APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22) Retracted

Comments and questions about the APOD on the main view screen.
Tom Harradine

Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Tom Harradine » Mon Jan 25, 2016 1:18 pm

Thierry Legault wrote:
Tom Harradine wrote: BTW here is my video of the HST in front of Jupiter https://www.flickr.com/photos/vontom/6095801209
nice catch Tom! :)

Being not native English, I checked my dictionary and here is the definition of "mistake": an ​action or ​decision that is ​wrong or ​produces a ​result that is not ​correct or not ​intended. It can be for example someone who recorded a bird passing in front of the Moon or the Sun and thinking it's a satellite (quite common situation). In our case aren't we more in the definition of "fake": an ​object that is made to ​look ​real or ​valuable in ​order to ​deceive ​people ?
Anyway, I agree that it's probably not necessary to blame him further, we can hope that he (and others who could be tempted to copy) has understood the seriousness of his actions.

:ssmile:
Hi Thierry! I am in awe of your work - it inspired me to give this kind of imaging a go with my dob and DSLR so thankyou for all you have done :)
I meant not so much "mistake" to mean the image was somehow inadvertent (it was calculated and on purpose), but "mistake" in the choice that was made to create it and submit it - I mean like a life mistake: allowing temptation and hubris to override honesty and scientific fidelity.
I do hope he comes out with a definitive statement soon about it all

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Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by owlice » Mon Jan 25, 2016 1:47 pm

Dan Llewellyn wrote:Excuse me! Sorry I show up as a guest, my name is Dan Llewellyn and Stephen Ramsden and I were the ones that originally spotted the fake Saturn...I assumed this forum would show my name via Facebook , but I guess not.
Others had also questioned the image; to say you "originally spotted the fake Saturn" is not accurate. You did do a nice bit of detective work, however.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.

KevinS

Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by KevinS » Mon Jan 25, 2016 2:40 pm

Unfortunately, I believe that his Jupiter transit is faked as well. Look at the video frame by frame. You can set YouTube speed to .25 then step frame by frame using the space bar. Notice how the spacing and speed of ISS changes abruptly near and over Jupiter. Then there are 3 frames containing ISS elements on the planet's disc. It appears to me to be a bad simulation of what an ISS capture over Jupiter would look like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBIDyDVyuQI

Guest

Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Guest » Mon Jan 25, 2016 3:41 pm

Ian Ridpath wrote:
Did everyone miss David Arditti's posting further up the page about JW's image of of the recent Venus–Saturn conjunction? David concludes: "It's another cut-and-paste job". Two "mistakes" by the same imager are indeed unfortunate.
I did. To me, it's not clear whether the hard lines were caused by some attempt to remove background noise and make it flat black or if it is indeed another paste job. It wouldn't be the first time I've seen hard lines hiding in the darks. Lots of people make that mistake. Good practice to brighten the image up at the end and check. I've got a brighter monitor than most people so I see a lot of stuff others miss.
Since this does seem to have gone unnoticed, I'll have to go into more detail. Julian's 'mage' of the Saturn-Venus conjunction is an absolutely clear fake, on many lines of evidence.

1. He posted it on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/BATrBDDvRF_/ and Twitter https://twitter.com/jwastronomy/status/ ... 5842657280 on the evening of January 8. This was about 10 hours before the closest conjunction that was visible from Europe, that I imaged, here, on the morning of the 9th: http://staglaneobservatory.co.uk/conjun ... anuary-09/

2. If you compare my image with his, you will see he has the distance from Saturn to Venus wrong and the angle between the ansae of Saturn's rings and the Venus-Saturn line wrong. His image could geometrically be a true representation of an earlier moment of the conjunction, as Venus was travelling away form Saturn, moving to the left (east) when I took my shot. But that moment would not have been visible from Europe, and there's no evidence that he went out of Europe to take his 'image'.

3. My image was taken in a very narrow, critical time-period of less than half an hour when the pair were high enough above the horizon to get any sort of recognisable image of Saturn, but the sky had not brightened enough to make Saturn disappear. The sky is very bright in my image (in fact I darkened it compared to the raw shot). The sky in Julian's 'image' is dead black, as illustrated by the extreme stretching I did on his JPEG in Photoshop http://staglaneobservatory.co.uk/wessel-venus-saturn/

4. There is absolutely no way that the faint moons of Saturn were imageable in the bright sky in which the conjunction was visible, but there they are in Julian's 'image'.

