11 ms·

Scientific Errors in Nat Geo Milky Way Photos

153 points by spzx 7y ago

leereeves 7y ago
> For starters, in real life, there is visible light pollution in several directions around the forest and none of this is visible here on the horizon. It seems like in many of the pictures, including the one above this quote, the horizon is much lighter than the sky above. Isn't that light pollution? > You can perhaps recognize...the bright star Vega and Polaris, which would be located above the frame. How do we recognize those? The arrow to "Polaris" is pointing out of the picture. And how was the bright dot in the picture identified as "Vega"?
- GraemeL 7y ago
  Vega is pointed out because in relation to the galaxy in the picture it allows the author to locate where Polaris should be (above the frame). Polaris being above the frame is a problem because it is never above the horizon where the photograph is supposed to have been taken.
  - leereeves 7y ago
    I get that, but if that bright dot isn't Vega, then the argument falls apart. How do we know it's Vega?
    - michelpp 7y ago
      From the article "The night sky offers an unlimited source of markers (e.g. stars, constellations, Milky Way, etc.) that never lie about the time of year and location in the world you shot a night sky picture from." The key word is unlimited. Vega is correctly identified by the many stars around it that are in turn correctly identified by the many professional astronomers and astro-photographers discussing these very pictures. The photo mentions polaris to point out the absurdity of the north star being in the sky of a picture taken in the southern hemisphere.
      - leereeves 7y ago
        That's an argument from authority without even establishing the authority in question. Evidence, please. Edit: Well, that's a lot of downvotes. So you all see the pattern? Why not point it out? Or are you merely accepting this blog post without question?
        FPGAhacker 7y ago
        So you don't believe Vega can be identified by the pattern of star visible around it?
        leereeves 7y ago
        I believe that if it's correct, the pattern can easily be pointed out and verified. But a mere claim without evidence, I question.
        metaphor 7y ago
        The pattern was clearly pointed out in the article: > You can perhaps recognize NGC 7000 (North American, Pelican nebulae, Sadr region)... Keyword: perhaps...everything else was redundant prose.
        Thorrez 7y ago
        From the article: >About the author: Adrien Mauduit is a professional astrophotographer and cinematographer and the CEO and owner of Night Lights Films. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. Mauduit also does science education, communication, and public outreach for Project PoSSUM. You can find more of Mauduit’s work Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
        leereeves 7y ago
        From the comment I replied to: > the many professional astronomers and astro-photographers discussing these very pictures That's what I was talking about. Even if we're just talking about the author, and you accept those qualifications, it's still an argument from authority without evidence.
    - empath75 7y ago
      Well you can look at the picture and look at any star chart and compare them. It doesn’t take specialized knowledge to do this.
      - leereeves 7y ago
        I did. I found Vega in Stellarium. I see Polaris, the Milky Way, and the dippers in Stellarium. I don't see any pattern that matches the claim made by this blog post. But I'm no expert, so I'm asking for a clear demonstration of the evidence the author sees.
    - nsilvestri 7y ago
      Services like http://nova.astrometry.net/ http://nova.astrometry.net/ provide celestial location data of any image of the night sky. Plug the image into it and check that it is indeed Vega.
aaron695 7y ago
At a different level it's funny all pics in Nat Geo are fake. Everywhere in world I've been I've seen rubbish. Can't say I've ever seen it in Nat Geo. But it's an integral part of nature. Along with at times hundreds of people, also missing in a lot of Nat Geo. And star pics are always fake. 10 or a 100 times more than the human eye can see. Unless it's a star map it's fake. It's a fine line I guess. I are entertained by the magazine. And it inspires to what perhaps we can be in a fantasy future even if it's not actually possible. https://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2019/05/national-geographic-falls-for-fake-milky-way-photo/ https://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2019/05/national-geographi...
todd8 7y ago
Reminds me a bit of the photo manipulation on Nat Geo cover photo of Egyptian pyramids.[1] [1] https://medium.com/engl462/visual-deceptions-national-geographic-and-the-pyramids-of-giza-3fee6d448d0d https://medium.com/engl462/visual-deceptions-national-geogra...
