Hmm... I think I'm not properly describing what this image represents. I was trying to get features from the surface of the shuttle by doing edge extraction, so the bands represent *changes* in brightness of the image. Although these features in the photo are real enough, I'm now also noticing that these changes of brightness on the surface of the shuttle could be nothing more than extensions of the original image's background brightness gradient.
This is the technical way of saying, the original picture was brighter in the lower left corner and darker in the upper right, so there may be no shuttle-related image features in this image, but is nonetheless posted here for reference.
If you torture the data enough, it will confess...