5. The stretched JW image makes it look likely that all the elements of his 'image', Saturn, the moons, Venus and the star above Saturn, have been pasted onto a canvas separately.

CONCLUSIONS

Julian's 'image' does not geometrically represent a view he could have observed, but his Tweet and Instagram post says:
"Right now! Venus is only 5.1 Arch minutes seperated from Saturn. Nice to See how fast the movement between These two planets is."
This implies he was watching the event, but the Tweet was posted at 9:57PM, when the planets were below the horizon from Europe!

It looks to me like he got the orientation of the scene at the moment of closest conjunction (visible somewhere in the world) from a planetarium program and made a composition around that. The image of Venus he used looks like he might have taken it around that date, but the image of Saturn and its moons is totally impossible to have been taken this year from Europe (like his Saturn image with the ISS transit) as Saturn is currently too low in the twilight. It looks like he pasted in a Saturn image he took last year, or got from somewhere else, and rearranged the moons to fit this date.

It looks like we are dealing with someone who habitually notes when close approaches of objects occur in the sky, then cooks up synthesised images of those events from available information and bits of his own imaging, and places them around the web with minimal information (such as date, time, location etc) that would allow them to be verified or disproved, and with vague captions that imply he has witnessed and successfully imaged the event, but don't (as in his Twitter and Instagram postings I have referenced) explicitly say he has imaged it, and don't explain what methods he used.

I call this fraud. I expect his Jupiter-ISS image is entirely fake as well.

David Arditti

Daniel Llewellyn

Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Daniel Llewellyn » Mon Jan 25, 2016 3:56 pm

owlice wrote:
Dan Llewellyn wrote:Excuse me! Sorry I show up as a guest, my name is Dan Llewellyn and Stephen Ramsden and I were the ones that originally spotted the fake Saturn...I assumed this forum would show my name via Facebook , but I guess not.
Others had also questioned the image; to say you "originally spotted the fake Saturn" is not accurate. You did do a nice bit of detective work, however.
I sent an email to Richard Jakiel on Jan 01/18/16 1:29 AM (I cam show the email if you like), indicating I thought this was a fraudulent video. We had some discussion on it, and low and behold, on the 22nd it gets an APOD. Richard quickly put up the objection on his Facebook page, where Stephen Ramsden picked it up. On that Friday at 12:27pm I emailed the APOD guys noting my objections to the APOD.

So I am not trying to be a glory hunter or bask in the limelight of uncovering a fraud, just trying to set the record straight that I was on it on the 18th.

Daniel Llewellyn

Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Daniel Llewellyn » Mon Jan 25, 2016 4:07 pm

It looks like we are dealing with someone who habitually notes when close approaches of objects occur in the sky, then cooks up synthesised images of those events from available information and bits of his own imaging, and places them around the web with minimal information (such as date, time, location etc) that would allow them to be verified or disproved, and with vague captions that imply he has witnessed and successfully imaged the event, but don't (as in his Twitter and Instagram postings I have referenced) explicitly say he has imaged it, and don't explain what methods he used.

I call this fraud. I expect his Jupiter-ISS image is entirely fake as well.

David Arditti


ABSOLUTELY CORRECT! People, stop giving this guy a pass with sympathy! I will NEVER understand the compulsion to defend this guy.....he has brought a stain onto the astronomy world for all to see, especially non astronomers....and given more ammo to the anti-science crowd.....Folks there is damage that has been done to us, do not be swayed by misguided attempts to blow it off with excuse making....

Tjswift

Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Tjswift » Mon Jan 25, 2016 6:23 pm

The APOD editorial staff need to revise the caption for the 22 January picture of the day to make it abundantly clear that this is a composite. Their scientific/journalistic reputation is in danger of lasting damage unless they act.

