The mystery of China’s suspicious moon photo, the one that looks like every other unremarkable moon photo we’ve ever seen, has been solved. When the Chinese government released the first lunar image produced by its moon orbiter Chang’e 1 (photo left), internet space enthusiasts accused China of copying an image captured by NASA in 2005 (photo right). The rumors spread so fast and so far that Ouyang Ziyuan, head of the China Lunar Exploration Project had to issue a statement. The moon man said, “China’s first moon photo is absolutely not a fake,” and that while the images do look identical, “a careful examination will tell some small differences.” Ziyuan also claimed that the Chinese image illustrates a new lunar feature (circled in photo). I’ve done some digging of my own and my conclusion is that while the images look remarkably similar, every image of the moon I’ve ever seen looks the same — like a bird’s eye view of a patch of dirt in the rain.
Wednesday, MSNBC published a report from a astronomy blogger with an eye vastly more trained than mine who has issued conclusive evidence that China’s moon photo is not a fake. But it is Photoshopped. According to lunar expert Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society, the Chinese image is actually a mosaic of 19 image strips taken on different orbits, not what Chinese officials claimed it to be. She wrote of the Chang’e 1 photo “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.” The “feature” in question was a supposed new crater that according to Lakdawalla, is merely a photo editing mistake on behalf of the Chinese. The Russians made a similar mistake in 1959 when they proudly labeled an apparent lunar feature captured by their technology “The Soviet Mountains.” This lunar mountain range turned out to be an emulsion smear on the photo’s negative. So while the image captured by China’s Chang’e 1 isn’t “a fake,” in the same way photos of Oprah on the cover of her magazine every month aren’t “fake,” it proves that a little bit of Photoshop can make everything a lot more beautiful.
•MSNBC Cosmic Log: Moon Photo Mystery Solved
•The Planetary Society Weblog: No, the Chang’e Image Isn’t Fake!
•Image: Telegraph