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Chinese Moon Photo Doctored, Crater Moved
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Dec 05, 2007 04:39 PM
from the publicity-stunts dept.
from the publicity-stunts dept.
mytrip writes "A controversy over last week's photo of the lunar surface, allegedly from China's lunar spacecraft Chang'e, appears to be resolved. It's real but it isn't. An expert says the photo's resolution shows that it is of recent origin. However, for some inexplicable reason, someone on Earth edited the photo and moved a crater to a different location. 'In the week since the picture was released amid much fanfare in Beijing, there have been widespread rumors that the photo was a fake, copied from an old picture collected by a U.S. space probe. The photo from China's Chang'e 1 orbiter is clearly a higher-resolution view, with sunlight streaming from the northwest rather than the north. The mission's chief scientist, Ouyang Ziyuan, told the Beijing News that a new crater had been spotted on the Chang'e imagery — a crater that didn't appear on the US imagery. Lakdawalla determined that the crater in question wasn't exactly new — instead, it appeared to be a crater that had been moved from one spot on the picture to another spot slightly south.'"
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That's not a moon (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
More jokes.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Coverup! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Coverup! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: Coverup! (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a particularly nutty conspiracy theory that says there was a landed UFO parked off to one side of the Apollo 11 landing site, and that the astronauts were being "watched" the whole time.
Given that Luna has no air to speak of, the big round dent it presumably would have left in the moondust should still be visible if Japan/China/India wants to fly over that w
Re:Who will pay the ultimate price? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Who will pay the ultimate price? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Who will pay the ultimate price? (Score:4, Informative)
http://home.no.net/harakiri/ [no.net]
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http://www.parida.com/seppuku.html [parida.com]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku [wikipedia.org]
"Vocabulary and Etymology
Seppuku is also known as hara-kiri (, "cutting the belly") and is written with the same kanji as seppuku but in reverse order with an okurigana. In Japanese, hara-kiri is a colloquialism, seppuku being the more formal term. Samurai (and modern adherents of bushido) would use seppuku, whereas ordinary Japanese (who in feudal times as well as today looked askance at the practice) would use hara-kiri. Hara-kiri is the more common term in English, where it is often mistakenly rendered "hari-kari.""
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http://www.answers.com/topic/seppuku-1 [answers.com]
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(Probably the blame can be squarely laid at the feet of hollywood and any servicepersons and tourists from the West who "just didn't get it" or who just didn't give a damn...)
But, it is carried out with a "tanto":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanto [wikipedia.org]
If you want to see it performed in a film (quite messy in real life and somewhat in the film), see:
Brother,
Starring and produced/directed by Kitano Takeshi (of "Beat"...) and starring Omar Epps
http://www.combustiblecelluloid.com/2001/brother01.shtml [combustiblecelluloid.com]
http://www.moviesunlimited.com/musite/product.asp?sku=D27123 [moviesunlimited.com]
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0222851/ [imdb.com]
http://global.yesasia.com/en/artIdxDept.aspx/section-videos/code-j/aid-30742/ [yesasia.com]
and,
http://www.heroic-cinema.com/reviews/brother [heroic-cinema.com]
"this film sure is one violent sonofabitch. If you're not down for that, then maybe you should check to see if you can get into a session of Harry Potter instead. Some of the harshest violence in it is self-inflicted (that brother thing again, but taken to an illogical and hella messy degree). And all of it is LOUD. Handguns are like cannons. Kicks are like wrecking balls. Punches are like car crashes. Car crashes are like - well, like car crashes. I think the punches are louder."
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Anyway, I will always respect Kitano-san for how he ended the film, something rarely permitted in many western films. You have to see it for yourself...
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Well, now... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well, now... (Score:5, Insightful)
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China is fascist, not communist (Score:4, Interesting)
see http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=105001682 [opinionjournal.com]
Snippet:
China is not, as is invariably said, in transition from communism to a freer and more democratic state. It is, instead, something we have never seen before: a maturing fascist regime. This new phenomenon is hard to recognize, both because Chinese leaders continue to call themselves communists, and also because the fascist states of the first half of the 20th century were young, governed by charismatic and revolutionary leaders, and destroyed in World War II. China is anything but young, and it is governed by a third or fourth generation of leaders who are anything but charismatic.
The current and past generations of Chinese leaders, from Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin, may have scrapped the communist economic system, but they have not embraced capitalism. To be sure, the state no longer owns "the means of production." There is now private property, and, early last June, businessmen were formally admitted to the Communist Party. Profit is no longer taboo; it is actively encouraged at all levels of Chinese society, in public and private sectors. And the state is fully engaged in business enterprise, from the vast corporations owned wholly or in part by the armed forces, to others with top management and large shareholders simultaneously holding government jobs.
This is neither socialism nor capitalism; it is the infamous "third way" of the corporate state, first institutionalized in the 1920s by the founder of fascism, Benito Mussolini, then copied by other fascists in Europe.
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spoiler alert (Score:5, Informative)
Bad summary (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems here that this is actually just a result of a vanilla screw-up.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". Though instead of "stupidity" I'd substitute "error".
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Re:Bad summary (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Bad summary (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Bad summary (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, even the most diligent scientists can forget correct procedure when caught up in euphoria or other pressures.