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Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Thierry Legault » Mon Jan 25, 2016 6:25 pm

Daniel Llewellyn wrote: ABSOLUTELY CORRECT! People, stop giving this guy a pass with sympathy! I will NEVER understand the compulsion to defend this guy.....he has brought a stain onto the astronomy world for all to see, especially non astronomers....and given more ammo to the anti-science crowd.....Folks there is damage that has been done to us, do not be swayed by misguided attempts to blow it off with excuse making....
...all the more that he perhaps works for Volkswagen, who knows...oops, it was just to lighten the atmosphere, but I'm as angry as you are for the damage done to our activity! I suspect that in some domains a "sorry" may not be considered as sufficient and that this could even lead to legal action against him for deception.

Megan Watzke

Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Megan Watzke » Mon Jan 25, 2016 7:07 pm

This is a rather shameless plug, but I'm the co-author of a book that was published a couple of months ago that deals quite a bit with the veracity of astronomical images, especially ones done by professionals. We don't have a ton of planetary or ISS imaging discussion, but I thought readers of this thread might find this book of interest: http://www.coloringtheuniverse.com/

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Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by RJN » Mon Jan 25, 2016 7:36 pm

Due to the accuracy of the criticisms, this APOD has now been completely changed -- picture and all. We thank our careful and well-informed audience for pointing out the problem(s) and apologize for the oversight and for the delay. - RJN

stephenramsden

Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by stephenramsden » Mon Jan 25, 2016 7:57 pm

RJN wrote:Due to the accuracy of the criticisms, this APOD has now been completely changed -- picture and all. We thank our careful and well-informed audience for pointing out the problem(s) and apologize for the oversight and for the delay. - RJN
What? Are you kidding? So you would have left it up if there had been no criticisms?

With all due respect Dr. Nemiroff the image was removed because it is a complete and utter fraud, intentionally meant to deceive the public.

Thank you for taking it down at least and I hope you guys are making it through the snowstorm okay.


mod edit: See Stephen's followup post. http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?p=253399#p253399

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Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Chris Peterson » Mon Jan 25, 2016 8:06 pm

stephenramsden wrote:
RJN wrote:]Due to the accuracy of the criticisms, this APOD has now been completely changed -- picture and all. We thank our careful and well-informed audience for pointing out the problem(s) and apologize for the oversight and for the delay. - RJN
What? Are you kidding? So you would have left it up if there had been no criticisms?
Do to the accuracy of the criticisms. Without accurate criticism, the problem would never have been identified, so the APOD would quite reasonably have remained.
Chris

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Ian Ridpath

Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Ian Ridpath » Mon Jan 25, 2016 8:36 pm

C'mon, chaps, stop tilting at APoD. They accepted the picture in good faith (and why not). Over the weekend, the imaging experts on here explained in detail what was wrong with it and why. APoD took it down on the Monday. It was up for only three days. I see no cause for criticism.

Daniel Llewellyn

Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Daniel Llewellyn » Mon Jan 25, 2016 9:00 pm

RJN wrote:Due to the accuracy of the criticisms, this APOD has now been completely changed -- picture and all. We thank our careful and well-informed audience for pointing out the problem(s) and apologize for the oversight and for the delay. - RJN
Robert, great news, thank you.

Daniel Llewellyn

Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Daniel Llewellyn » Mon Jan 25, 2016 9:09 pm

Thierry Legault wrote:
Daniel Llewellyn wrote: ABSOLUTELY CORRECT! People, stop giving this guy a pass with sympathy! I will NEVER understand the compulsion to defend this guy.....he has brought a stain onto the astronomy world for all to see, especially non astronomers....and given more ammo to the anti-science crowd.....Folks there is damage that has been done to us, do not be swayed by misguided attempts to blow it off with excuse making....
...all the more that he perhaps works for Volkswagen, who knows...oops, it was just to lighten the atmosphere, but I'm as angry as you are for the damage done to our activity! I suspect that in some domains a "sorry" may not be considered as sufficient and that this could even lead to legal action against him for deception.
Hey Thierry, hopefully the storm will follow him for a while...deceivers usually cover under a rock and emerge later after the storm passes.

Are you coming to NEAIC this year? I am thinking of giving a lecture on the Sony revolution, Planetary (Sony 224), Deep Sky (A7s Modded and Cooled) and Lunar (A7R2). You did a talk last year on the A7s, so I am a tad hesitant to tread on your subject. I can default to updating my One Shot Color Planetary Imaging Lecture, but I think Bob likes the Sony Revolution idea. Do you have any issues with me doing the Sony Revolution? (I have a bunch of deep sky images done with the modded and cooled A7s).

