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Posted on 12/03/2007 10:29:22 AM PST by BGHater
BEIJING -- China's space program has defended a photo of the moon's surface taken by its lunar probe as authentic, dismissing critics who suggested it had been copied from a similar image captured by an American orbiter.
China last week presented the first picture taken by its Chang'e 1 lunar probe at a gala ceremony attended by Premier Wen Jiabao, part of the ruling Communist party's program of using the space program to instill national pride.
However, critics posting on Chinese-language Internet sites questioned the image's authenticity, saying it was all but identical to a photo captured by a U.S. lunar orbiter two years ago.
Commentators questioned how the Chinese image were of the exact same spot on the moon, given its size.
Lunar program chief scientist Ouyang Ziyuan insisted the Chinese image was real.
"Because China and the United States took the images in the same region, it's natural the two pictures look alike,'' Ouyang said in remarks carried Monday by the Xinhua News Agency and other state media outlets. "But through careful observation you will see there are some nuances,'' Ouyang said.
Questions about the lunar image recall conspiracy theories such as those claiming the U.S. lunar landings were filmed on a sound stage.
However, they also reflect growing skepticism about Chinese government propaganda and a tendency by the military-linked space program to embellish such images. Two years ago, wire services were forced to recall pictures of two Chinese astronauts after it was determined that head shots of them had merely been cut and pasted onto photographs of identical space suits.
Didn't OJ just get out on bail?
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Its about damned time, I have heard the lie about the great wall of China being the only man made structure visible from space with the naked eye so many times its insane.
Sorry folks, while its really really long, its only about 15-25 feet wide! If you can see that from space you can see your house, every highway and nearly every street in america...
How that piece of propoganda ever got into common consciousness is beyond me.
All I can say is... their optics are not nearly as good.
And at the same time in the lunar month? The shadows change during the month. If the shadows are the same in the two images, we should be able to compare the date when the US pictures and the Chinese (allegedly) were taken and see if the shadows are right.
Two years ago, wire services were forced to recall pictures of two Chinese astronauts after it was determined that head shots of them had merely been cut and pasted onto photographs of identical space suits.
The photographs had been cut and pasted, or were the heads of the astronauts cut and pasted? This is China so you can't be sure.
Shadow angles tell me the photos were taken at different times. Look at the major crater in the upper right. The one on the left has a shadow at 11:00, the one on the right is at noon.
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I tell ya, I don’t get any respect...
| Chinese netizens on the hunt for truth |
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The Internet, as a relatively young form of mass communication, has radically changed Chinese people's lives and their ways of looking at the world. There has emerged a trend where in Internet debates Chinese netizens, whether they agree or disagree with what they read, will seriously and professionally try to find proof supporting their opinions via web searches and even field investigations. The dispute over the appearance of a South China Tiger and the rumor of the disappearance of Chang'e-1, China's first lunar obiter are examples of how the changing Chinese Internet culture is not only affecting individual users, but also more traditional media sources. On October 12th, the Shaanxi Province's Department of Forestry publicized a series of photos allegedly depicting the South China Tiger, declaring that tigers of this endangered species had not died out in the wild as previously speculated. That same afternoon, a person posted the news release along with the tiger photo on an online professional photographer's forum. Six hours later a forum member expressed suspicion, saying that the photo seemed to be a Photoshop creation. Other interested members began analyzing the photo in terms of lighting, perspective, and color, among other elements. The next day, a person who claimed himself to be a Photoshop expert said that the size of the tiger could be estimated based on that of the leaves in the photo and if the photo was authentic, the actual size of the tiger would be near to that of a rat. Words quickly spread, and other online communities became involved in the dispute. They came up with various hypotheses about how the photo was made, but the one thing they all agreed on was that the photo was a fake. Voices in the virtual world grew louder as more people participated in the debate on the authenticity of the photo, including experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), officials from Shaanxi Province, well-known wildlife photographers, and the person who