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Re:Bad summary (Score:5, Informative)
By taking 2 -- or in this case 19 -- photos that cover different parts of an area, stitching them together to make one big photo, and making a mistake with the positioning on one of the pieces.
You did read the actual article before rebutting to a comment that told you the summary was inaccurate, right?
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Re:Bad summary (Score:5, Funny)
Of course not. Besides this being Slashdot and RTFAing being discouraged, it would ruin my opportunity to be wildly inaccurate.
I read it later.
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Re:Bad summary (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:spoiler alert (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Feng Shui (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Feng Shui (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's hit wikipedia real quick: Today's Feng Shui schools teach that it is the ancient Chinese practice of placement and arrangement of space to achieve harmony with the environment. [wikipedia.org] Fen Shui originated in China. The picture came from China. See the connection? That my statement is absurd is what makes it funny. That Feng Shui would be banned by the Chinese government makes the joke that much funnier. This does not 'diss' (why do you diss english with this lame slang?) Taiwanese culture in the least. Taiwan doesn't even enter the picture - unless you are running around with some kind of chip on your shoulder.
Oh and as far as our supporting Taiwan - I personally took part in operations like this [canada.com] that have been a part of Taiwan remaining free from Chinese control. But I'm wandering now - the issue is your inability to get a joke. Pointing fingers at Christians and laughing at Allah could be funny too in the right context.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
See? (Score:5, Funny)
maybe just a watermark (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:maybe just a watermark (Score:5, Interesting)
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Crater pics from NASA... (Score:3, Interesting)
Development [nasa.gov] of the Mars global surveyor: $148 million
Launching [nasa.gov] it into space: $52.6 million
Getting [nasa.gov] it into orbit: $46.4 million
Seeing what the martins really think of us: Priceless.
Re:maybe just a watermark (Score:5, Informative)
The best evidence they could come up with for the baby picture was "the photographer laughed" and "the guy carrying some baby walked towards the rail tracks".
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Someone didn't read the NIE (Score:5, Funny)
Bad Astonomy (Score:5, Informative)
Supports not nullifies (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Bad Astonomy (Score:5, Informative)
Two issues:
The analysis concluded that it's not copied, and concluded that the moved crater can be explained [planetary.org] by a mistake stitching the components together. If you look at that article, you'll note that the new image is missing a small crater in one place, and has an extra small crater a little ways away, and there's an odd indentation around it. She figured out where the seam probably was, shifted the parts a bit, and they line up perfectly.
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Trouble with the Chinese moon missions (Score:5, Funny)
Chinese knockoffs (Score:5, Funny)
TFA (Score:5, Informative)
Oblig. (Score:4, Funny)
Misleading summary - it's not intentional (Score:5, Informative)
I would assume that you can request the original mission data for serious research use instead of having to rely on newspaper clippings for science. If those images are also doctored, then we have a genuine controversy.
Doctored my ass (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Doctored my ass (Score:5, Funny)
When can we expect a better moderated Slashdot or people who can read?
That's going to be an in-game feature of Duke Nukem Forever.
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For crying out loud, include the rationale! (Score:5, Informative)
Often, surface features that show up on two strips of data have to be manually corrected to produce the finished image, due to subtle changes in perspective.
"You know that there should have been seams in that image, and I just did not look for them carefully at the time," Lakdawalla told me today.
If you've ever viewed satellite imagery, you'll recognize that the source images are not nice, ultrahigh resolution wide arc views, but instead low resolution wide arc views or high resolution narrow arc views. The 'recognizable' product that is released to a nontechnical public, such as the images used in Google Earth, are the result of post-processing including image registration, tone correction, etc. See this article [incaindia.org] on mosaicing multi-sensor images, for example.
Surprise. Some technician made a mistake. No cookie.
People, RTFA, read the spoiler posts...PLEASE. (Score:5, Informative)
I realize that it goes against the general Slashdot commenting procedure, but read just a little before commenting on this one, please.
1. Two photos were poorly stitched together, repeating an image of a crater on the combined photo (the crater was photographed twice).
2. Chinese scientists miss the poor stitch job and proclaim they found a new crater.
3. Someone else takes a close look at this "discovery" and points out the error in the stitch job.
The crater wasn't intentionally added, it's a result of trying to align two photos, each taken from a different perspective in which the edges won't completely line up exactly.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
pffffft. that was the sound of their credability dying a death.
its sad really, somewhere in China there are some *very* capable engineers holding their heads in their hands.
Quick! (Score:3, Funny)
All scientific photos are doctored (Score:5, Insightful)
The Chinese screwed up mosaicking their imagery. Big deal. Now that they know how far up their ass the scientific community will be looking, I am sure they will strive for more rigor. Their desire to be a contributing member of the scientific community appears genuine to me.
Re:Can the small crater be from a recent collision (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, that is exactly what happened. The asteroid hit a rectangle of terrain from another spot in the old photograph and blasted it up in the air.... well of course the moon has no air but you know what I mean... and this rectangle of terrain landed intact at the new location. Quite simple and obvious really.
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Re:It's a shop (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:ON the topic of it being a fake (Score:5, Funny)
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