Satellite photo

[EddieW]

I got sent this by a friend - I thought I would share it as it is such a stunning photo:

This was taken by the crew on board the Columbia during its last mission.
This photo was taken via satellite, on a cloudless day.
The picture is of Europe and Africa when the sun is setting.
Half of the picture is in night. The bright dots you see are the cities' lights. The top part of Africa is the Sahara Desert.
Note how the lights are already on in Holland, Paris, and Barcelona, and how it's still daylight in London, Lisbon, and Madrid.
The sun is still shining on the Straight of Gibraltar, and the Mediterranean Sea is already in darkness.
In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean you can see the Azores Islands; below them to the right are the Madeira Islands; a bit below are the Canary Islands; and further south, close to the farthest western point of Africa, the Cape Verde Islands.
Note how the Sahara is huge and can be seen clearly both during daytime and nighttime.
To the left, on top, is Greenland, totally frozen.

 

[CFC]

Must be a fake there is no rain clouds over England No seriously that is a cool picture makes the rest of the world look a bit closer.

 

[wetwetwet]

cool pic Eddie B)

its now my desktop

 

[StiX]

Indeed an interesting lil piccy

 

[EddieW]

One of my colleagues at work (who is a bit of a photographer) reckons it was probably not taken using the visible spectrum which would account for the lack of clouds. He thinks it was probably processed afterwards to make the colours look more natural - it's all beyond me......

Eddie

 

[William]

I agree! A really nice pic however they made it!!

 

[Thomas A. Anderson]

heres how:


http/www.snopes.com/photos/sunset.asp

 

[Mollymomma]

Hmm very interesting TAA
it is still a cool pic

 

[Cian McLiam]

Yes, I suspect they used a spectrum 48K, I have one in my wardrobe, its the one with the rubber keys I think...

0nly joking, great pic, good to see my car is still outside the house.


Ken

 

[aberdeen aquarist]

i use this pic as a background on my pc at work
makes it east to look down on my loyal subjects!!!!

 

[Lateral Line]

Yes, it was obviously a fake, but something the exposé site fails to pick up on is the presence on the "photgraph" of the mid atlantic ridge and it's transform faults. There is no visual imaging system that could do that, the depth of water is simply to great. To get that information, an acoustic sonar would have been necessary, and sound waves don't travel through space, therefore it could never have been a shuttle or satellite image.

 

[rsz]

it may be fake, but it's a very good fake