Chinese Moon Photo Not Fake, But Not Pristine

For the last week, rumors have flooded the Net that China's moon photo,posted here and elsewhere, was a fake. Some bloggers and commentators argued that in fact it was a NASA photo, and that the Chinese hadn't produced anything original at all.

The rumors reached such a pitch that Chinese lunar scientist Ouyang Ziyuan felt compelled to refute them on Monday, noting a bit acerbically that the Chinese and American orbiters did, in fact, take pictures of the same spot.

Thankfully, Planetary Society blogger Emily Lakdawalla has done her homework, rather than rely on insinuation and guesswork. She compared old photos of the moon from NASA's Clementine orbiter with the new photo, and found considerable similarities – they were indeed depicting the same location – but enough differences to prove they were separate photos.

Most notably, the light in the Chinese photo was coming from a different direction. Possible to fake, like everything with Photoshop, but pretty unlikely.

Particularly, it turns out, given what else she saw. Ouyang had earlier pointed out an apparently new crater in the Chinese photo, which – when
Lakdawalla looked closely – was fairly obviously the artifact of an improperly joined seam, where different photographic strips had been joined and blended to make a prettier whole.

This kind of photo manipulation is common, although misjoints like this aren't. Many photos seen of space objects are "composite," meaning several different images have been joined, sometimes even from different cameras or telescopes.

Lakdawalla sums up the story well:

So, in a way, the story has come full circle. The Chang'e image isn't a fake as far as I can tell; my personal opinion, based upon the evidence
I was able to dig up, is that the Chinese do have an orbiter at the
Moon, and that it is producing really beautiful images that are a great improvement over Clementine. But the one released image is a processed product, and was altered slightly (the seams were blended away) to make it pretty. This alteration made it difficult for a scientist to realize that what appeared to be a new feature was in fact an artifact.

For a detailed look at the images in question, and how they compare, visit Lakdawalla's post here. I'm not going to post the comparison here, because she deserves full credit.

It's odd that moon images are so often questioned. We can do so many other things that stagger the imagination; why are people reluctant to believe that we can't go to the Moon? I find it also particularly interesting that many people are apparently willing to believe something so improbable (faking a moon mission? That's serious business, way harder than faking a memoir or a resume).

Skepticism is certainly useful, but there's an ugly scent in the air when so much extraordinarily bitter criticism gets leveled at China in particular.

Kudos to Lakdawalla for untangling this rumor.

No, the Chang'e image isn't fake – but there's no new feature in it either [Planetary Society blog]

(Image: Cropped element of lunar photo from Chang'e mission. Credit: China National Space Adminstration)