touch with reality, we need developments/discoveries that affect us in helpful and useful ways to justify the funding we give them as taxpayers. We could make it an international venture like the ISS and encourage teamwork amongst the various space agencies, which hopefully would translate into goodwill between the nations involved. Who agrees?

Moon photo mystery solved

Blogger Rich Fort Lauderdale, FL — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:41:54 GMT

I know you're not supposed to bash what others say here, but Hell is obviously lost (Americans are from every country on Earth), Chris from B.C. can't spell and Brown is bashing Chris over that fact, yet Brown spelled "before" incorrectly. Anyway...

The bottom line here is that the Chinese took the image with a high resolution camera, so why did they need to touch it up before releasing it? I mean, the whole idea of high resolution is that the image is basically perfect. I haven't looked at many of the images taken by the Chinese orbiter as of yet, but now you must wonder if there are additional discrepancies. In my opinion, they need to be more careful with the way this information is processed and distributed as it will lead to many problems within the scientific world. If you can't depend on the Chinese material to be accurate, than what scientific value will it have?

Let's hope that this is just a short term issue in their relatively young space exploration program and that it will be quickly corrected. Maybe they need to slow down a bit and quit trying to play catch-up. When it comes to space exploration, it is more important to take your time and do it right than to hurry the process and get it wrong. The costs could be Trillions of yuan and more importantly, their credibility. Of course, I'm not saying this one image will cost trillions...just that if they do not take their time to do it right the first time and include corrections when there is a mistake, they will have many situations that will not be addressed before they become costly. I say this not because the Chinese are bad or incompetent people, but because they are notoriously secretive. Individuals may not say what they should out of fear of retaliation from the "higher ups". The Chinese accept apologies from people outside their country, but they do not expect their own people to be in a situation to have to apologize. I fear this may be a repeated process at every level of their space program and this image is just a small example.

There needs to be an open door policy at every level and enough “layers” of people so that problems and issues get caught before they have a chance to be realized. NASA has been doing this for years and even so, there have been errors. The problems should be researched and fixed and put to practice and updated as needed. The Chinese are very capable of making their space program top notch and I hope that is their intention, because we will all need to work together for the next big trip…to Mars.

Moon photo mystery solved

John, San Francisco, CA — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:04:02 GMT

She's looking for seams?

1. I don't think this spacecraft uses camera. Instead, it has sensors to scan the moon surface continuously, and send the data back to earth. The image is created on earth from the scan.

Think radar.

2. Anyone looking at those two pictures closely would have to say they are not the same crators. The moon is full of crators. You can pick any two and they will look pretty alike, and you can say one if the "re-touch" of the other.

3. Even if those two pictures are of the same crator (that means the moons surface certainly changed a lot), isn't it possible that the surface is hit by something to create a new crator? After all, the NASA photo is from 1994.

4. Is this society giving too much credit to some amature bloggers? A master degree makes you a "professional"? Come on.

Moon photo mystery solved

paul, Calgary, Alberta, Canada — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:10:11 GMT

Lakdawalla jumped to a conclusion too quick. Does she aware China is expert in counterfeit? The main question is: how come ONLY ONE PICTURE? Japanese's Kaguya sent back many pictures and moving images.

I won't believe it until I see the second picture!

Moon photo mystery solved

Garaboldie, Anchorage Ak — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:11:11 GMT

I am very pro Nasa but give China a break. They are still kind of new at this. I am glad to see other folks doing stuff out there in space. The more people exploring space the better. Some good old competition would not hurt anyone. Go China! Congrats!

Moon photo mystery solved

s hamz — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:14:12 GMT

I have always wondered why no one (professional scientist or amateur astronomer) has ever photographed a landing site on the moon. I think it would be very cool to see the bottom half of the lunar lander, tracks, flag, etc. from a satellite or extremely powerful earth-based telescope.

Moon photo mystery solved

Jesus — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:56:05 GMT

So after reading half the retarded entries having nothing to do with the crater, It came to me.. Aliens.. or a fraking meteorite (or similar) hit the moon again like it has for millions of years..

Moon photo mystery solved

Jim Oberg — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:02:10 GMT

The issue isn't the small slip-up in stitching, it's that the resulting composite image was then digitally processed to blend the edges and eliminate the visible seams -- compare this to Lunar Orbiter images, for example.

So the image WAS altered, for what they thought was purely cosmetic reasons, but the accidental result was an error of no small scientific value -- the notion of a 'fresh' crater in the past decade, on the moon. That notion is a mistake based on over-eager (but I presume innocent) misrepresentation of the released image.

But hey! -- this takes practice, so I cut a lot of slack -- about 240,000 miles of it -- for this very admirable accomplishment.

The newsworthy angle to ME is the unintentional and delicious irony of the Chinese scientist DENYING any fakery, and as proof, he pointed to the 'new crater' -- which actually was the hint Lakdawalla followed to discover the 'real' (but trivial) 'fakery'. Now THAT'S worth making a public issue over -- and us all having big laughs. The Chinese, too, when they finally have to face up to it....

Now, as long as the images don't show any vast collapsed glass domes and other ruins up there --
even half-vast ruins would be newsworthy! They would be a match for the half-vast theories of some recent authors and bloggers on 'lunar anomalies'.

Moon photo mystery solved

jerry redondo — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:11:52 GMT

Maybe we should fly around and see if the jeep and flag the americans left behind are still there.After all if they truly did go there, there should still be evidence of this no? besides pictures are touched up all the time, you think that's really mars?

Moon photo mystery solved

Sparki — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:22:01 GMT

Perhaps all Chinese moon probes should be recalled.

Moon photo mystery solved

Kamama/K Yeager, Jefferson City, Missouri — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:23:56 GMT

To J Lewis from Savannah, who wrote: I think it's an effort to hide the secret Nazi bunker planted there at the end of WWII. Everyone knows the Apollo missions were just for resupply, right? The Nazi's got the technology from the alien dinosaurs they thawed out in antartica.

ROFL. Love the way you put this whole thing in perspective!