- PorterDuff 7y ago
  lol. You beat me to it, although I was going to be snarkier. The funny thing is that even cropping can be an editorial decision. All media lies to a certain extent.
  - EForEndeavour 7y ago
    > The funny thing is that even cropping can be an editorial decision. All media lies to a certain extent. Don't let "perfect" be the enemy of "good." It's technically true that all media lies to a certain extent, but painstakingly modifying the actual content of a photograph such that no physical device could ever capture the result is obviously way worse than just cropping the image.
- aw3c2 7y ago
  Direct link to actual source of Medium "regurgitation": http://www.alteredimagesbdc.org/national-geographic/ http://www.alteredimagesbdc.org/national-geographic/
RyanAF7 7y ago
Haha, I love all the comments for this article. These idiots probably think NASA has been telling them the truth, too. Man will always lie to you. Plain and simple.
IAmGraydon 7y ago
The way she mentions her father's death and then goes on to blatantly blame the image on a nameless intern while claiming she's not blaming it on her is just cringe inducing. This is a grown adult making childish moves. When you screw up, you stop digging, come clean and deal with it.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > When you screw up, you stop digging, come clean and deal with it. This doesn't seem to be true. Are you saying this always produces the best outcomes, or that you wish more people would hurt themselves for your benefit?
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    Is often true. Also 'you wish more people would hurt themselves for your benefit?' is a rather unusual and somewhat fanatically zero sum way to describe someone's advice not to double down on a lie when caught out by competent experts.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      > a rather unusual and somewhat fanatically zero sum way to describe I'm not seeing where "zero-sum" applies. Zero-sum, intuitively enough, describes a system in which gains and losses sum to zero. That is almost certainly not the case here. But it's still true that what you're hoping for is a gain to you and a loss to the fraudster. Somebody losing doesn't mean they lost an amount equal to some other party's gain.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    For many people, it's easier to recover respect for someone after a proper admission of error. It can even enhance respect overall.
swixmix 7y ago
I've taken 30 second exposures of stars at night but they were too blurry for my liking. The earth never stopped rotating and I didn't have the gear to correct for the rotation. There's no way to get an accurate panorama on a moving subject unless all exposures are at the same time. (Fifteen second exposures worked best for me.)
- mchristen 7y ago
  A good rule of thumb is (focal length / 500) to figure out your maximum exposure time before having blurry stars. To get around a 20-30s exposure you're looking at somewhere between 14-24mm focal length, ideally with the largest aperture you can afford.
holografix 7y ago
“I’m not blaming the intern but it’s completely their fault”. Is her basic response, pretty shocking behaviour for a professional. Also, would t NatGeo demand the RAW files for any photo submitted? Or did they conveniently trust the photographers completely?
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  It's not a great one, but I think I can understand her response... I feel like she's between a rock and a hard place here. If you're accused of blatant dishonesty for someone else's work and demanded an explanation... would you make it appear as if you yourself were dishonest when you weren't, without mentioning someone else was involved? Wouldn't that itself be dishonest (and I'd argue unfair)? It's much easier when the company is the target, when you can just blame it on an error and move on, but I can't think of a much better response honestly when your name is the one personally on the hook, which it appears to have been here. What would you say instead?
  - CriticalCathed 7y ago
    I would apologize for putting my name on the work of an intern. Either they're lying and they were fully aware of the work being fabricated, or they were so uninvolved with the processing of the photographs that they had no idea they were faked.
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      > I would apologize for putting my name on the work of an intern. How is that any better than what she already wrote? Or in fact how is that even an apology? It seems way worse and far more willing to blame the intern than what she has right now.
wayanon 7y ago
Would be a cool site or app if you could upload star images and it would give you locations/dates when that view was possible - or if the image was completely bogus.

