posted on Jan, 21 2016 @ 11:51 AM
A composite or an artists rendering is what is presented by NASA in I'd guess 99.9% of the images that people believe are photos.
I am not saying NASA has presented them in a disingenuous fashion. Simply that, the average Joe see's the latest image on a magazine while in line at
the grocery store. He gets a little patriotic boost I mean, just look at that "We" just took a picture of a Brown dwarf Star 200 Million Lightyears
away! That is amazing that We can even do that!
Technically we haven't used a photograph to image space for a very long time. I mean actual reflected light to a lens , to a filmstrip, being
recovered and the developed in a dark room with chemical immersion. We use composite layers of data captured by a sensor interpreted by a computer
program. That data is then converted into a transmit able form of energy that is again captured and reconverted into information that can be displayed
as an image on a screen.
Just in defense this is not me saying that this method of capturing an "image" cannot present an accurate depiction of an area of space time in a
given moment. This is just me saying that neither of the op images are photos. And, no amount of perspective can account for the size difference of
America presented. Period.
Now could a misinterpretation of data be the culprit? Possibly. A misplaced decimal point is easily overlooked.
Now, the reason for releasing them both as claimed accurate representations of The Earth in photo form? How did this even get released?!
reply to: chr0naut