Why Russian Space Images Look Different From NASA's

An anonymous reader writes "The Russians have published two amazing photos of Earth using their new Elektro-L satellite, in 30,000km high orbit around the equator. The quality is stunning, and they look quite different from NASA's Earth images. But why are they different? And are they better than NASA's?"

Gizmodo? Seriously?

[phantomcircuit]

Gawker media should be summarily banned.

For those who don't know why http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/12/12/2234252/Gawker-Source-Code-and-Databases-Compromised [slashdot.org]

Re:1st and I hope last time on gizmodo

[Anonymous Coward]

The blue marble image is a composite image of many different pictures and sources taken at different times. The cloud layer was taked seperately from the other layers and stitched on to become part of the entire image. The Russian picture, however, is from one single image and is how the earth looked at that moment.

Re:1st and I hope last time on gizmodo

[leehwtsohg]

Yes, I think you are right. And the cloud layer has some obvious photoshop artifacts.. strange. (go left from panama, you'll hit a cloud with w hole, and a bit further left, another cloud with a hole. These two clouds and the region around them are pixel copies of each other. That was pointed to in a comment on gizmodo)

Re:1st and I hope last time on gizmodo

[yoshi_mon]

Yeah, that site is a mess if you are using NoScript. I normally will allow the site itself and see if that will fix it but it did not. So rather than allowing the 5+ data-mining addresses to operate I just will do without.