claimed capturing the image of the tiger. The hot debate among Chinese netizens and experts even aroused the interest of foreign media. On October 30th British newspaper Financial Times reported the controversy over the picture of the endangered South China Tiger was dominating Chinese online communities. This was followed by prestigious US Science Magazine, who reported the ongoing public debate in their November 9 issue. This story featured the original photo captioned "Flat cat?" in order to showcase people's doubts. Even though the myth may never be solved, the debate continues to grow hotter and hotter. In early November, Fu Dezhi, a photo skeptic and expert from the CAS predicted that the State Forestry Administration would not be able to persuade any expert to do a field investigation on the tiger because no expert wants to ruin his reputation for a lie. Fortunately for scientists, the Chang'e-1 rumor did not last so long. On November 13, a Chinese netizen made a post entitled "Did Chang'e-1 disappear?" on an online forum, which attracted over 120,000 views and about 1,000 replies. Many people assumed based on the post that something had gone wrong with the lunar obiter. Similar to the tiger photo issue, traditional media began running related stories and interviewed experts for authoritative explanations. On November 16, The South Metropolitan News newspaper interviewed Long Lehao, an academician with the CAS and deputy chief architect of the lunar probe project. He spoke frankly in an attempt to squash the rumor: "The online messages are groundless for sure. Pay no attention to them. But please mark my words -- Chang'e' can never be gone." Four days later, the netizen who originated the rumor reflected on the post and pointed out that discussion by some of matters irrelevant to the Chang'e issue within the message thread actually made the situation worse. On the same day, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) reported that as of 14:00 November 20th, Chang'e I had circled the moon 158 times and all systems were operational. Official websites of the Commission of Science Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND), China Lunar Exploration Project (CLEP), and CNSA began updating news about Chang'e-1 in real time in order to keep the general public constantly informed. These two examples show a progression in Chinese Internet culture. Many involved in the discussion threads searched for evidence to support their arguments, and some even did offline research. Just a few years ago, the Internet was merely a virtual platform, but now to many netizens it is connected to their personal lives. Yu Guoming, director of the Institute of Public Opinions under Renmin University of China (RUC) said that Chinese netizens are becoming more mature in their interactions and general behavior. The Chinese online community has formed its own moral standards that may serve as a foundation to widen the Internet's influence, Yu added. In addition, Chinese netizens are better informed and able to distinguish fake information more easily than before. In this way, groundless rumors will not be able to survive, let alone spread widely within the online community. Some experts believe that with netizens constantly improving themselves, the Internet community will show more of its positive side. It is no surprise that traditional media are more frequently adopting the Internet as the source of their news. A foreign research report predicts that by 2010 about 70 percent of news stories will first be released by bloggers or podcasters instead of professional journalists. Some experts think that the traditional media's dependence on the Internet for news stories will only grow stronger in the future. Dr. Zhou Qingan from Tsinghua University's School of Journalism and Communication said China should follow the practices of the US to draft laws to govern the Internet world and guide its development. He believes such laws are absolutely necessary in order to maintain a harmonious society. (China.org.cn by Pang Li, December 2, 2007)
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Nearly the same sun angle too. How many new craters in the frame?
Questions about the lunar image recall conspiracy theories such as those claiming the U.S. lunar landings were filmed on a sound stage.”
If this were the case ( and I am not saying it is) and the chinese go to the moon and look for the equipment that we left there ( lunar rover, etc) and it is not there... Well the political coup would be... well unmeasurable.
Find hi-res copies of both images and see how many "differences" there are.
The similarity is stunning!
I;m sure they have more than one photo -— Right?
Similar, but some changes already in 30 years. This could be of some use in planning the new lunar base: how deep to bury it.
Just a guess.
All that money for one photo?
I would guess even if we knew they didn’t go to the moon, that we[US Gov’t] wouldn’t say because it might ‘embarrass’ and bring ‘shame’ on China.
Trade and all, ya know.
Do a registration of the two aerial images and then data subtraction. What is left would be either new stuff or stuff that has disappeared. Should stand out like neon signs in the desert.
