Sunday, October 10, 2010

Aliens






ALIEN conspiracy theorists are confident they've caught NASA in the act of covering up the fact we are not alone in the universe.



A video posted on YouTube yesterday showed how an image of Saturn's moons Dione and Titan, taken by NASA's Cassini orbiter, had been Photoshopped before being added to a Picture of the Day website.



In the video, "DominatorPS3" turned up the brightness levels on the photo to show that a "huge" object can be seen behind the smaller moon, Dione.



Clearly visible are brush strokes that show how the rainbow aura of the object has been blacked out.



"More solid proof of NASA/ government coverups," DominatorPS3 said.





Of course, being the internet, it didn't take long for the truth to get out there, so to speak.





The person responsible for the manipulation, Emily Lakdawalla, told a forum of excitable theorists that she made the changes because of the way Cassini takes photos.





"Cassini takes colour pictures by snapping three sequential photos through red, green, and blue filters," she said.



"In the time that separated the three frames, Dione moved, so if I did a simple color composite I would be able to make Titan look right, but not Dione; or Dione look right, but not Titan.



"So I aligned Dione, cut it out, and then aligned Titan, and then had to account for the missing bits of shadow where the bits of Dione had been in two of the three channels."



She explained the process further at Planetary.org but it still wasn't enough for the alien hunters, particularly DominatorPS3.



"Thanks for the feedback and explanation," he said in a comment on the YouTube post.



"However I still remain skeptical because someone still could have ordered her to 'cut it or something out'.

20 comments:

  1. wow what a great post..aliens huh..?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Suspicious in my opinion.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Awesome!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Conspiracies make the world go around! I love reading about them :P

    ReplyDelete
  5. That sir... was shooped

    ReplyDelete
  6. Only because a NASA spokesman says something doesn't mean she is right.

    ReplyDelete
  7. i don't know about most people but i definitely believe in alien life, and would not be surprised if the government did do this to hide things from us

    ReplyDelete
  8. Great read! Looking forward to reading your next post.

    ReplyDelete
  9. NASA would be smart enough to know not to release that.

    ReplyDelete
  10. this is a good follow up post to the previous one

    I have a new post on GTL Everyday too :)

    ReplyDelete
  11. wow. to think that nasa is keeping secrets. what other secrets have they kept?

    ReplyDelete
  12. That's a crazy picture!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Makes sense to me, just seems "alien hunters" will go after anything.

    ReplyDelete
  14. interesting. but i agree with Nie

    ReplyDelete
  15. i love aliens though D:

    ReplyDelete
  16. Maybe the government is the aliens?

    ReplyDelete
  17. I really can't believe in any of it until I see with my own eyes to be honest

    ReplyDelete