Recently, the Chinese government has had to defend its moon photographs against allegations that the pictures were plagiarized. Sleuthing on the part of blogger Emily Lakdawalla might put these doubts to rest.
From MSNBC’s Cosmic Log:
In the week since the picture was released amid much fanfare in Beijing, there have been widespread rumors that the photo was a fake, copied from an old picture collected by a U.S. space probe.
The good news for the Chinese is that Planetary Society blogger Emily Lakdawalla’s clears them of outright fakery. The bad news is, she found evidence that the photo was badly retouched for public release. [Full text]
The link to the original blog post is here. See also an interview with a Chinese Academy of Sciences expert about the photo from Southern Metropolis Daily, translated by Danwei. Also, refer back to this link for more on the background of this story.
