Is this object planet Earth??

Originally posted by mikesingh
And the light reflected by the 'object' is too bright to be the Earth. Could be a lense flare as pointed out by jra. But if it is, why two, in one shot? And where are the radiant 'spokes' one usually sees in a lense flare?

There is more than one lens in a camera, so that could be the reason for the doubling of the lens flare. As for the radiant spokes. That would come off the sun itself, but since the sun isn't in the photo, you don't see it.

And of course you must've noticed the glare/haze on the Moon. Can there be any in a vacuum?? But that's another story.

The haze isn't visable to the naked eye, it's just part of the effect of the lens flare.

Hi--

I'm afraid the pic posted has been altered to fake a Bogie. If you look at this image , you will see a square area around the "Bogie" that clearly shows altered pixels, in both size and color differential. It was likely done via an inserted selection from another photo. The photo below is a crop out from the original enlarged 600% and otherwuise untouched. Whatever, it's a very lousy retouch job.

Originally posted by Ed Littlefox
I'm afraid the pic posted has been altered to fake a Bogie. If you look at this image , you will see a square area around the "Bogie" that clearly shows altered pixels, in both size and color differential. It was likely done via an inserted selection from another photo. The photo below is a crop out from the original enlarged 600% and otherwuise untouched. Whatever, it's a very lousy retouch job.

What you're seeing is an effect of .jpg compression. The original picture is of rather poor quality and it's small. Take a look at a much higher res version of it here. 161.115.184.211... [2340x2369, 907kb]

Thanks for the true original JRA! Now THAT'S lens reflection, and totally discounts any possibility of it being the earth. Excellent job on that!


By the way, mikesingh, there can be an extremely weak atmosphere on the moon (which is actually 3 × 10^-13kPa, as opposed to Earth's 101.3 kPa) because of gravity. The exact same reason Earth has one - gravity. It's just that the moon's is so tiny, and the moon formed so late in the formation of the solar system, that it has very little atmosphere.

Originally posted by Yarium
Thanks for the true original JRA! Now THAT'S lens reflection, and totally discounts any possibility of it being the earth. Excellent job on that!

Agreed, and thanks for posting the original--which I haven't seen. Still looks like somebody cropped it to fake a bogie--and it IS lens flare.

Originally posted by Yarium
By the way, mikesingh, there can be an extremely weak atmosphere on the moon (which is actually 3 × 10^-13kPa, as opposed to Earth's 101.3 kPa) because of gravity. The exact same reason Earth has one - gravity. It's just that the moon's is so tiny, and the moon formed so late in the formation of the solar system, that it has very little atmosphere.

Yarium, agreed. There could possibly be 'some'.

But I should take the liberty of differing with you where the formation of the Moon is concerned! You say it formed so late during the formation of the Solar System. What if I say that the Moon is older than the Earth? If so, your argument doesn't hold water! (You know, some Moon samples were discovered to be older than the Earth!)

[edit on 2-10-2006 by mikesingh]

Originally posted by mikesingh
(You know, some Moon samples were discovered to be older than the Earth!)

Not quite
Some of the Moon samples were older than rocks we have found on Earth but this doesn't mean that the Moon is older. The Earth is constantly renewing its surface because is geologicaly active.

And about Moon's atmosphere...I saw somebody asking john lear how come you can't see any atmosphere in all the pictures of our moon, taken by amateur/proffesional astronomers. If you look at mars you can clearly see some kind of atmosphere. Why not in the moon pictures? Because there is none.

Edited to add:
I did not see any answer of john lear to this question...but also I didn't read thoroughly the thread...

[edit on 2/10/06 by Apass]