Moon photo mystery solved

Scott, Iowa — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:34:36 GMT

In response to the comment about the Islamic crescent moon and star, the star itself may not represent a star itself in the vastness of space, but a beacon of light, or hope, emanating from the surface of the moon itself. It is, as if, to foreshadow the possibility of creating a lunar colony on the moon. In order for the facility to operate in the darkness, light must be provided. As a result, a shimmer of bright light could be detected from the surface of the Earth during a crescent moon. Of course, this could fall under scrutiny, but I'd rather be sipping a cold fruit blend.

Moon photo mystery solved

BG, Scottsdale, AZ — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:38:27 GMT

Wow, China & Japan are sending unmanned orbiters to the moon and taking pictures! Welcome to the 1960's!!! [Yawn...]

Moon photo mystery solved

Irwin M. Roitman — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 23:21:36 GMT

MMM, my chinese made Garmin will have to sent back for recalibration. I had it set up for the moon.

Moon photo mystery solved

Peter Zim — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 23:37:34 GMT

Check out some more photos which I think are of much more interest. On pages 2 and 3 of the Chinese news report there are some initial 3-D images from their lunar probe.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-12/03/content_6294146_5.htm

Moon photo mystery solved

AUSTRALIA — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 23:48:26 GMT

The picture on the right looks to me like both craters are identical but taken on different angles.Both craters in the right photo show identical marks to the photo on the left.2 photos of the same crater have been joined.

Moon photo mystery solved

James,UK — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 23:55:53 GMT

it just makes for better feng shui without the crater there

Moon photo mystery solved

Ali, Los Angeles, CA — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:12:45 GMT

Hilarious article...the Soviet mountains, the Chinese crater! Funny stuff

Moon photo mystery solved

Jason Hu, Elk Grove, CA — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:33:11 GMT

Obviously the Chinese took one photo from column A and one from column B. Steamed or fried with that?

Moon photo mystery solved

Robert Minneman, Euless, TX — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:46:42 GMT

This is entertaining.

Yes, the photo will have seams on it, just like your globe of the earth has seams on it. You have to do some cutting/manipulation of a FLAT representation of a ROUND object, which this photo is.

I for one, am impressed that China has been able to get the probe to the moon and return some quality photos.

All cultural bashing aside, it's an impressive accomplishment for any nation.

Let's leave all the distracting issues of product quality control out of the discussion, and let's leave the religious fervor of Islam vs. the rest of the world out of this as well.

It's an article on "space-based conspiracy theories" getting explained.

Out of the hundreds of thousands of pictures taken by all the various space agencies on this planet, I am VERY certain this isn't the first/only mistake.

Moon photo mystery solved

whitie, washington, dc — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:49:00 GMT

Nice job Dragon people of the center kingdom!
Let's try and release some of that stuff... would love to have a google earth or baidu of Chinese moon map in HD.
we have so many other problems getting along, can we just have the province of knowledge and education as a green zone? everyone makes mistacks.

Moon photo mystery solved

Brock, Dallas, TX — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:01:58 GMT

I think Kurt's right; if you look at the larger photos in Lakdawalla's blog, the crater enlargements are from the same area of the moon. So her explanation seems very plausible.

Moon photo mystery solved

Tommy Cotton, Holland, OH — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:05:15 GMT

To be honest, we don't deserve to venture off this rock called Earth anyway. We can't even get along on this planet, never mind another one. Were still fighting over race, religion and land after how many thousands of years. Humans are still way to primitive to start travelling the universe.
Peace!

Moon photo mystery solved

Andrew, Brandon, Canada — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:38:23 GMT

Throw in the factor of anonymity, and suddenly everyone's an expert.

Seriously, never have I seen the line between opinion and fact blurred so profoundly. Before you post your thoughts, please

a) Read the actual blog post - not just this summary.

b) Think carefully about your post, and try to keep the political overtones (e.g. lead paint scandal) to a minimum. Posting witty social commentary fueled by media hysteria only makes you look ignorant.

c) Keep the conspiracy theories out of it. If there is one thing that all humans are good at, it is confirmation bias.

c) Spellcheck. ESPECIALLY when criticizing others for spelling. Nobody likes a hypocrite.

Moon photo mystery solved

JCE, Orlando, FL — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:51:55 GMT

So they fudged a picture up. Who hasn't done this? It's not like they are blowing up satellites or something like that... wait a sec.

Moon photo mystery solved

Ron, Xi'an China (U.S. Citizen) — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:57:08 GMT

I don't know what all the fuss is about. The moon is made of green cheese. I know this is true because my father told me this many many years ago. And everyone knows fathers do not tell fibs to thier children. So now you have insulted Islam, China, NASA, the U.S., the Moon, and now my father. Enough already. It's a nice photo of 'green cheese' I think and the reason it appears different is that as cheese molds it takes on different appearances.

Moon photo mystery solved

candy — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 03:47:52 GMT

We don't know who made mistake of stitching pictures by one crater to two craters or two craters to one crater? the US or China?

Moon photo mystery solved

Mark, Melbourne, Australia — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 03:49:49 GMT

John from SF, the photo wasn't generated by radar. It was a high-resolution CCD with a lens on it, ie a digital camera. The images where recorded by the CCD into a memory device of some sort, and then transmitted to a ground station, where they was processed, and stitched together. The error in the stitching process could well have been a very small one that's been picked up by the Western press and amplified for all it's worth. If you have a look at some of the press-release Mars rover images, sometimes there is a noticeable overlap when the image is a composite of smaller images.

Moon photo mystery solved

Mat, Mauritius — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 05:40:07 GMT

If you look closely enough, you can just make out weapons of mass-destruction...

Moon photo mystery solved

buster, beijing, china — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 06:26:10 GMT

Are there any other pictures? Why don't they take some hi-res photos of the lunar buggy and American flag to finally dispel rumors that America never went there? Why out of all those 10's of thousands of photos mentioned in this article aren't there any pictures of tire tracks or the flag??? The Chinese could score some authenticity points by publishing that!

Moon photo mystery solved

Nic Shulver, Staffordshire University, UK — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 10:49:33 GMT

Everyone makes mistakes. The real test of scientific integrity is to observe what remedial actions are taken and the level of care in future publications.

Moon photo mystery solved

Nic Shulver, Staffordshire University, UK — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:17:08 GMT

It is evident from many of the comments above that few respondents read the Planetary Society blog entry by Lakdawalla.

In it she provides pretty conclusive evidence for a (minor) error and takes a very balanced view.

She says "... the Chinese do have an orbiter at the Moon, and that it is producing really beautiful images that are a great improvement over Clementine" and "It is incredibly difficult to get every tiny feature in a large mosaic to line up properly; you have to have very, very precise knowledge of the shape of the body being photographed, and we actually don't have very good topographic models of the Moon".

All in all, the Chinese have done an excellent job - as has Lakdawalla, NASA and the Pentagon's 1994 Clementine mission. All should be applauded, none pilloried.

Moon photo mystery solved

Riley Bishop — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:55:22 GMT

EGAD! It's an alien space base that the governments know about and are hiding with the "crater" image.

Moon photo mystery solved

aldric — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:58:41 GMT

I'd just like to know why governments feel the need to edit photos of planets and moons. There is no point to it, and this is the main reason why people doubt their sincerity.

Stop retouching the damn photos, and maybe people will stop screaming "you're hiding something!!!" at you, pigs. Or are you actually hiding something...?

There is ALWAYS a reason for shifting scientific data and reconnaissance photos around, and the explanation is rarely innocent.

Moon photo mystery solved

Freddie Tan — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:56:50 GMT

I have a query. Seem that the lighting and shadow falls on the same direction. So did they take this photo on the same date or session as the US did. During the same session ? Even on earth, the shadow falls on different direction on different session of the year.

Moon photo mystery solved

Tim, Ont, Canada — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:11:34 GMT

Who knows, maybe it is the US pictures that are flawed and this is how it really is?? ;)

Moon photo mystery solved

nobody, Lisle, il — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:22:52 GMT

I am not a rocket scientist, but if the picture was seamed together incorrectly one would see the duplicate of other artifacts along the same seam. I just don't see it in the image that I have. Does anyone know where the NASA 1994 pictures are so that I can compare them?

Moon photo mystery solved

Mazz, Oceanside, CA — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:52:51 GMT

Taking a picture of the moon? Say Cheese!

Moon photo mystery solved

revere, belfast, northern ireland — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:53:55 GMT

i honestly can't believe how dumb some people are - so they stitched a couple of images together to make a composite (NOT nasa images btw) and made a slip in aligning one perfectly.

big deal

show me a nasa large area pic that doesn't use the exact same technique and i'll be impressed. btw i've NEVER seen a perfect composite even from nasa - not one.

so is it fake? no

is it being deceptive? no

they did exactly what nasa does, only thing that makes it a big deal is that it was china, nobody wants to believe they did it because us westerners are just so damned superior....smacktards

Moon photo mystery solved

Greg — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:57:14 GMT

If the USA is so good, how do you roll a shuttle out to the launch pad with two bad fuel gage sensors. Don't those things get checked before you leave the hangar?

Moon photo mystery solved

Keith, Levelland Texas — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:13:39 GMT

RE: Timothy Bryant (Sent Tuesday, December 04, 2007 8:50 PM)
I have plenty of problems with islam, but give them a break on this one. This fall, during Ramadan, I happened to walk out pre-dawn, looked up, and saw...the crecsent and star. It's close enough to what they use for their symbology, for crying out loud. It was very striking, I have to add.

Moon photo mystery solved

james Wood, OKC, OK — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:33:18 GMT

Uhh, wow. Orbiters DO use cameras. They film strips of the target area, and the strips are put together to form the full image. That's how it has been done for a very very long time.
We don't have the technology to take one snap of the whole moon at high res. We have to focus in on a small area, snap that picture, then move to the next section, snap that picture, etc.
This was, as the researcher says, an error in pasting those two pictures together.

Here is a test. Take a camera, and take a picture of half of a bridge.
Now shift and take a picture of the other half of the bridge. Now line those two pictures up, for one wide shot of the bridge, in a closer focus than the camera could have been to take the whole thing in one shot. is this picture faked?

Moon photo mystery solved

james Wood, OKC, OK — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:42:09 GMT

And scale. We won't see photos of the rover or lander for a while yet. the moon isn't the size of your neighborhood playground!
picture this:
Lay a penny on a sheet of sidewalk. Now, go up 1 mile and point to that penny. you can't. heck, you'd be lucky to even see the sidewalk! this is the scale you are looking at. that crater that moved.
The photo you see above is 120 meters per pixel. pixel, folks. 120 meters fit under the point of a pin on that photo! you are looking at the small "new" crater being miles across. At that res, you aren't going to make out a 7.5 meter diameter lander base at all, it isn't even 1 pixel on the photo!

Moon photo mystery solved

Sohosh the layman — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:01:04 GMT

Just one picture, makes all the sence in the world!
Some how china must find a way to make money of this new data. If you give away too much how could you hope to sell the data afterward?
About all the cospiracy theories... There are things that are not easily explained and some time accums razor is not the proper anser, so let say something in the picture is not easy to explain but it looks like a building, what do you do then? you let the morons say it is like the faces on mars or you say we can't explain it or you just cut it out of the picture and not cause any laymen to speculate on it?

and last! if the china could proff any of thos conspiracis that there stuctures on the moon that imply inteligence (wich i poses litle on acount of my spelling he?)the would come rigth out to proove that god does not exist like mention in genesis in the koran talmut and bible, the moon would be their joke on religion and their way of discrediting western thougth.

so finaly my take on it, it is just a cam mistake!

Moon photo mystery solved

Slashdot User — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:29:47 GMT

You space people are really weird.

