This shot is from a new series by NASA called the "black marble" photos, because the earth supposedly looks like a black marble floating in space. For the last couple days everybody's been transfixed by these photos, raving about how beautiful the earth is, with some folks even saying they're proof positive that the earth must have been created by a God.
Beautiful, huh? Amazing. Oh, except check out the small print:
Composite map of the world assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October 2012.
Got that? THIS ISN'T ONE PHOTO. This is the best parts of a bunch of photos cobbled together. Think about it for a minute: is this impressive, or is this sad?
Say one day you go visit your grandma, and see her huddled over the kitchen table, hard at work. The table is completely covered with little bits of chopped-up photos, and she's holding a magnifying glass and some tape.
"What are you doing?" you ask.
"I've always wanted a picture of me looking pretty," she says. "I've almost finished the neck and chin; see if you can find some good lips."
In fact, these "black marble" photos are even sadder than that. This isn't the work of some doddering old lady who still gives you cassette tapes for Christmas: these are America's brightest minds working tirelessly. And rather than using snippets of photos, they toiling at the pixel level.
Even the Hunchback of Notre Dame didn't have to sort through pixels to piece together his Grindr shot.
Now, I can sympathize. I'm not particularly photogenic. If I don't aim my face at precisely the right angle, I look like a Shar-Pei eating a tube of Pringles. But those are the breaks! A photo is supposed to mirror reality, and if reality isn't nice, then tough shit.
Of course, I realize how tempting it is to "clean up" pictures in the era of Photoshop. But unlike shoplifting and french-kissing chickens, this isn't a victimless crime. There are consequences. They create unrealistic images in our heads of what things are supposed to look like. You might gawk and gape at this photo, but me, I'm thinking of all the planets that don't have teams of scientists airbrushing their publicity stills.
I'm picturing Jupiter, that giant gray gas bag, seeing these shots. After four seconds of thinking, "Wow, that's a pretty planet," she'll start stuffing Häagen-Dazs in her crater and tweeting, "HOW COM ILL NEVR LOOK LIK THAT :("