Dan

stephenramsden

Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by stephenramsden » Mon Jan 25, 2016 9:41 pm

After consulting with my buddy Phil, I have decided that I owe the APOD guys an apology for the last post. I understand better why the retraction was worded that way and I apologize. Please delete the post.

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Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Thierry Legault » Mon Jan 25, 2016 9:53 pm

RJN wrote:Due to the accuracy of the criticisms, this APOD has now been completely changed -- picture and all. We thank our careful and well-informed audience for pointing out the problem(s) and apologize for the oversight and for the delay. - RJN
Good news Robert, however I suggest a mention in the last APOD page too, the one to be published tomorrow. I think that most readers look only at the page of the day without looking backward, so they will keep this image in mind and will never know the truth. This is also applicable to media (web or paper) who may have recorded it from APOD page or from Julian's page and who are about to publish it. Don't you think?

:)

Astrofan

Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Astrofan » Mon Jan 25, 2016 11:59 pm

Maybe you'll find this video interesting? It seems this is a real iss transits Saturn.
Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Nuncius

Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Nuncius » Tue Jan 26, 2016 12:42 am

Optics is a piece of science . Does not lie. You can blame Newton. Jupiter transit and the Venus - Saturn photos are fake too.

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Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by geckzilla » Tue Jan 26, 2016 1:14 am

Astrofan wrote:Maybe you'll find this video interesting? It seems this is a real iss transits Saturn.
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
Nice one. I see it was published today (Jan 25th) and one does wonder if we would have seen it had the forgery not occurred.
Just call me "geck" because "zilla" is like a last name.

Tom Harradine

Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Tom Harradine » Tue Jan 26, 2016 2:10 am

Astrofan wrote:Maybe you'll find this video interesting? It seems this is a real iss transits Saturn.
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
That is excellent! Thanks for posting :)

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Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Nitpicker » Tue Jan 26, 2016 7:52 am

Ahem, yes, I like to imagine that I would have spotted an ISS sequence transiting M101, as a fake. :oops:

So, I can well accept that an exposure time of 0.001 seconds, or less, is required to freeze the image of the ISS at this scale, even when low on the horizon and travelling with a reduced angular speed relative to the camera. (And note that the video frame rate does not need to relate to the exposure time, which can be much less than the interval between frames.)

But I imagine that with a big/fast enough scope, and a good enough camera, Saturn could still be exposed to a level comparable to the now infamous faked Saturn (which was presumably recorded around the time of its most recent opposition, based on the lack of ring shadow, as has already been mentioned). Is anyone capable of estimating the kind of scope and camera that might be required to expose Saturn nicely in 0.001 seconds?

I imagine that if one had the gear to expose Saturn nicely in 0.001 seconds, and if the highly variable magnitude of the transiting ISS just happened to be in the same ball park as the magnitude of Saturn, then there is no reason to suppose the task impossible.

I'll note that the other (real) video of the ISS transiting Saturn, posted here recently by Astrofan, appears to have been recorded with quite a small scope. It is a great video, though Saturn is a little underexposed.

Julian Wessel

Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Julian Wessel » Tue Jan 26, 2016 7:58 am

Hello,
I just wanted to say that I'm very sorry about what happened the last days. My picture was a fake and a huge mistake. There is nothing that can apologize that. And I can understand the hate that is going on against me. It is my fault that I'm going through hard times now. I've deleted all pictures from my Website etc at which it wasn't clear where it's from and how they processed. I didn't want to disrespect or betray you at this point I had just my interests in mind. This is a shame I know.
But now I have to move on.
Pleace try to accept this apology.
Julian

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Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by Nitpicker » Tue Jan 26, 2016 8:09 am

Julian, for what it's worth, whilst I don't have any respect for the fakery (beyond the fact that you fooled me), I think that some of the hate that has been directed towards you by others, is shameful and quite appalling.

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Re: APOD: ISS Transits Saturn (2016 Jan 22)

Post by avdhoeven » Tue Jan 26, 2016 8:15 am

Julian, I have to say that I respect a lot that you respond now and show your apologies. I think a lot of people wouldn't do that. You probably learned a lesson and I really hope that you will go on in this fantastic hobby with a new view on things. Good luck!

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