Moon photo mystery solved

Andrew, York, UK — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:03:18 GMT

Let's just assume it isn't a fake and that this little foray into space by the CNSA will ultimately be a good thing - even though it puts them around 50-odd years behind, principally, NASA and RSA and to a lesser extent, ESA, JAXA et al - since it'll carve NASA into the streamlined powerhouse of ingenuity that ultimately won the Space Race, leading to the winning of the Arms Race and ultimately the Cold War and securing the United States' position as the greatest country in the world, and not the bloated, bureaucratic, almost socialistic entity it is today. That's not to say it doesn't do stellar work (heh) and that it still has the best and the brightest working for it, but let's face it - it's a shadow of its former self.
And who cares about the Islamic symbol? That's the least of their problems.

Moon photo mystery solved

Matt, Danbury, Conn. — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:39:59 GMT

Blogger Rich:

It wasn't touched up - the way orbiters work is that they take their pictures in long, thin strips as they orbit repeatedly, each time taking a picture a little bit further over, of the ground directly beneath the orbiter. These strips then get patched together to create a full image. If you look at the raw data some of the pics from NASA probes, you'll see the same thing - it's one image created from many smaller images. It sounds like what happened here is the error was introduced when the smaller images were patched together. So it's not so much the quality of the HD images that's the issue, it's the processing after it that turns them into usable images.

Moon photo mystery solved

Karen Rei, Iowa City, IA — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 21:51:04 GMT

Always fun to slam China, isn't it? Well, it works best when you have your facts straight. Photo stitching isn't done by a bunch of people sitting around drawing in craters on photoshop. There are photo stitching tools. I've used them extensively myself (I'm a Hugin user, personally) to make massive landscape photos (hundreds of megapixels) from many shots taken by my 6MP camera. Nowadays, you don't even have to tell it what parts of the image match up to what other parts; it can figure that out on its own. The difference between blending shots and not blending shots? A checkbox. That's it. The software does all of the work for you. NASA does the exact same thing. Photos for scientific use don't have the edges blended, to make it clear where one shot stops and the next one begins. Photos for public release generally have them blended to make them look prettier. And the only difference is a checkbox.

There was no, and I mean absolute no ill will or deviousness required for this mistake. If you knew more about what you were talking about, you'd understand that. But hey, can't miss a chance to bash other people's hard work, now can you?

By the way -- these sorts of errors -- called "parallax errors" -- are rather tricky beasts. I have a number of stitches with parallax errors in them, to my chagrin, because I don't have a panoramic head for my mount. To understand parallax errors, move your head close to a narrow vertical object (a pole, a speaker, a lamp, whatever),and close your right eye. Now open your right eye and close your left. Notice how the speaker moves relative to its background? That's a parallax error. If you eyes were cameras and had taken photos of what you saw, those images wouldn't be able to be stitched together without problems. Well, Chang'e is orbiting the moon at high velocity, grabbing strips of images as it goes. Mountains and crater ridges will appear to move relative to one another depending on where the shot is taken. This can make it difficult for a stitcher to line up properly.

Moon photo mystery solved

G, Colorado — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 23:38:34 GMT

"whoop-te-do!!!! A new crater or not....it has no relavancy to our life on earth...right? So what's the big deal?... And who REALLY cares, anyway?"

Actually space exploration and the research required to support it has a direct affect to life on Earth. There are countless technologies used everyday that would not exist without the space program. Not to mention the less tangible affects of knowing more about the world around you...Would you rather believe that the world is flat?

"Screw the pictures...lets start landing and mining for resources; the moon is relatively close compared to Mars and asteroids, other possible sources of raw materials. Logic would dictate that some type of settlement/mining establishment would be within our current capabilities, would it not? At the very least we should be exploring. Why send robots to Mars but no the moon? NASA is out of touch with reality, we need developments/discoveries that affect us in helpful and useful ways to justify the funding we give them as taxpayers. We could make it an international venture like the ISS and encourage teamwork amongst the various space agencies, which hopefully would translate into goodwill between the nations involved. Who agrees?"

For one thing, NASA does not get much money from taxpayers (in relation to other programs). Secondly, Mars offers the possibility of supporting life, of potentially harboring life in the past and of actually having valuable resources. What raw materials would you bring back from the Moon? NASA has and continues to produce more "developments/discoveries that affect us in helpful and useful ways" than any other government funded project/agency that I can think of, despite being devestatingly underfunded and unfairly unpopular.

If people in this country paid an equal amount of attention to space exploration (and all scientific discovery) as they do to 'celebrity' activity we would be in a much better place...

Moon photo mystery solved

NM, Lee's Summit, Missouri — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 02:06:09 GMT

Hmmm, wanna see some real master photo retouch work? Look at Google Earth. :>p China struggles with technology like the west does, but it will take them a few years to match our smoothness. I agree with Garaboldie in that China is pace setting, but cosmic football is fun too! We are the leaders of the pack, but can only taunt so long until our @$$e$ are handed to us. Maybe they should outsource their photography to India or Taiwan (lol)...

Moon photo mystery solved

Mike Dong, Peking — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 02:08:07 GMT

Just another Huanan tiger.

Moon photo mystery solved

Shashikant Salvi — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 05:52:18 GMT

Ms. Lakdawala has done a good research on this image . No doubt about that.

These things do happen when images are meshed together ( see Google Earth which has several of such instances ) but then a couple of questions crop up:

1. There should have been some more repeatations in the image ... there seems to be none.. I tried to find seams in various directions but could not succeed.

2. The person who matches the images knows thoroughly well that there is some repeatation.. then why did the Chinese specialists say that a new crater has been found?

Moon photo mystery solved

Floaters, Kuala Lumpur — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 09:02:53 GMT

Gosh! the craters must be floating on the moon. Just compare the craters' relative positions in the two pictures (in this link: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-12/03/content_6294146.htm) and you will see what I mean. (Use a ruler or an empty envelope and measure across horizontally.) The difference is so obvious!

