Check out the official image of Dione and Titan, above. A YouTube user named DominatorPS3 turned up the contrast on the image, and discovered brush strokes. You can just about see a “rainbow aura” around the object that’s been blacked out.
As quoted by Fox News, DominatorPS3 said: “More solid proof of NASA/ government cover-ups. And this is recent. You can do this yourself!!”
Dominator PS3′s tell-all YouTube video has been taken down, allegedly because he received death threats. But he’s put up a follow-up video, which you can watch here.
NASA’s Emily Lakdawalla, who was responsible for the photoshopping, explained it over at Planetary.org:
Cassini takes colour pictures by snapping three sequential photos through red, green, and blue filters. In the time that separated the three frames, Dione moved, so if I did a simple colour composite I would be able to make Titan look right, but not Dione; or Dione look right, but not Titan. So I aligned Dione, cut it out, and then aligned Titan, and then had to account for the missing bits of shadow where the bits of Dione had been in two of the three channels.
She explains the process further here, showing how some other images of Saturn and its moons have been photoshopped — but she didn’t post any raw images of the Dione/Titan image that caused the controversy. So at least some conspiracy theorists were not appeased, demanding to see the raw images. Update: She did actually include a link to the raw image feed, where you can grab it.
What do you think? Did NASA really try to hide evidence of extraterrestrial life by photoshopping a picture — and then making that picture is Astronomy Picture Of The Day, just to confuse us further? It’s so crazy, it might just be true! [Fox News]
Spock
Sunday, October 10, 2010 at 9:57 PMI feel sorry for him. He is clearly not the brightest bulb in the brightly lit room, and does not understand the technology and processes involved in presenting these images to the public.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s an appalling Photoshop job, but that’s all it is. It is far removed from the likes of BP and their ‘control’ room forgery …
Paul Carmona
Monday, October 11, 2010 at 8:48 AMSpock – I agree that there is a lot of process involved in combining all the photo elements to reconstruct the final image in it’s correct colour – but there is no requirement to photo shop areas out of the image.
NASA seems to have a policy of removing anything they cannot explain rather than having to deal with a flood of queries – they rather remove it all together. This is not to say there is anything alien on the image here – just that they rather not go into it which is sad.
NASA has a long history of avoiding any controversial issues which in the long run causes more suspension and conspiracy theories.
Just look at Mars as an example – they still to this day claim the Mars sky is pink/ red when it is blue!
If they post the true colour images of Mars landscape – people are more likely to think it is fake and taken on earth than if you add some red to it – again this just leads to conspiracy theories.
Paul Carmona
Monday, October 11, 2010 at 8:59 AMUpdate – looks to me that due possibly to time constraints, that the halo appearing that has been removed is likely to be the moon in the Green and Red filters which has shifted between images – rather than trying to line them up – looks like they have tried to removed the other images – this is purely a guess though :)
glennc
Monday, October 11, 2010 at 9:15 AMany half-wit can understand why they did it.
Ed
Monday, October 11, 2010 at 11:33 AMIf it really was shopped to hide something they didn’t want us mere mortals to see….. then wouldn’t they have just NOT POSTED it in the first place? lol
I think some people are trying a bit too hard to see what they want to see ;-)
Kensai
Monday, October 11, 2010 at 11:52 AM“More solid proof of NASA/ government cover-ups.”
Stargate people…stargate….thats a Goa’uld mothership they’re trying to hide…we’re all screwed
:-)
G
Monday, October 11, 2010 at 4:02 PMim more likely to believe its that light cloud that took the doctor’s baby in SGU…
Dr_Stef
Monday, October 11, 2010 at 2:49 PMOrbulus, LOOK!! It’s Unicron!!!
Simon Reidy
Monday, October 11, 2010 at 3:36 PMThis is from the same type of conspiracy nutjobs that believe we never went to the moon, even though every last jpg of “evidence” they spend their lives analysing can be easily debunked and explained by NASA. People will believe what they want to believe I guess.
TVAddict
Monday, October 11, 2010 at 4:33 PMWhy are we wondering if there is life out on Saturn’s moons. It’s alot closer than that…Just look around the “Fox News” newsroom for strange lifeforms like that clown, O’Reilly… he must be an alien from the planet “Republicanus”