[Ramius]

So what we would be seeing in this picture is not so much the shape of the shuttle itself, but the shape of the plasma "cloud" around it and trailing behind??

[RightWhale]

Not really a plasma cloud in front. That would be an especially bright hotspot on the wing itself with the light spilling over into adjacent pixels. The bright plume behind the wing would be hot gas, possibly somewhat ionized. Looks from the symmetry pictures posted above that the whole wing is oversized, swollen. The whole wing would have been hot.