Amazing Space Pictures

Amazing pictures... a flag and star for sharing these.
I just watched every picture for minutes, these pictures have given some reality to my imagination about space and how earth looks from outer space

thanks again

[edit on 26-6-2008 by communicator]

Those are awsome, good find and 2 thumbs up OP!

We are all enjoying them at my work.

It looks so pleasant up there Thanks for the pics...

If you closely at pictures 9 & 10 you can see a UFO on the edge of earth.. anyone spotted that?

reply to post by Nola213


I was thinking exactly the same thing.. but I don't think it's a model.

When I saw the picture for the first time, I thought to myself, something wrong here.

Took me a few minutes to work it out, then I realised there are virtually no shadows... anywhere... so why has the astronaut got his helmet lights on?

Which drew my attention to another small detail.. which I've added as a picture below this one.



I can only assume that the cameraman is inside the cabin taking this photo through the door window..but the glass would have at least reduced te clarity of the image, even just a little. Yes, a zoom lense could have been in use to get the shot so close to the astronaut..but my question is simple.

Where is the camera/cameraman?


And also note how the 'shadow' appears to be a lot darker close to the nose in the bay than any shadows seen in the main pic. This may be due to the effect of the visor, but to be able to clearly see a difference in light balance does kinda hint at a lot of touch ups going on.

I'm still finding it very hard to see any solid shadow.

Yes, the sun could be flooding the bay, along with the reflected light from Earth...but even then, surely you would get some form of shadow somewhere. Compare this pic to other pics in the OP and you'll see what I mean.

Otherwise, outstanding pics..great find.. real or fake or real and touched up..nice pics.

Ooooh.. just thought of something regarding the camera position. If the camera was using a zoom, then the entire picture should be in focus (If I'm correct in thinking) if the camera was as close as it seems then this is possibly the only way you'd get an out of focus foreground.

If this is right, then where is the camera?

these pics look sooooo fake!

I have alot of trouble trusting NASA that these are real.

If they are real, they are easily touched up to the extreme to make it look so cool.

Quit tampering with photos!

Originally posted by illuminist

I have alot of trouble trusting NASA that these are real.

Sounds like a personal problem. Just because these pictures are literally out of this world doesn't mean they're fake. Are you suggesting that the ISS and shuttle are hoaxes? My first hand experiences say they are not.

Originally posted by ngchunter

Originally posted by illuminist

I have alot of trouble trusting NASA that these are real.

Sounds like a personal problem. Just because these pictures are literally out of this world doesn't mean they're fake. Are you suggesting that the ISS and shuttle are hoaxes? My first hand experiences say they are not.

Some people just like to be party poopers, that's all.

Cmon, these scream fake, u can see a bad cut and paste error around the leg on one picture and the orange tin foil looking stuff with the stickers on it is wayyyy too perfect , wudnt it be covered in dust etc

Well if you look at picture number 3, It is not from this mission for sure. Look at pictures 5 and 6, Look at the interior of the bay, not even close to pic 3. And its not the canadian sat. , It wouldnt have The american flag on it.

I am not disputing the fact of real or fake, I just wonder what shuttle that is from. And as far as shadows and why you dont see them, There are many light sources on the shuttle as you can see in some of the pics. And im sure they are halogen and very bright. And you have the sun. In a few of the pics. you can see shadows, most likely from the brightness of the sun.

All of that aside, very nice pics and we could only hope for pics like that everytime. I think the mars pics are not so great because The mission isnt so much a visual one. they are there to take samples and analyze them.

I will give this thread a star and a flag for great quality pics that are rarely seen

Very beautiful!

Thanks for sharing!

Originally posted by russ1969
Well if you look at picture number 3, It is not from this mission for sure.

You're right about that. The mission patch on the equipment in the bay indicates it's the Hubble servicing mission 3B, in other words, STS-109. Not sure about how many of the others are from various missions, but they're good pics.

reply to post by Extralien


I can address some of the questions posed in this post. (I couldn't log in before but I authored the long anonymous post on page 3.

Many light sources disperse sharp shadows throughout the setting, as I outlined why in the anonymous post. Much reflected light, much like what a photographer creates in a studio.

The cameraman most likely is shooting through the small bay window from inside. The severe curvature of the helmet face mask could distort this point to a tiny size. Quite a convex curvature. The face mask is cladded–lack of better term– with real gold for radiation protection, and is much more mirror like, (reflective), than a motorcycle helmet. Very reflective.

The shadows may be more pronounced in the foreground than the background due to light dispersion. If a ship was a few hundred yards away, it would be nearly glowing and much more out of focus. So why is not this scene ALL in focus? Zoom or no zoom, the subject is close, but the rear is some 60 feet away. If the subject was 260 feet away, the whole scene would be more the same focus. You do have an area field of view.

I use wide angle for architectural shooting and indoor d=rooms because you can't always back up far enough to get everything in you want. You can adjust down to eliminate fish eye distortion.

Hope that helps a bit.

Originally posted by Illustronic
reply to post by Extralien

 

I can address some of the questions posed in this post. (I couldn't log in before but I authored the long anonymous post on page 3.

Many light sources disperse sharp shadows throughout the setting, as I outlined why in the anonymous post. Much reflected light, much like what a photographer creates in a studio.

The cameraman most likely is shooting through the small bay window from inside. The severe curvature of the helmet face mask could distort this point to a tiny size. Quite a convex curvature. The face mask is cladded–lack of better term– with real gold for radiation protection, and is much more mirror like, (reflective), than a motorcycle helmet. Very reflective.

The shadows may be more pronounced in the foreground than the background due to light dispersion. If a ship was a few hundred yards away, it would be nearly glowing and much more out of focus. So why is not this scene ALL in focus? Zoom or no zoom, the subject is close, but the rear is some 60 feet away. If the subject was 260 feet away, the whole scene would be more the same focus. You do have an area field of view.