Moon photo mystery solved

Chang, Kuala Lumpur — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 11:23:53 GMT

The 3-D picture of the moon surface, generated from Chang'e transmited data, indicates that other sensors are onboard other than the CCD camera. Any mistake on the composite picture is therefore quite easily verifiable with these data or by a comparison with the 3-D picture. So, whether it's a error or not, we will just have to wait for the Chang'e team to respond to these questions.

Moon photo mystery solved

Jared , Fairview Tn — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:41:36 GMT

yeah lets strip mine the moon, it will only cause it to lose mass which will in turn mean it effects the Earth and her tides less and God only knows what happens next. Yeah weve screwed this planet up enough lets move to the next one. Brilliant

Moon photo mystery solved

Brent W, Orange Park, FL — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:42:43 GMT

All this over a picture. Geeze Louise!! Thank god it wasn't a video.

Moon photo mystery solved

Eagle1 — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:50:19 GMT

Hey Hell, All the conspiracy theories about us landing on the Moon have been debunked for years! Get your head out of the sand and learn something! Number one..we were in a race with the Soviets.. do you think for one second they'd let anything slip and for a second.. the Apollo missions set up a lasar tracking system to determine the actual Moon distance to Earth at any given second. That was set up by our Astronauts! The stars missing, the flag wave.. all debunked! Grow up!

Moon photo mystery solved

Scott, Florida — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:28:45 GMT

Greg: If the USA is so good, how do you roll a shuttle out to the launch pad with two bad fuel gage sensors. Don't those things get checked before you leave the hangar?

The only way to be absolutely sure they're working is to force them to give a false negative reading once there's fuel in the tank. Filling the external tank with high explosives while it's still in the "hangar" (Vehicle Assembly Building) is an extraordinarily bad idea.

As for the stitching error, the real blunder was in the chief scientist calling it a "new crater," not in the stitching error itself. Stitching errors are common and acceptable, but the chief scientist on the project should be able to detect them before making such an announcement.

Moon photo mystery solved

Marcus Aurelius, Rome — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 22:59:22 GMT

To be honest, I think it's totally useless to do the SAME job (space exploration) by 3 different nations without any co-ordination, as a kind of competition. Typical game theory "prisoners dilemma" situation: We would all be better if we co-operated, and we all lose if we think about ourselves only. The Chinese badly need these "save face" exercises, e.g. exploring the moon. It's scientifically totally redundant, nobody asked them to do it, it's only to prove that by exploiting a large enough number of their poor farmers, they can get together enough money to sponsor such a ludicriously futile project as this (and the Olympics, and the nuke, etc).

When will we all learn to CO-OPERATE on this planet, realizing that looking back from space there are no borders, no countries, only HUMAN BEINGS, all being equal? :-)

Moon photo mystery solved

Jok N Jute — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 00:11:22 GMT

Pride and Prejudice, that is the downfall of our species. From a scientist perspective, it is exhilarating to have a colleague take an interest in exploring the same mysteries of the universe as we do. Someone else is studying the moon; it should simply be terrific. We have somebody with whom to share our thoughts and data. But the politicians have to inject pride into it. They have to put a competitive spin to things and make it look prouder than it needs to be, and curse themselves should a mistake be admitted. As for the public, a mass of brutes whose vision is so tainted with prejudice that they do not realize they are really looking right into a mirror. The American elitist forgets that America is a conglomerate of cultures from all over the world. And "they", the Chinese, our nemesis who stands accused of poisoning our toys with lead and pirating our CDs and photos, are more than 50 different cultures loosely bound geographically who can no more speak with one voice or be painted with one broad stroke than "they" can hop up and down in unison, all 1.3 billion of them, and destroy our world in one huge earthquake. May be the brutes should take note and be even more paranoid now.

Moon photo mystery solved

Moon Cha Cha, Bangkok, Thailand — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 08:36:23 GMT

Some rubbish posted here reminds me of a joke:

After working many years as a journalist in Beijing, a Chinese man returned to his home village to visit his relatives. He showed them a photograph of the late U.S. President Nixon who visited China in 1972. All the relatives of the Chinese journalist claimed that the photo was a fake because Nixon did not look like Mao Zedong, or rather, Nixon did not look like a Chinese.

The journalist’s home village was situated in a remote part of western China where the people had never seen a white foreigner in their lives. To them, Nixon was an alien from the outer space.

In order to convince them, the Chinese journalist took out a Beijing newspaper that published the news of Nixon’s China visit. He pointed to a photo of Nixon in the newspaper and asked them to compare it with his photo. However, the villagers accused him of trying to hoodwink them by publishing a fake photo in the newspaper. They argued that both photos were created by him because they looked alike even though the photo in the newspaper showed a smiling face while the journalist’s photo showed a solemn-looking face.

By now, most of those villagers should have gone to heaven or hell. If you happen to pass by their graves at night, you may still hear them arguing about the fake photos.

Moon photo mystery solved

SukuWatalu, Chiangmai, Thailand — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 10:16:37 GMT

Dear John (San Francisco, CA)

You say: "Is this society giving too much credit to some amature bloggers? A master degree makes you a "professional"? Come on."

Please don't belittle your famous space scientist unless your words and qualifications carry more weight than her and all other space scientists in NASA. She would be having a hard time trying to control her laughter if she happens to read all the rubbish here ( in particularly yours).

Perhaps many Americans think that making fun of space projects, whether by NASA or its Chinese counterpart, is the trend and fashion of the day. Please look at one example on the website http://www.stuffucanuse.com/fake_moon_landings/moon_landings.htm

Some Chinese may have seen the above website and try to imitate those American sceptics by making a brouhaha out of the Chang'e moon photo.

Emily Lakdawalla is an American space scientist from the non-governmental and nonprofit Planetary Society which is the largest and most influential public space organization group on Earth. Its members come from more than 125 countries and are astronauts, scientists, entrepreneurs, educators, parents, and grandparents, corporate and foundation leaders, engineers, planetarium, museum, and science directors, policy makers and space enthusiasts.

