Moon Photo Mystery Solved!

Some dogged sleuthing by a fellow space blogger has tracked down the truth behind the controversial first photo from China's moon orbiter.

In the week since the picture was released amid much fanfare in Beijing, there have been widespread rumors that the photo was a fake, copied from an old picture collected by a U.S. space probe.

The good news for the Chinese is that Planetary Society blogger Emily Lakdawalla's clears them of outright fakery. The bad news is, she found evidence that the photo was badly retouched for public release.

Lakdawalla's explanation would be embarrassing for Beijing, but it makes the most sense as the solution to this week's moon photo mystery.

Lakdawalla began her investigation by plowing through databases of lunar imagery and dredging up a U.S.-produced picture for comparison. It's not a NASA picture, as reported by the rumor mill. Instead, it's one of the tens of thousands of pictures taken by the Pentagon's Clementine lunar mapping orbiter back in 1994.

The photo from China's Chang'e 1 orbiter is clearly a higher-resolution view, with sunlight streaming from the northwest rather than the north.

"So the notion that China faked their lunar photo can be put to rest. (What is it about the moon and conspiracy theories, anyway?)," Lakdawalla wrote. "At least it certainly isn't a copy of the Clementine image; and it's certainly not a Lunar Orbiter image, either."

Case closed? Not quite.

Lakdawalla found that a mistake was apparently made in stitching together the 19 strips of imagery to produce the finished picture - and that Chinese officials unknowingly pointed out that mistake as they defended the photo's veracity.

The Planetary Society's Emily
Lakdawalla compared Clementine imagery of the crater, at left, with Chang'e imagery at right.The mission's chief scientist, Ouyang Ziyuan, told the Beijing News that a new crater had been spotted on the Chang'e imagery - a crater that didn't appear on the U.S. imagery. Lakdawalla determined that crater in question it wasn't exactly new - instead, it appeared to be a crater that had been moved from one spot on the picture to another spot slightly south.

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.

"You know that there should have been seams in that image, and I just did not look for them carefully at the time," Lakdawalla told me today.

She said the Chinese must have blended together the seams between the strips - misplacing the crater. The picture may be pretty, but it's pretty much useless as a scientific product, Lakdawalla said.

The detective work came in for kudos from other space mythbusters. "Go check out her really amazing sleuthing," said Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait. "This is how it's done, folks. Case closed!"

NBC News space analyst James Oberg, who has had his own experience with moon-hoax controversies, also saluted Lakdawalla's efforts. Even though the Chinese insist that the first picture from Chang'e is scientifically accurate, Oberg said he expected the Chinese to "be forced to backtrack a bit" once they see the full evidence.

"This isn't the first time that photo problems have created illusory 'moon features,'" Oberg wrote in an e-mail. "The very first Soviet moon photo probe, Luna 3 in 1959, sent back images of the back side that included a view of what Moscow grandiosely called 'the Soviet Mountains,' stretching for hundreds of miles. It turned out to be an emulsion smear on the negative."

"For a 'dead world,' the moon sure continues to offer surprises to explorers," Oberg said, "even if many of the 'surprises' are self-induced flaws in the exploration process!"

Defining the Traditional or Cozy Mystery Novel Genre

Agatha Christie's novels and the long-running television show Murder She Wrote are good examples of cozy mysteries. Cozies are the kind of stories one might read while curled up on the couch with a cup of tea.

What is a Cozy Mystery?
The Agatha Awards, sponsored by Malice Domestic, defines the traditional mystery, also often called the cozy mystery, as one that "contains no explicit sex and contains no excessive gore or gratuitous violence".

A cozy mystery is one written in the tradition of Agatha Christie. It usually takes place in a closely-knit setting with a limited group of suspects. A small town or English village where people are well-acquainted is a common setting for the cozy. An amateur detective is usually responsible for solving the crime. The cozy is light-hearted in tone rather than heavy. The murder often takes place offstage, as opposed to the hard-boiled mystery which contains a professional police officer, graphic violence and a sense of gritty reality. There may be a body and blood in the cozy mystery, but the murder is introduced with the minimum of gore or descriptions of violence. The main focus of the book is a puzzle and always centers around "whodunnit."

The Cozy Setting
Many cozy mysteries are set in a small town or small section of a larger city, and have a local business as their base. The story may center around a tea shop, a bed and breakfast, or have a more unique setting such as a hairdressing salon, laundry or even a tattoo shop. Others may be set at a special event such as a meeting of archaeologists or a writer's convention, where all the attendees are suspects. The sleuth's occupation often plays a strong role in solving the crime.

Culiinary mysteries, such as Diane Mott Davidson's Goldy Bear Culinary Mystery Series, are very popular cozy themes. These books focus around a cooking or a catering business. Cozies of this type often offer recipes at the end of the book. Some examples of books with culinary themes are Catering to Nobody, the first in the Mott Davidson series, The Chocolate Cupid Killings, JoAnna Carl, (Chocoholic Mystery Series #9), Death Takes the Cake, Melinda Wells, (The Della Cooks Mystery series #2), and Carrot Cake Murder, Joanna Fluke, (The Hannah Swenson Mysteries #10

Why we read mysteries?

Do you like to curl up with a mystery book? Do you find it hard to put the book down once you get started? Have you ever thought about the reasons we read mysteries? Mysteries are filled with suspense and we like to see it build to come to the climax and finally to the end. We like the suspense because it keeps us guessing what will happen later on. People like mysteries because they give you action until the end trying to get the crime resolved.

