The first photos of Mercury distributed widely on the Internet were taken with Mercury retrograde, giving rise to speculation that they are really photos of somewhere else.
“They look like just about anyplace,” said astronomer Mike Brown of Caltech, who discovered Mercury. “You cannot conclusively say that’s Mercury. It’s the probable surface of something, a planet, an asteroid, maybe even Arizona. But to say it’s Mercury is speculative.”
Neil Armstrong was emailed the image Thursday. “This looks extremely familiar,” he said from his home in California. “I could swear I’ve seen this somewhere before.”
By Thursday night, speculation that the Mercury photos were a hoax was running wild on the Internet. “Look closely and you’ll see the shadows go in all directions,” said Sophia Coppola, reached at home in Palermo. “This is worse than the crap Kubrick did for Nixon with the Moon landing thing. I can’t believe anyone is falling for this. Look, there’s a Snicker’s wrapper on the lower left.”
But NASA officials were adamant that the photo originated with the $56 billion MESSENGER program they say arrived at Mercury this week, the first spacecraft to reach the innermost planet since Mariner 10 in the mid-1970s.
“That would be nice, but the whole thing was fried by solar flares,” said Martha Alexandra, a secretary at the space agency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “I mean, toasted. The decals on the outside of the ship are actually scorched. You can’t tell if it’s USA or USSR.”
“The Moon was in Pisces when the photos of Mercury appeared,” said Rob Hand, who was leading a tour of the Nile Valley with his cousin Barbara Hand Clow. “Clearly, this is a work of cinema.”
I dunno, KBO’s are difficult to detect…and once identified it is v. difficult to determine anything about them… kind of like at the moment of observance, they change!
sneaky that 1992 QB1..!
“He seems to be on a roll today…”…fer sure! Mr. Frawncis is not in retrograde motion! 🙂
Serendip – I’m sure that’s what our dear leader intended. 😉
He seems to be on a roll today…
Happy April Fools?
Nah. That’s the bottom of Meteor Crater, east of Flagstaff. NASA did a lot of “filming” there in the late 60’s and early 70’s.
C’mon man, give NASA some credit here! My grandpa used to say you can fly as high as your dreams.
I guess that’s why he fell asleep in his hang glider.
Wow, Paul, believe it or not, when I saw the photo of what is supposedly Mercury, I immediatley thought of QB1, too! Something fishy IS going on here…
Looks like QB1 from Kippers belt, the not so smiley Cod creation fishy thingy-ma-jig. Ya gotta be unconscious to see it!! Or conscious of the unconscious, either way your need just the right fragmentation.