Lakdawalla, who knows her way around spacecraft photo databases as well as photo-retouching tools, hit upon the likeliest explanation for the gaffe. Often, surface features that show up on two strips of data have to be manually corrected to produce the finished image, due to subtle changes in perspective. (link to original)
edited to add this link to another article about the Chinese photograph.
-- Edited by qmantoo on Saturday 25th of September 2010 08:57:44 AM