153 points by spzx 7y ago

> For starters, in real life, there is visible light pollution in several directions around the forest and none of this is visible here on the horizon. It seems like in many of the pictures, including the one above this quote, the horizon is much lighter than the sky above. Isn't that light pollution? > You can perhaps recognize...the bright star Vega and Polaris, which would be located above the frame. How do we recognize those? The arrow to "Polaris" is pointing out of the picture. And how was the bright dot in the picture identified as "Vega"?

GraemeL 7y ago
Vega is pointed out because in relation to the galaxy in the picture it allows the author to locate where Polaris should be (above the frame). Polaris being above the frame is a problem because it is never above the horizon where the photograph is supposed to have been taken.
- leereeves 7y ago
  I get that, but if that bright dot isn't Vega, then the argument falls apart. How do we know it's Vega?
  - michelpp 7y ago
    From the article "The night sky offers an unlimited source of markers (e.g. stars, constellations, Milky Way, etc.) that never lie about the time of year and location in the world you shot a night sky picture from." The key word is unlimited. Vega is correctly identified by the many stars around it that are in turn correctly identified by the many professional astronomers and astro-photographers discussing these very pictures. The photo mentions polaris to point out the absurdity of the north star being in the sky of a picture taken in the southern hemisphere.
    - leereeves 7y ago
      That's an argument from authority without even establishing the authority in question. Evidence, please. Edit: Well, that's a lot of downvotes. So you all see the pattern? Why not point it out? Or are you merely accepting this blog post without question?
      - FPGAhacker 7y ago
        So you don't believe Vega can be identified by the pattern of star visible around it?
        leereeves 7y ago
        I believe that if it's correct, the pattern can easily be pointed out and verified. But a mere claim without evidence, I question.
        metaphor 7y ago
        The pattern was clearly pointed out in the article: > You can perhaps recognize NGC 7000 (North American, Pelican nebulae, Sadr region)... Keyword: perhaps...everything else was redundant prose.
      - Thorrez 7y ago
        From the article: >About the author: Adrien Mauduit is a professional astrophotographer and cinematographer and the CEO and owner of Night Lights Films. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. Mauduit also does science education, communication, and public outreach for Project PoSSUM. You can find more of Mauduit’s work Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
        leereeves 7y ago
        From the comment I replied to: > the many professional astronomers and astro-photographers discussing these very pictures That's what I was talking about. Even if we're just talking about the author, and you accept those qualifications, it's still an argument from authority without evidence.
  - empath75 7y ago
    Well you can look at the picture and look at any star chart and compare them. It doesn’t take specialized knowledge to do this.
    - leereeves 7y ago
      I did. I found Vega in Stellarium. I see Polaris, the Milky Way, and the dippers in Stellarium. I don't see any pattern that matches the claim made by this blog post. But I'm no expert, so I'm asking for a clear demonstration of the evidence the author sees.
  - nsilvestri 7y ago
    Services like http://nova.astrometry.net/ http://nova.astrometry.net/ provide celestial location data of any image of the night sky. Plug the image into it and check that it is indeed Vega.

aaron695 7y ago

At a different level it's funny all pics in Nat Geo are fake. Everywhere in world I've been I've seen rubbish. Can't say I've ever seen it in Nat Geo. But it's an integral part of nature. Along with at times hundreds of people, also missing in a lot of Nat Geo. And star pics are always fake. 10 or a 100 times more than the human eye can see. Unless it's a star map it's fake. It's a fine line I guess. I are entertained by the magazine. And it inspires to what perhaps we can be in a fantasy future even if it's not actually possible. https://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2019/05/national-geographic-falls-for-fake-milky-way-photo/ https://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2019/05/national-geographi...

todd8 7y ago

Reminds me a bit of the photo manipulation on Nat Geo cover photo of Egyptian pyramids.[1] [1] https://medium.com/engl462/visual-deceptions-national-geographic-and-the-pyramids-of-giza-3fee6d448d0d https://medium.com/engl462/visual-deceptions-national-geogra...

