From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Thu Feb 06 2003 - 13:50:18 PST
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2003 10:54:34 -0700 (MST)
From: William Bottke <bottke_at_boulder.swri.edu>
To: news <news_at_boulder.swri.edu>
Subject: Nikon digital camera captures Columbia
CATASTROPHE IN THE SKY
Camera catching shuttle 'zap'
had own glitch
Nikon admits digital devices
sometimes show purple
aberrations
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30904
Posted: February 6, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Joe Kovacs
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
As interest skyrockets in an
unreleased photograph purporting
to show the space shuttle
Columbia being "zapped" by
some kind of purple electrical
phenomenon, WorldNetDaily has
learned that the digital camera
model which took the picture has
been known to have its own color
glitches.
The
Nikon 880
occasionally
produces a
purple
fringe
around the
edges of
some
photographs, said a top Nikon
official.
"It was a complaint [we heard
from users]," said Michael Rubin,
senior product manager for Nikon
Inc. "Sometimes you see it,
sometimes you don't."
The issue of the camera's
reliability has been raised since an
amateur astronomer using an 880
claims to have captured a
mysterious image of a bright,
multi-colored flash surrounding
the orbiter shortly before it
disintegrated Saturday morning.
"Wow."
That was veteran astronaut
Tammy Jernigan's stunned
reaction Tuesday night when she
viewed the photo at the home of
the San Francisco man who
documented the shuttle's early
morning re-entry into the
atmosphere and flyover of the Bay
area.
"It certainly appears
very anomalous,"
Jernigan told the San
Francisco Chronicle.
"We sure will be very
interested in taking a
very hard look at
this."
Reporters from the Chronicle are
among the few people who have
seen the image, as the
photographer says he won't
release the photo publicly until
NASA has a chance to review it.
"In the critical shot," stated the
Chronicle, "a glowing purple rope
of light corkscrews down toward
the plasma trail, appears to pass
behind it, then cuts sharply
toward it from below. As it
merges with the plasma trail, the
streak itself brightens for a
distance, then fades."
"[The photos] clearly record an
electrical discharge like a
lightning bolt flashing past, and I
was snapping the pictures almost
exactly ... when the Columbia
may have begun breaking up
during re-entry," the
photographer originally told the
paper Saturday night.
A misquote concerning an early
statement by the man led to some
confusion about digital versus
traditional analog images.
"I couldn't see the discharge with
my own eyes, but it showed up
clear and bright on the film when
I developed it," the astronomer
was originally published as
saying. But the Chronicle has
clarified that the device is indeed
a Nikon 880 digital camera which
has no need of film to be
developed.
Nikon says unless it examines the
San Francisco photo, it would be
pure speculation to know if the
"purple rope of light" has
anything to do with any defect in
its device.
"Without seeing the image, it's
like a blind person guessing what
blue sky looks like," Rubin told
WorldNetDaily.
He says it's "color interpolation
combined with chromatic
aberration" that causes the purple
fringe around the edges, and can
occur when the lens is wide open,
there's high contrast, and what
normally would be a white line
could appear purple.
In an online evaluation of the
Nikon 880 when it debuted in
2000, photography expert Phil
Askey of Digital Photography
Review noted he had trouble
re-creating the chromatic glitch,
except in one instance.
"We waded
through our
1000-plus
'real life'
shots
looking for
an