I use wide angle for architectural shooting and indoor d=rooms because you can't always back up far enough to get everything in you want. You can adjust down to eliminate fish eye distortion.

Hope that helps a bit.

Now I know who to U2U when I have camera questions...Thanks. My daughter is thinking about becoming a professional. Now what kind of camera do you suppose that is? It's incredible.

reply to post by Jeff Riff


thanks for sharing..


i saw a couple of those pics in another thread...notice how outer space is gloss black,void of stars and the far edges of the earth look photo-shopped of some kind?

reply to post by seagrass


It could be any kind of camera. One would hope it is an actual film negative type, even a 35mm will have a much greater resolution than the best digital, which are at what, 11 or 12 megapixels? We have no idea of the original digitized sizes unless NASA puts up the actual raw files somewhere. I'm sure you could find that out on their site, or a contact for that kind of info.

I wanted to continue the long post I made for another thread that turned very skeptical but was limited to the 4,000 characters. Though not really applying to this thread, here anyway.


Now for the CT skeptics let me add that a virtual 3D software ‘scene’ as complex as what we see in these NASA photos would contain millions and perhaps billions of fractal planes, called polygons. Polygons in 3D land is a triangular flat plane that is ‘skinned’ with all the color, reflective, textural, transparency, and light absorption information that the programs uses to render a facsimile image for. A simple space helmet shield could be constructed with hundreds of these planes all with unique skinning calculation codes for the software to translate. Why triangles? It is the simplest two-dimensional plane possible. What I’m trying to say is the model creation, and skinning, and scene lighting and positioning of one of these simple NASA Shuttle scenes is a huge undertaking. What is an even larger undertaking is for the software program to finally ‘render’ or paint the coded information. Frankly, on my hopped up MAC G5, a low-resolution scene of a simple lab-building model takes the software a day to an entire weekend to render. I have a photographer friend that does fine art 3D renderings in the same software I use that his faster machines burden the render for two weeks or more, which he can do since he has several computers.

So faking these photos in 3D software won’t churn out the number NASA posts of Shuttle missions without a considerable expense. So why would they fake them when real people see real ships get launched in Florida all the time? Yes NASA has faster computers but why all the effort to create fantasy, besides the majority of NASA employees use your normal office PC’s you see in most large companies purchased or leased by the hundreds.

One last thing to keep in mind is most of these photos are taken by people in the ship, through glass, through glass lenses, with lots of various light sources and light reflective materials around. There are bound to be some reflective legacy images and anomalies showing up from time to time. Not to mention near zero gravity indoor spacecraft ‘air’ is littered with millions of free floating particles of all the various materials and human skin that gravity allows to land in your home, on earth.


Hope the tone is not offensive. But NASA has to their public interest not to fake or hide any information captured in an image. Most of their primary missions are to collect scientific data out of our visual range. Of course Shuttle photos are what they are, snapshots in an extraordinary setting.

reply to post by Extralien


thank you for replying, and looking into the picture as much as you did, star for you



I don't know it's just when I was going through the pictures and got to that one(mind you I didn't have these are fake on my mind at all), but that 3rd picture just jumped out at me. The astronaut looks like an action figure.

One explanation of where and how the photo was taken could be a stationary remote camera outiside on a remote rig allowing for full 360 degree pans and what not. But you may be onto to something as to why the picture just didn't look right.

That there are no shadows. Rarely does one see a picture so clean and light up, without a single shadow. But I suppose this can occur in space, or Low earth Orbit or wherever it was taken.

Still the Astronauts legs, they just look plastic to me. I guess it's just tricking my eye. But it looks like a close up you see of those really tricked out railroad conscrictions those hobbiest do. Made even easier cause you can have a person in the frame, and not have to show his face, which would be the hardesrt thing to fake on something the size of an action figure. Strange picture nonetheless.

The rest as I said, are amazing, that one just popped out at me. But why would nasa even fake the pic, when they could've taken a real one, that's the question I can't get my head around.

Unless it was a small scale model of what the Astronauts would be working with, and somehow it slipped into the "real" pictures folder.

PLEASE- don't let this next statement derail the thread: but remember the scaled down version of the passenger jets broken in half inside the pentagon, before 9-11. Something akin to that. But nothing nefarious here, like there was with the pentagon photo.

Again it's most likely a trick on the eye, or a scaled down picture put in the wrong folder(as it doesn't coincide with the rest of the mission pictures, its from a different mission.) Or maybe just someone thought it was so real looking they'd see if they could pass it, for s@#$^ and goggles. But again I don't believe anythinf nefarious is behind it, it it is indeed a model.

Has anybody seen the NASA underwater training photos? Underwater has a way of simulating a zero gravity appearance and the bulky suits look kind of funny because we are so conditioned to seeing clothing with the effects of gravity and or wind blown movements. Believe me, even with gravity, those suits look funny and un-conforming to the body within, or the motion of the astronaut.

What amazing detail, what clear images, what a wonderful tone.....

WHY does the area near the earths horizon look like a compressed jpeg with 8 colours? That section screams "retouch" to me!

Picture 6




I've created better looking "sphere" objects in "Bryce 3D"using downloaded high res texture files.......terrain, specularity, bump, cloud maps etc.

Great ship, shame about the planet.



must just be image compression.

[edit on 26/6/2008 by nerbot]

I use Bryce also, and you'd be correct assuming that image compression is posterizing the background. Before I could log in, I made a long anonymous post explaining digital image compression in detail back on page 3. The linked photos are not that large, I'd say in the area of 3-4 megapixels in size, these days quite small.