PorterDuff 7y ago
lol. You beat me to it, although I was going to be snarkier. The funny thing is that even cropping can be an editorial decision. All media lies to a certain extent.
- EForEndeavour 7y ago
  > The funny thing is that even cropping can be an editorial decision. All media lies to a certain extent. Don't let "perfect" be the enemy of "good." It's technically true that all media lies to a certain extent, but painstakingly modifying the actual content of a photograph such that no physical device could ever capture the result is obviously way worse than just cropping the image.
aw3c2 7y ago
Direct link to actual source of Medium "regurgitation": http://www.alteredimagesbdc.org/national-geographic/ http://www.alteredimagesbdc.org/national-geographic/

RyanAF7 7y ago

Haha, I love all the comments for this article. These idiots probably think NASA has been telling them the truth, too. Man will always lie to you. Plain and simple.

IAmGraydon 7y ago

The way she mentions her father's death and then goes on to blatantly blame the image on a nameless intern while claiming she's not blaming it on her is just cringe inducing. This is a grown adult making childish moves. When you screw up, you stop digging, come clean and deal with it.

thaumasiotes 7y ago
> When you screw up, you stop digging, come clean and deal with it. This doesn't seem to be true. Are you saying this always produces the best outcomes, or that you wish more people would hurt themselves for your benefit?
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  Is often true. Also 'you wish more people would hurt themselves for your benefit?' is a rather unusual and somewhat fanatically zero sum way to describe someone's advice not to double down on a lie when caught out by competent experts.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    > a rather unusual and somewhat fanatically zero sum way to describe I'm not seeing where "zero-sum" applies. Zero-sum, intuitively enough, describes a system in which gains and losses sum to zero. That is almost certainly not the case here. But it's still true that what you're hoping for is a gain to you and a loss to the fraudster. Somebody losing doesn't mean they lost an amount equal to some other party's gain.
- pjc50 7y ago
  For many people, it's easier to recover respect for someone after a proper admission of error. It can even enhance respect overall.

swixmix 7y ago

I've taken 30 second exposures of stars at night but they were too blurry for my liking. The earth never stopped rotating and I didn't have the gear to correct for the rotation. There's no way to get an accurate panorama on a moving subject unless all exposures are at the same time. (Fifteen second exposures worked best for me.)

mchristen 7y ago
A good rule of thumb is (focal length / 500) to figure out your maximum exposure time before having blurry stars. To get around a 20-30s exposure you're looking at somewhere between 14-24mm focal length, ideally with the largest aperture you can afford.

holografix 7y ago

“I’m not blaming the intern but it’s completely their fault”. Is her basic response, pretty shocking behaviour for a professional. Also, would t NatGeo demand the RAW files for any photo submitted? Or did they conveniently trust the photographers completely?

mehrdadn 7y ago
It's not a great one, but I think I can understand her response... I feel like she's between a rock and a hard place here. If you're accused of blatant dishonesty for someone else's work and demanded an explanation... would you make it appear as if you yourself were dishonest when you weren't, without mentioning someone else was involved? Wouldn't that itself be dishonest (and I'd argue unfair)? It's much easier when the company is the target, when you can just blame it on an error and move on, but I can't think of a much better response honestly when your name is the one personally on the hook, which it appears to have been here. What would you say instead?
- CriticalCathed 7y ago
  I would apologize for putting my name on the work of an intern. Either they're lying and they were fully aware of the work being fabricated, or they were so uninvolved with the processing of the photographs that they had no idea they were faked.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    > I would apologize for putting my name on the work of an intern. How is that any better than what she already wrote? Or in fact how is that even an apology? It seems way worse and far more willing to blame the intern than what she has right now.

wayanon 7y ago

Would be a cool site or app if you could upload star images and it would give you locations/dates when that view was possible - or if the image was completely bogus.