On Sat, 15 Mar 2008 10:47:56 +0000, Proton Fox wrote:

Bob Harrington wrote in
:

Admittedly, I'm optically challenged as a bat - but I'm not seeing the
giant smeary artifact/fingersmudge/whatsit on the NASA image...?

Bob ^,,^


Hmm...maybe your browser automatically resizes images? It doesn't look so
bad when it's smaller, but at full resolution on my 19-inch LCD it's 8
inches high and 4 inches across. Mostly I thought it was an odd choice to
put up on the main mission page, given how many pictures they must have of
each launch.

I've got a 21.4 inch LCD, and at full res it looks very strange.

I cut that part out and blew it up (I blowed up /real/ good!) 500% and
then 1000%, and it's weird. Not a pixel-by-pixel retouch done by hand.
(i.e., a hand job. sorry, couldn't resist....)

It looks -- at first blush -- like a water-stain on a scanned image. But
with their technology I doubt if NASA would go that route.

Truth is, it looks like a poor touch-up job, but of what? Some sort of
reflection? Internal lens-flare? The affected area is a nearly perfect
oval, so it might be an automatic retouch tool from a graphics program. If
there were something nefarious to hide, they would have done a better job
of it.

Might shoot NASA an email and ask them why they used such a poor photo --
though I doubt I'd get an answer.

"'Tis most passing strange....."