People like to read mysteries because we go through troublesome times. We want to get away from our own troubles and experience somebody else's. In a mystery or any book we enter into the main character's world and journey with them throughout the book. While we do this we get away from our own cares in this world. We travel with someone with a totally different set of problems to face to come to a conclusion. People want to go on an emotional ride with this main character, so that they feel for them. Readers want to cheer when they cheer and cry when they cry. We like to feel emotions for the character that the author created.

We like mysteries because they take our imagination away to different lands. Mystery readers get to see different places through the words of an author. They get to use their imagination to guess at the events that will occur. Our imagination gets carried away while we are reading mysteries as we imagine how the crime will be solved. With each clue the reader gets more excited. Red herring clues, which lead the detective the wrong way, make the mystery even more enjoyable because readers don't want for it to be to simple for the detective to solve the case.

Mysteries are good for readers, too, because you never know what twists and turns it might take winding the way to the end. We never know what the detective might face or what setbacks the detective might have before the end, which makes people want to keep reading to find out what all will happen. We like all the action mysteries give to keep us going on through. Mysteries give a reader something to think about until their conclusion. The next time you pick up a mystery novel you will find what makes them enjoyable

Swede little mystery

STOCKHOLM as a winter sun destination... are you one smorgasbord short of a picnic? Well, the sun certainly can shine extremely brightly but, admittedly, the temperature is liable to be way south of zero in this pristine northerly capital, set on 14 islands.

Trust me, though, the sight of the sun glistening on the frozen harbour and the snow on the city's rooftops sparkling in the stark winter light is quite magical.

And make sure your camera has a large memory card - this is one of the most photogenic cities you will visit.

At almost every turn a new photo opportunity seems to arise. So grab your silly trapper hat and thermals and let's see what the city- on-the-water capital of Sweden (and of Scandinavia, it claims, too) has to offer the winter tourist...

Most visitors will begin with a look round Gamla Stan, the Old Town.

It's located on a small island between the Baltic Sea and Lake Malaren to the south of the modern city centre and you'll want to spend at least half a day or more here, as many of the main sights are in the area.

It's a charming place, with a maze of narrow medieval streets lined with shops, bars, cafes and restaurants.

Start at the Kungliga Slottet (Royal Palace) - no longer inhabited by the much-loved Royal Family - and fairly accessible.

There's a chapel, armoury, apartments and galleries, and a changing of the guard to see.

Who is That Mystery Caller?

It happens to us all: you pick up your cell phone and see that you have received calls from an unknown number. It is only natural to be curious about who was calling, but how can you find out who the caller was. You could, of course, return the call, but this may lead to an awkward and unwanted conversation. Instead, you may like to consider using a phone number reverse lookup service, which will provide you with the name and address of your mystery caller.

Reverse lookup services, or reverse phone directories as they are also known, have access to a massive nationwide database, which contains almost all phone numbers and the information connected to their owners. Thanks to modern technology, this information is now quite literally at your fingertips. You may have already noticed that the internet is teeming with reverse lookup sites and any one of these companies could be the answer to your prayers.

Phone Number Reverse Lookup: Can I Perform a Search for Free?

If you have already tried to look for reverse phone directories with the assistance of a search engine, you will, no doubt, have come across a large proportion of sites that claim to allow free searches. In almost all cases, these offers are false. In some instances, the claim may just be misleading, because most reverse search facilities will allow you to perform a free search. However, you will be asked to pay once the information has been found. Therefore, technically the search itself is free, but if you want to retrieve the details of the search, you will have to transfer payment.

On the other hand, claims of a free search may be the cause of concern. Some of the sites, will attempt to take your personal details and sell them on to third parties, while others may request that you download some dodgy software. Consequently, it is recommended that you select a site that is honest and upfront about its charges, and provides an adequate privacy policy.

Google Crop Circle UFO Mystery Solved!

Today's Google logo shows a flying saucer above a series of crop circles that spell Google. Although some might say the "L" is missing. Others say there is a tractor mowing out an "L". Then there are others who think the green dot is a barn with a road leading up to it in the shape of an "L'. What ever this logo is depicting, it is another strange phenomenon from the world of Google. It was just ten days ago that the flying saucer appeared on the logo and lead us to "Unexplained Phenomenon".

10 days ago the flying saucer appeared to be taking one of the"O's" from Google's name. Today the L is missing (maybe). What is all this telling us? Or better yet where is this leading us to? Can we expect the UFO back in another 10 days taking a letter again? What will it lead us to next time?

The two missing letters are also found in the word, "Halloween", which is my guess at what this will all spell out in the end. This is a grand way for Google to ring in Halloween this year. For the letters that are not in the word "Google", my guess is that we will see the UFO dropping them off with in the next few weeks.

On Google's tweeter feed the coordinates were given as a hint to what all this might mean. These led us to a town of Horsell, England (HE) these two letters are needed to spell Halloween. This was the town that H.G. Wells named in "The War of the Worlds" as the first place to have a UFO landing.

If you leave out one digit (-) from the coordinates, the location brings you to Bromley Kent England, the place that H.G. Wells' was born. Is this significant, probably not.

H-A-L-L-O-W-E-E-N is what the UFO's are going to spell out in the next few weeks by either taking the letters or leaving us hints, such as coordinates, on where to find them.

If this is a promotion for something that is coming, what a great way to advertise!