Not going to happen.
The landing sites are visible without expensive optics, and the mirrors left behind are used continuously.
The “fake moon landing” stuff is just drivel.
[A “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” cartoon from May 1932 explains that the wall is “the mightiest work of man, the only one that would be visible to the human eye from the moon,” and Richard Halliburton’s 1938 book Second Book of Marvels makes a similar claim, but it is not true. This belief has persisted, assuming urban legend status, sometimes even appearing in school textbooks. Arthur Waldron, author of The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth, has speculated that the belief might go back to the fascination with the “canals” once believed to exist on Mars. The logic is simple: If people on Earth can see Mars’ canals, the Martians might be able to see the Great Wall.]
I think I believe the Chinese. The shadow angles are different and the Chinese pic is lower resolution.
The shadows ARE different. You can see for yourself.
Thou presumeth too much... alas!
I are not a geek.
Not that I wouldn't mind learning cool stuff like that, mind you.
If "landing sites" means "hey, there's the Sea of Tranquility" then yes, they are visible. If you mean "Oooo, look, there's the base of the lunar module and there's the rover" then those can't be seen.
When the moon is at perigee (363000 km), the lunar module (4.27 m) is only 0.0024 arc seconds across. The Hubble can only resolve 0.084 arc seconds. The Keck telecope can get down to 0.04 arc seconds at best, which is still only 1/20 the resolution needed to resolve the LM. The only way to see them would be from orbit around the moon.
They could as easily *claim* that our stuff wasn't there with the same effect.
Nothing low-res about the image link at this site:
I think the other posters on this thread give too little credence to "The Propaganda Department of the Central Committee".
Given a photo, a LOT can be changed with photoshopping it and enough resources and a skilled operator.
The only I'll believe it personally, is when they show us hundreds and thousands of pictures that they've taken.
One or two won't cut it.
I think itis their picture, but Imaust say that if this represents best optics, they have a long way to go. Low contrast, low resolution is not what you want on a lunar orbiter.
It’s there.
The examples in the post above appear to show the same craters, but in the Chinese pic the edges of the craters are noticably fuzzier than in the US pic. The link shows a pic with fuzzy crater edges, so I stand by my earlier statement.
Any idea which particular laws this guy is referring to? The Google China experience shows that his government definitely believes in taking much of the Internet away from its people for "the common good".
Part of the difference in apparent illumination angle is due to the relative angular misalignment of the two images, I’d say about 5 degrees. If you rotate the right image CCW by that amount, the illumination angle is more nearly the same.
But the nature of the illumination is still different. Unless somebody did a lot of Photoshopping, they just ain’t the same photo.
Different shadow angles and different picture angles. When the left picture is turned to the angles on the right picture... uh oh, it sounds like same shadow angles.
You are probably right, but if you are not... you have this emerging superpower that could not only knock off the king of the hill but then say “we really did it”
I think of things in terms of what they will mean. Yes we landed on the moon, what does that mean? A lot of things. Doing it first, repeating it, etc. All those things go into building an identity. Let’s say suddenly that identity were not there and it then belonged to someone else?
Those are the implications I find interesting.
You know your stuff. I agree too.
It's not the width of the wall that makes it visible, but the hundreds of miles long sinuous winding that shows up from space.
"Astronaut Leroy Chiao used 80mm and 400mm lenses and managed to capture some images. In this photo, NASA adds helpful red arrows which will guide viewers hoping to discern the location of the wall amidst the white and patches of blue."
/sarc, I hope
Apparently half the people here know next to nothing about photography. Overcontrasted and oversharpened photograph = ZOMG!!! Superior camera!.
BS.
The wall is only 15-30’ wide, its not visible from space with the naked eye.. nothing that wide is visible from space with the naked eye.
US highways run thousands of miles and are many times as wide, but are not visible with the naked eye.
To suggest the great wall is, is just nonsense.
With the naked eye there is no way you can see anything 30’ wide, no matter how long it is with the naked eye from the distance of orbit.
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