Look into Paul on the Plane's Faking Space series - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP6MVv6qg6qSqo6ryVx74gphaf4KudYEl
I just watched the first few videos, and this guy is missing the plot. He is applying forensic analysis (which is indeed a good way to determine whether a photograph has been altered) on photos that make no claim of not-being composited in the first place. The photo he debunks in his first video describes itself as a produced image, combined from a color photo of earth + a black and white photo from the moon. I mean it's right there on the page in his video, if he took 5 seconds to read the page he would know it was a composite before he even analyzed it.
https://i.imgur.com /fLQ2eSQ.png
He does the same thing in the second video. Earth from The Moon is stated to be a mosaic of photos taken by a Narrow Angle Camera, it does not claim to be an un-composited photo of the Earth in the first place. Then he goes on to debunk the photo nobody claimed was an unaltered photograph.
https://i.imgur.com /g7c0PGu.png
What you quoted and highlighted doesn't say 'composite' anywhere. It just says 'special processing' and 'mosaic'. The viewer does not expect a manipulated picture with embellishments that were not actually seen.
Egregious manipulation kind of invalidates this entirely, regardless of whether NASA put a small astrisk with 'special processing' somewhere.
What do you think 'special processing' and 'mosaic' means if not for compositing?
Here is the description of the 'updated' 2002 version of the Blue Marble, which is a composite. The 1972 version (down below) is not, I'll get to that later.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090626055055/http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=2429 (10 year old archive link to prove that this has always been the case.)
This spectacular “blue marble” image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet. These images are freely available to educators, scientists, museums, and the public. This record includes preview images and links to full resolution versions up to 21,600 pixels across.
Much of the information contained in this image came from a single remote-sensing device-NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS. Flying over 700 km above the Earth onboard the Terra satellite, MODIS provides an integrated tool for observing a variety of terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric features of the Earth. The land and coastal ocean portions of these images are based on surface observations collected from June through September 2001 and combined, or composited, every eight days to compensate for clouds that might block the sensor’s view of the surface on any single day. Two different types of ocean data were used in these images: shallow water true color data, and global ocean color (or chlorophyll) data. Topographic shading is based on the GTOPO 30 elevation dataset compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey’s EROS Data Center. MODIS observations of polar sea ice were combined with observations of Antarctica made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s AVHRR sensor—the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer. The cloud image is a composite of two days of imagery collected in visible light wavelengths and a third day of thermal infra-red imagery over the poles. Global city lights, derived from 9 months of observations from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, are superimposed on a darkened land surface map.
This is much more than a small asterisk explaining 'special processing'. They fully disclose all the different ways the image was composited, compiled, mosaic'd, combined, and stitched together, down to the facilities the relevant data was collected from! I don't think it could be more explicit if you tried. If the image was a fraud, and intended to bamboozle a population of idiot sheep, why go to the lengths to describe the way the picture was fabricated? Are they not ruthlessly debunking themselves in this instance?
SURELY you see how ridiculous it is to proclaim that NASA is faking photos when they are giving you explanations like the above. MANY images of space are composites, so what? When your camera can only take 1/50th of the image you want, of course you're going to have to stitch 50 images together to get the final result. That is not dishonesty, that is called producing something presentable and interesting.
This is a photograph, not a composite, image of Earth, taken by the Apollo 17 crew in 1972. It does not claim to be composited, it was shot on a modified Hasselblad 500EL with a Zeiss Planar 80mm f/2.8 lens and a fixed shutter speed of 1/250 sec. and no viewfinder, by Dr. Harrison Schmitt, the Lunar Module Pilot.
In the first video your guy uses Noise Analysis to determine the authenticity of the video. In his own words, clean uninterrupted noise is the mark of an authentic photo.
Here is the same, Noise Analysis being applied to the PHOTOGRAPH of the Earth from 1972.
Based on forensic analysis of this photo,
we can conclude, using Paul on the Plane's method, that Blue Marble 1972 is an
authentic photograph.