And thinking about it, that would be quite a zoom lens to get that much of a close up from at least 40 miles away. Agreed. Then again, it was taken with a professional-quality camera, and they're very good.
At any rate, in addition to actually being the Shuttle, the image looks like the Shuttle: it has all the right things in the right places, and even roughly the right colors. I tend to think that, because of a good lens, or a trick of the optical path, it is a true image of the vehicle.
You know when I saw this on tv early today I thought it was a shot directly behind the shuttle and then camera pulled back and it was obvious from the plume that it was a side shot. It doesn't seem likely that the shuttle could be moving sideways at that speed without immediately falling apart. I mean how much stress could the side of the shuttle take?
I wonder if NASA will be able to get accurate times for when all these videos were taken and match it up with their downloaded data of what was going on?