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Originally posted by CynicalM
reply to post by saabacura
Mate that was clearly photoshoped from this..
stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov...
I wouldn't go as far as to say the image has been "tweaked", but that is not how it looks in the original file (raw data file). What you're seeing in that member's image is a consequence of extremely high compression, conversion to jpeg, resizing and rescaling. I have attached an image that shows the cosmic ray in the original data file. It's just a standard cosmic ray. If folks want to verify this, they can download that file from here:
stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov...
Filename is 20100824_080915_n4c2A.fts
There are two things to note about those files. First, they are in a format called "FITS" (.fts extension). A lot of modern image software will read FITS files now (e.g. GIMP, photoshop), but Windows won't natively view it, so do not try viewing it in your web browser. You have to right-click and save the file. A simple google search returns lots of FITS file readers. (We like 'DS9'.) Second thing to note is that these files are the raw, unprocessed data product -- we have not done anything to make them look "pretty". So things like mass ejections and the solar streamers do not show up as well as in the pretty pics. But if someone sees something in a jpg image that they are unsure of, they should always check the original file first.
Going back to the member's "tweaked" image, I should also note the following. That file that he/she 'enhanced' was one of our realtime space weather beacon images -- a very, very highly compressed, low quality image that we send down purely so we can see very large mass ejections. After ~3 days, we get the uncompressed, full version of that image. Folks need to be extra skeptical of anything that looks odd in the space weather images -- the massive amounts of compression do all sorts of strange things.
Best wishes,
~~Karl
PS: Here's a good example of how you can tweak an otherwise innocuous cosmic ray to make it look like something other-worldy! sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov...