This one’s for Adam Curry.

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. “… and this is recent. You can do this yourself!!”
[…]
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.
[…]
She explained the process further at Planetary.org but it still wasn’t enough for the alien hunters, particularly DominatorPS3.

Here’s a new video made this afternoon by DominatorPS3 about the controversy. BTW, the original video that started this is no longer available because, he claims, he was forced to take it down, or something.




  1. Derek says:

    Lighting it up myself, it just looks like when software cannot make out the data and just enters it in as a splotch. It’s pretty cool looking, but it’s about as conclusive as any other UFO picture I’ve ever seen.

  2. dg says:

    Stupidity meets bullshit.

  3. Cursor_ says:

    Extraterrestrial visitors are the modern version of guardian angels, the sidhe and fairies.

    All of it stemming from the vast ego of humanity that somehow humans are SO fascinating and SO important that some highly evolved or mystical beings would even take a remote interest of a bunch of sycophantic, alcohol swilling, homicidal, filthy monkeys.

    Face it, even IF this third rate mud ball floating around a second rate single star system out in the fringes of a plain, common spiral galaxy would have such visitors; they would tap into our satellites and glean everything they would need to know to run screaming from it.

    But guess what folks. They don’t even know we are here. So get over yourselves!

    Cursor_

  4. Animby says:

    Nothing like cooperative aliens. They travel thousands of light years, meet with our government and agree to hide out in the moons of Saturn for a few decades. Poop. Why would we spend billions of dollars sending Cassini to Saturn if we could have just asked our friendly reptilians to email us some close-ups?

    Here’s a conspiracy theory for you. No link ’cause I just made it up: There is no Cassini spacecraft. Our alien overlords ARE sending us the images. The billions we claim to have spent on Cassini went straight to the Illuminati…

  5. Dan Barker says:

    Well… it must be true after all. After all it must be an alien and not errors within the picture (which is why they apply photoshopping and false colouring).
    Aliens will be here on the 13th of October, they are coming!

  6. Johnny Jr. says:

    Oh brother !

  7. Somebody_Else says:

    Why is this crap even on the blog?

  8. Dallas says:

    I’m more concerned that Christine Odonnel was elected to be amonsgt those top leaders in US government. If she in on the alien reception team we are going to be eaten for certain.

  9. nilum says:

    “Cassini takes colour pictures by snapping three sequential photos through red, green, and blue filters.”
    “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.”

    It’s very obvious to me that this is the case because of the obvious green and red auras visible at the edges. The only thing Ms. Lakdawalla is guilty of is sucking at Photoshop.

  10. soundwash says:

    this is nothing…if you want to see blatant photo-shopping by nasa, you need only browse thru the multitude of mars images on the jpl server. they’ve gone gone smudge happy with the smudge tool over there. esp in images from 2002-2006 time span

    and adjust colour images to 50% blue, 25% green to correct for the original “calibration errors”

    you can also find many images from the rovers that look like it just rained. many ground images of what looks like sand or dirt that just had water / liquid track through it.

    also helps to invert images that have any semblance of geometry in the landscapes. an old nasa favorite.

    some fun coherant portal looking stuff going on with the suns magnetic field too. (start with the day the norway spiral appeared for clues)

    like everything else, its all hidden in plain sight, -you need only “look”

    you will grow old and see nothing of value if you rely on the msm for data, however.

    this image above though.. is nothing in comparison.

    happy searching!

    -s

  11. faxon says:

    Yes. The government is covering up the existence of alien life and the fact that Algor was responsible for the Asian Tsunami a few years ago.

    Also, the funny stuff that is put into Popeye’s chicken to make black people sterile, and the racist symbols on Proctor and Gamble’s logo.

    For starters.

  12. ZZman says:

    Over 50 million people have seen UFO’s including presidents, scientists, astronauts, large groups of people etc. I worry more about the people that believe the conspiracy that those are weather balloons, swamp gas, darkroom effects, photoshop or just something that was painstakingly chiseled in stone for fun.

    Will the same thing happen to them as did for the believers of flat earth, thunder and lightning, we can’t fly (to the moon), etc.

  13. Ben-in-the-woods says:

    Why would a government hide the existence of aliens? On films they always because it’d cause ‘wide spread panic’ but really …. aliens are going to cause everyone to panic when the existence nuclear weapons on the hands of countries like China, Isreal and Pakistan doesn’t?

  14. Bytowner says:

    Oh sure, NASA finds evidence of a massive object hiding behind the moon, clear evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence, gets a staffer to Photoshop the evidence out, and then they put it up as the Picture of the Day.

    Really? Really?

    LOL

  15. Tippis says:

    Why is it that conspiracy theorists are inherently ignorant about photography? Is it some kind of requirement to join?

    “How does the image get onto the paper?”
    “Magic!!”
    “You’re in!”

  16. clancys_daddy says:

    #3 You mean we’re not?

    #14 I can agree the thousands of people have seen UFO’s. Your equating a UFO with an alien space craft. Not the same thing. If it were an alien craft than it wouldn’t be a UFO. In reference to your second statement the answer would be NO.

  17. RTaylor says:

    Ignoring this bullshit, I have always wondered how the world governments would handle undisputed proof of extraterrestrial presents. I would assume it would turn the population nuts, no I mean really nuts. I do believe they would censor any data if it was possible. If a several kilometer long ship did a close flyby then it’s out, but what about more subtle albeit real proof.

  18. clancys_daddy says:

    #19, Panic.

  19. Mr Fog says:

    All will be revealed on October 13th. Or October 14th if you live in Alabama.

    Three more days. Four in Mobile.

    Google: aliens october for numerous links.

  20. Ben-in-the-woods says:

    #19

    The amount of potential threats that we do know about is extensive: asteroids hitting us, large volcanoes erupting, nuclear meltdown, getting hit by a car, global epidemics of aids, swine flu, bird flu, drug resistant TB, MSRA not to mention all the possible harm that can be caused by the religious, the non-religious, liberals, conservatives, libertarians and people who like tea. We all manage to go about our daily lives with this threat. What is one more?

    If a giant space ship flew over the planet at best the UN would pass some sort of non-binding agreement that in the event of a extra-terrestrial member nations may share intelligence.

  21. chuck says:

    Too much lens flare?
    NASA regrets hiring J.J. Abrams to direct all its space-probe videos.

  22. Paul says:

    I don’t think NASA is trying to hide anything with this. To me, it looked like a really bad image correction done in Photoshop. Terrible, even, in the professional work force. I took a look at the three images put together to make the final picture, and I believe the image processor’s testimony. At the most, the person responsible for the image should be criticized and reprimanded badly. It’s incredible shitty work, especially with the artifacting.

  23. Alki Area says:

    Bigfoot kidnapped by baby and the aliens anal probed me while I was drunk…what a bunch of idiots! NASA can’t “hide” aliens you morons. They’re just a small government agency. If aliens exist they can just come down and land in Vancouver Canada, Paris France, Brazil, Italy, Norway, Chad, India, etc. We, and especially NASA can’t stop them. They don’t land and say “howdy” because they don’t exist. Life on other planets? Sure. Intelligent? Likely. Here in space ships? Nearly infinitely improbable. The odds of 2 intelligent lifeforms within a few thousands years of technology (ie. “space ships”) passing each other is silly. They’d likely be hundreds of millions or a billion years or so in front or behind us.

  24. sulfuric ass says:

    #3 Who you callin’ filthy? I bathed last week!

  25. Gary, the dangerous infidel says:

    Exactly once for every revolution of the earth around the sun, an alien craft seems to come out of nowhere and streaks through the night sky at incredible speed, darting from house to house, evading all cameras that might record the photographic evidence that an alien being does exist. This life form is quite recognizable for its little round belly that shakes like a bowl full of jelly, plus it seems to always be clad in a red suit.

    I believe!

  26. deowll says:

    When ET shows up and kicks the bob tailed moneys out of what is about to become ETs banana patch I think the bob tailed monkeys will notice the fact.

  27. dannythedog says:

    So, based upon the rub out, the UFO would be say, between 1000-5000 miles long, given that they rubbed out the size of a moon. Humm, could be…


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