It would be very exciting if any of the smart alecs here can upstage Emily Lakdawalla by refuting her verification. To find such a smarter-than-Nasa expert among the critics is exactly like discovering a jungle in the North Pole. That genius is likely to end up as a space expert in NASA.

Your attitude is just like a boxer who has been knocked down by his opponent. Instead of admitting defeat, you blame the floor for being too slippery. Nobody (not even Einstein if he could return to this world) can make you admit your own mistake after you have been proved wrong.

The only way the Chinese could convince you of their space prowess is to put you in a space capsule in the shape of a bullet and shoot you into space with a huge cannon.

Moon photo mystery solved

Longinch John, Singapore — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 16:19:36 GMT

One way China can silent all its critics and continue its "fake space program" with a much lower budget. Sack all its space experts and replace them with all the photoshop experts and sceptics here. If these smart alecs cannot prove their worth by making better fake moon pictures, China can rid of all of them by firing them off to the moon with huge cannons.

Moon photo mystery solved

bgriffin, eagle point, oregon — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 17:49:53 GMT

mistakes or mistacks,befor or before, they are made by everyone everday, including the chinese, but i am curious as to why we never get to see photo's of the back side of the moon,plus colonizing the moon first sounds more logical than colonizing mars first. It would be lot easier, from the moon to take off to mars, than it would be from earth, and a whole lot cheaper.

Moon photo mystery solved

Jeffery Lebowski, Montreal, Canada — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 19:30:54 GMT

Why does everybody assume the Chinese photo is a fake a and not the NASA photo. If you are an American you don't realize it but you country is not a democracy anymore. Two elections rigged in a row and evidence that thermite was used bring down WTC 1,2 & 7. Your country is actually being by controlled the members of PNAC (and two men without conscience) and is now a Roman-style republic.

Moon photo mystery solved

Scott, El Paso — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 19:46:29 GMT

As was pointed out in someone else's post, the EU and NASA space agencies have made stupid mistakes in the past. When a many million dollar probe is lost because some unthinking moron forgets to translate from one measurement system to the other, there is little room for critacism. Besides, with the short sighted view the U.S. Congress has been taking on space travel these days, maybe the Chinese will take up the slack. I'm not a big fan of comunist governments, but eventually they may give the U.S. reason to make the financial sacrafices necessary to make space science advances. If the U.S. government fails to do so, at least some part of humanity will eventually colonize the other solar planets, etc. As Stephen Hawking said, we can't keep all of humanity's eggs in one basket. If the U.S. decides not to expand into space, at least there will be other countries working on it. Not to mention the private sector. The more the merrier. Take the plunge and do all you can do. Mistakes will be made. Get over it and keep on moving...

Moon photo mystery solved

Johnson Lobstah — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 20:09:31 GMT

"if you make a mistack fix it and dont try to hide it"
Hah hah! Good one Chris of 'vernon'. Spot on. "mistack" Spelling it twice like that was the cherry on top.

Moon photo mystery solved

Simon Wood — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:16:19 GMT

Believe what you like. Until I see American Lunar Junk on the surface I will not believe any of these missions have real crediblity.
Come on the Chinese. Cameras are in focus or is it just "exposure" that needs adjusting??

Moon photo mystery solved

Lyrea — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 18:46:37 GMT

You Americans and whatever Caucasians who insult and mock the Chinese and Asian are hypocrites.

I had had positive viewpoint about Americans as I grow up, even agreed whole-heartedly that Caucasian race are the greatest inventors and scientists for the modern era, seeing the fact that many many great inventions in fact come from your race. And then the fact that democracy and liberalism and whatever modern -ism, comes from your countries too.

But after surfing the nets for some time, after reading many posts about Asians by people like you, I was so shocked: that you as race actually has no difference than us who you claimed third world civillians with old-fashioned biggotry or xenophobia or whatever mock-name you come up with. Your race hate other race too the same way those extreme Terrorists hate your people. It's no wonder there will always be war between groups. Bullshit about humanity and whatever dreaming about no-racist life your peacemaker-group loves to brag about. As your representatives try to educate the world about equality in human rights and all(or maybe that's what you call as political-correctness or whatever it is?), the majority of your race is actually as racist as others too and just show it more and more each days.

I'm disappointed. But on the other hand it makes me feel relieved...you all are just like the rest of us. That despite whatever flashy terms of peace and whatever it is your first world come up with, in the end the hatred and barriers between all race group was the sins of all race groups.

Good day, and may we all have the peace at the end of the world.

Moon photo mystery solved

Richard Seeto — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 07:30:36 GMT

What a big deal indeed. You yanks have made so many blunders and blame others for them that when you try to make yourselves look like saints; forget it, it does not gel. BTW, Recall of Chinese products are not the fault of the Chinese manufacturers, blame greedy American importers for skimping on details in order to milk the maximum profits from the goods and all at exploiting cheap Chinese labour.

Moon photo mystery solved

Roy Gary — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 22:14:17 GMT

There is no doubt that project Earth is being influenced by our genetically superior siblings. whos lives and motivating circumstances is reason enough for our existance - as we understand. Our sole purpose here on Earth is to serve our master our alien creators who live and watch us from there make shift society within the moon. They refer to our world as a seed planet(project Earth) in which they nurture and keep us off keel for there own benefit! Perhaps they should think about who is watching them! Kasha

Moon photo mystery solved

A.J., Indianapolis, In. — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 07:37:17 GMT

Quote:

"1. I don't think this spacecraft uses camera. Instead, it has sensors to scan the moon surface continuously, and send the data back to earth. The image is created on earth from the scan.

Think radar. "

Due respect sir, this is explained in the original story:

"How did that happen? the Chang'e 1 image is actually a mosaic of 19 image strips taken on different orbits."

(Source: http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001248/)

Radar mapping doesn't capture the whole hemisphere at once; it does indeed work in strips. As an example, see this description of the Magellan mission mapping Venus:

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/magellan.htm

Also, scanning the moon surface "continuously" is exactly what any imaging system, whether optical or radar, does when it returns data in strips. An imaging system will only have so many degrees of view. If you pull the system's view out far enough to where you capture an entire hemisphere all at once, you waste the effort, as you sacrifice crucial detail for such a wide view.

