There has been plenty of rumors, opinions, ideas and conspiracy theories that our government is not quite as honest with us as it could be. There is even the theory that the whole moon landing coverage was shot on a sound stage somewhere on good old earth.
But all this aside, let’s assume all our ventures out into space and to other planets is actually true, then this fascinating image of our Earth-Moon system as seen from Mars (actually from one of our space crafts up there) is in fact authentic.
But unfortunately it is totally misleading. It tries to create this feeling of being this small twin system out there in the void – alone but still the moon so close that we can identify with it.
Still, let’s still assume that this image is not photoshopped, then it uses the treacheries of three dimensions to mislead us. The moon must be either much closer to the observer – the little green Martian – or much further away.
How come?
Let’s do some simple math. The Earth diameter is about 12000 km (OK, I think in metric – so what?) and the distance of Earth and Moon is about 360000 km, that would put the Moon at the distance of about 30 Earth radii. In the NASA image the distance seems to be 6 Earth radii – pretty big difference, don’t you think?
If we – or the Martians – would look at our system at a time when the real distance of the two heavenly bodies in one image would be shown, we would see two specs of light without any awe-inspiring effect.
What do you think why they do this manipulation?
The moon would be at 30 earth radii from the perspective of mars at only two points of its rotation around the earth. The moon could be in front of the earth, all with no photoshop manipulation, simply because the orbit of the moon around the earth is not necessarily around the optical axis of the camera.
Very true! And no, I did not suspect any photoshopping, only a smart selection of the right time to snap the photo to accomplish the intended goal – totally valid. Just line in the advertisement for some drink that says “Made with real apple juice.” It’s true, what is left out is the info that it’s only 5%, but the reader is supposed to think “all.”
What bothers me more is the size of the earth and moon in this picture, compared to the blip that represents mars in our evening sky. A magnification on this scale is almost of Hubble proportions, no?
No, I don’t think that this is such a big deal. I have been outside of the Griffith Observatory once, a few years ago when Mars was very close, and had a chance to look though a medium size telescope, and Mars was pretty big.
Originally posted in response to you @ BoingBoing:
Merlin, I think you are reading too much into the image. If it wasn’t manipulated (which you allow in your blog-post), and was indeed a result of timing and perspective, then it’s a valid photo. It’s “true”.
Just because you think someone may interpret the image as showing an acttual linear distance (where both objects sit on the same z-plane), doesn’t mean Nasa’s intention was to deceive.
It’s a photograph, not a diagram.
Hi Arkizzle,
you are most likely correct. I have been a photographer for many years – and still like to do take a good shot – and there is always some manipulation and bias involved on how you compose the shot and what you do and what you don’t show – – – but it does not have to have any evil intention, and mostly does not – it’s just expressing what the person communicating with the image wants to say, and any opinion is correct.
My intention with this post was mostly to make clear that even though the shot is coming from our all-powerful government it is still a biased view of things.
Cool that you take distance into account. I suggest you do a pixel measurement of the diameters of both objects. And compare that to the actual sizes =)