Square Wheels wrote
in news:UbOCj.88325$w94.5187@pd7urf2no:

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....."

Thanks for the out-pointing, I do see it now (Mein Fuhrer! I can see!) It
does look like a bad touch-up job; I'm guessing of an internal lens
reflection of the glaringly bright SLB exhaust.

Or maybe just the Gray Mothership observing the launch...

Speaking of spiffy photos of this launch...

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080316.html