Moon photo mystery solved

the mighty T — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:49:59 GMT

What an interesting insight into how people spin just about everything. How the hell did religion, politics, racism and just about every other ugly stereotypical assumption about other cultures and countries wind up in a discussion about a slip of a Photoshop cloning tool? What a sad, sad commentary on the state of our collective psyche...

Moon photo mystery solved

FL — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:49:02 GMT

I just hope that everyone who has had something to say about this also feels this strongly towards the homeless, abused and starving children in their own community as they do about something that has no relevance to any of us anyways.

Moon photo mystery solved

John Downing, Champaign, Illinois — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:57:25 GMT

The two craters in question are in fact portions of the same crater. Split verticaly, the left 1/3 of the crater is just below the right 2/3 of the same crater. If you line up the two sections, all the other little craters in the picture match the Clementine picture.

Moon photo mystery solved

A.J., Indianapolis, In. — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 19:01:36 GMT

To non-US readers of this comments thread:

Please don't take the exceptionally ignorant posts littering this thread as being representative of the US population. If you peruse any internet site, whether a blog posting, a comments thread like here, or some other forum, you'll see that there's a low signal-to-noise ratio due to the many people who choose not view internet forums as a place to post serious, well thought out posts. Rather, you see a lot of knee-jerk, spur-of-the-moment attempts to get rises out of other forum readers. Public forums tend to be vandalized like this quite often. You can compare public forums like this with private, log-on ones where only serious commenters are allowed, or with in-person discussion in groups. The commentary in those situations will be much more informed, serious, and enlightening.

In short, think of most internet forums being exposed to the "Peanut Gallery" (you can do an internet search for what that is). Because most public forums will be littered with people who treat it as a forum for heckling and irrelevant (as well as irreverent) commentary rather than as a place for serious discussion.

Moon photo mystery solved

BirdMan Tahlequah Oklahoma — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 19:25:01 GMT

Who is to say the pictures are real, who's to say that there were weapons of mass destruction. All I'am saying is that we will most likly never know if the pictures are real, along with a number of questions that we all might have. Why can we as people just say good job, and forget about it.

Moon photo mystery solved

Azhar Ansari — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 19:40:25 GMT

RE: Islamic Crescent Moon Symbol: Islam is a devine UNIVERSAL religion. The moon and star represent the outer space of our world. Islam invites people to study this religion and make the right choice about their environment and what our position in this vast universe is. The stars on American flag represent the states within the U.S. Similarly the Moon and Star in Islam represent that they belonged to Islamic world approximately one thousand five hundred years before any nation could reach there. Open your hearts and minds, know the truth and submit to the Supreme Creator of this Universe. Amin

Moon photo mystery solved

PITCH Dothan Alabama — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:21:44 GMT

Hey if the asians want too spend (OUR) hard earned money on worthless projects let them, our own gov'mnt does it every day. It's all a waste of money.

Moon photo mystery solved

Kevin, VA — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 21:28:45 GMT

I hope people discussed here are all scientists (at least with scientific brain), not politicians. Everyone makes mistake including Chinese. Please check the following links for the mistakes Chinese made. I feel sorry for that, but it's a mistake.

http://www.astron.sh.cn/cgi-bin/topic.cgi?forum=52&topic=92&show=0

http://china.rednet.cn/c/2007/12/02/1386875.htm

BTW, Lots of contaminated food (beef) from US to China rejected by Chinese Government, and also Japanese government report says Chinese Food is safer/better than US food (unqualified from China is about 0.7% and about 1.5% from US).

Moon photo mystery solved

Atul — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 08:02:59 GMT

I agree with Paul. I am having hard time convincing myself that chinese orbiter really reached moon. In my suspicion either it is lost or crashed on surface. I would believe it when I see second picture.

Moon photo mystery solved

Someone from Georgia — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 17:03:46 GMT

I really think it's a good thing that the Chinese are exploring the moon and space. NASA is not the only one, and putting pictures together could be just a simple mistakes. Like what Brian Z, Plainfield, Illinois, USA, said "If it's faked, then shame on the Chinese. If it's a mistake, then it's proof that the Chinese are not evil monsters, but simply human like the rest of us." Seriously, people are all trying to throw bad things onto the Chinese when you can't really look at "Chinese" as a whole. It's not like all Americans have McDonald's every single day or everyone here in the US is obese or something. China made a mistake; don't we all? So get over it and stop critizing base on race.

Moon photo mystery solved

Malini Frederick — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 19:09:05 GMT

We spend trillions of dollars just to see space for no good reason. It's not like the cure for cancer is out there. I say we just wait for the aliens to get here and then borrow their maps.

Moon photo mystery solved

ian cole, chatham, uk — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 18:51:48 GMT

well done china, japan, ussr and nasa, there will always be idiots out there to trying to rubbish your work, always do your best, and i and many, many others will sing your praises. simple mistakes will always happen in things so complex.

Moon photo mystery solved

Baratacus, San Diego, CA — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 00:18:58 GMT

the reason for the anomally and the error in stitching is that the orbiter wasn't in the exact same position when the photo was taken. It says right in the article. As the orbiter shifts to a different latitude or longitude, the perspective of the image shifts slightly,causing the same strip of land photographed to become distorted a little bit with each pass.

The issue of different details being visible in the chinese photograph v.s. the NASA photograph, the NASA photograph was taken from a lower resolution imager aboard the Clementine space probe. The purpose of the clementine probe was not to get high detail imagery of the lunar surface, but to collect data on the chemical composition of the moon. We have other satelites that have mapped the lunar surface in higher detail, but this image was from a lower resolution shot taken by the Clementine. The Chinese image was taken with a high resolution camera and shows much more detail.

The images were not take by radar and reproduced, they are photographs from orbit. A radar image would not have shaddows.

