{"id":36462,"date":"2011-04-01T03:32:34","date_gmt":"2011-04-01T08:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=36462"},"modified":"2011-04-01T08:26:44","modified_gmt":"2011-04-01T13:26:44","slug":"first-photos-of-mercury-in-30-years-taken-with-mercury-retrograde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/first-photos-of-mercury-in-30-years-taken-with-mercury-retrograde\/","title":{"rendered":"First ‘photos of Mercury’ in 30 years taken with Mercury retrograde"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Dubious images are believed by the public to be Mercury. Very little about the picture actually makes sense. Photo: NASA.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36462"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}