There are no photos of the lunar landing sites that show the rover or the base for the LM left over from the apollo missions. Neither NASA or from the chinese or from any other country's space program. It's pretty much understood that it didn't happen and there's no reason to keep bringing up dirty laundry. We will get there some day, so will the chinese. NASA hopes to have a man on the moon by 2020. The Chinese program last I checked has a 2024 target. They are still developing a craft that will get a human there and back. NASA actually has an open development contest for designing the craft. (ingenious way to save a crud-load of money in R&D)

Moon photo mystery solved

John — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 03:38:20 GMT

Pleae visit "www.uforb.i8.com" to see if the shift of the trees is by parallax mistake or mistack.
Thanks.

Moon photo mystery solved

Baratacus — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 08:13:59 GMT

Note: To see the two photos John gave the page for, you need to click on the "Photo" link on that page. They're both pictures taken from the same vantage point, at the same time of day, but the positions of the objects in the two pictures are not oriented the same. It shows how two images taken from a slightly different position can distort the view enough to completely obscure and reveal objects from one photo to the next.

Moon photo mystery solved

Macie — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:19:01 GMT

Hi i'm Macie my friends are Kristi, Carina, Risha, and Kyla and were really enjoying this crator:)

Moon photo mystery solved

Starr Astronomer — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:46:28 GMT

Very interesting . I saw this on the astronomy news wire . great comments .

Starr of AskTheAstronomer

Moon photo mystery solved

Rodney Sibert, Trussville, ALabama — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 02:12:21 GMT

Some say it's just a picture, it's not. This is science, this is data...
If you can't trust the data you are receiving (or rather connecting), then you can't make accurate calculations and or conclusions.
This is why I don't think China wants to admit the mistake. If they do, they will not only be looked at as a second rate, half-put-together outfit, they will also lose this since of accomplishment (to the outside world) in what they have just done. It takes years, allot of people, and a lot of money to do what they just did.
My question is: Why not double check your work. If you find something this significant, (interesting), you always double check. Then have someone else check behind you. Don't go public so quickly...

Moon photo mystery solved

pakistan — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 08:41:44 GMT

i think the appolo mission of landing moon was nothing but a fake. if nasa still insists that it was a real event that i wana ask only one question: why the flag was waving there in the moon for there is no air????
if they give me its reliable answer i and many other people will accept the appolo mission of landing moon to b a real event!!!

Moon photo mystery solved

Tom, Melbourne, Australia — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 02:03:33 GMT

It's unlikely that NASA and China will team up for their next big trip to Mars as the former has blocked the latter's involvement in the ISS project or any joint space project for that matter.

The US establishment knows full well that it's only a matter of time that its dominance is lost to China. So why expect them to make partners with the Chinese, which will give them a giant technological leap and quickens its own demise?

By refusing Chinese involvement in joint space projects, the US is sowing the seeds for future conflicts between China and the rest of the world.

Moon photo mystery solved

Baratacus, San Diego, CA — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:10:59 GMT

The U.S. has no technological advantage over China in the space race.
Even though we built a ship that could launch a human payload, get it to the moon, land, relaunch, dock in orbit, return, re-enter, and be recovered, 50 years ago... with vacuum tube radio technology, binary computers, no rocket powered VTOL capable aircraft, (except for the lunar lander which never completed a successfull earthbound landing) It is projected that we wont be able to develop a ship to do the same thing for another 20 years.
China is currently at the same place that we are in its projections give or take 5 years.
They are trying to collect Data for their launch independant of NASA's data... maybe because... given the questionable nature of our previous lunar exploration, they'd like some imperical data of their own instead of going off of something that is very likely to be doctored.

Moon photo mystery solved

Jake, Philly, USA — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:41:03 GMT

I would like to see a follow up: one thing I have noticed is that only ONE (1) photo has ever been released by China. ONE! When other countries send stuff up, hundreds, even thousands of photos are obtained. Here, we have one. Did the probe break down? Did it fly by the moon and not enter orbit? Why only one photo?

Moon photo mystery solved

Mark Mller, San Diego — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 09:39:47 GMT

try doing a google search before posting.. save yourself some embarassment. Here's one site with a few images. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90783/91322/6317936.html

Moon photo mystery solved

John Taylor — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:51:02 GMT

Then ??? What is this??? I like it when she can find the truth... please look at this photo for yourself. It is an Apoll Atlas photo..that was missed by those editing out all structures on the Moon.
It is photo AS17-160-23950, I will tell you exactly how to find it, so you see it is not doctored by me, and directly from the LUNAR and PLANETARY INSTITUTE. It is important to know it is an actual Nikon camera photo (not a cut and pasted Mosaic photo, like discussed above), taken by a hand held camera, 35 mm black and white film, by the Apollo astronaut. The single film photo, like the kind you would take...with no cut and splice. Look at it for yourself...follow this path. Go to : http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/images/print/AS17/160/23950.jpg
In the photo, the Moon horizion is at the bottom of the photo, the ARCH you are looking for is along the Moon's horizion, move to the bottom of the photo using the slide on the righthand side of your screen, then using the slide at the bottom...move the image slowly, right to left. As you get just past the center of the photo, you will see the Arch, rising off the Moon's surface. You must understand, this is a miles-high object. You are looking at it from 112 kilometers from the lunar surface, 72 miles high approx. The sunlight is is from the right side of the photo, barely above the horizion (according to the photo index info.), which highlights the object well in the dim light. The astronaut was trying to get a photo of something he saw out the window. Just look at all the photos in this cartridge..he took. Some are of the guys next to him in the Apollo craft. Let me know what you think...there are other photos they missed. This one was really hard to see...probably why they missed it.

Moon photo mystery solved

Al, — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:10:05 GMT

i think they just discovered spell check on the moon

Moon photo mystery solved

charles,harlingen tx — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:38:26 GMT

i dont think they went to the moon. look at the flag?? also, when man step on the moon, who was taking the picture? something is not right.when the lunar module landed, where are the marks? the gov't hides alot of things from us. didn't they make a movie years ago, starring o.j. simpson??