NASA photoshopping images of space?

Image taken from foxnews.com, but really from NASA

NASA-watching conspiracy theorists found something to latch onto recently when one of them noticed that NASA's picture of the day, when the contrast was increased, had received some very obvious touching up.  The image of Saturn's moons apparently had something very large behind the smaller moon, Dione, which the space agency had effectively erased.  What are they trying to hide?

The evidence, posted by NASA itself, and fed through your own image-editing program, is fairly compelling.  Around the blacked-out pixels, a green and red aurora can be seen.

Well, how is the dark and conspiratorial National Aeronautics and Space Administration going to spin this one?  We caught them red handed, editing their own images, after all.  The official explanation, against all expectation, turned out to be entirely reasonable.  The image had to be photoshopped, because the Cassini probe takes photographs with a green filter, a red filter, and a blue filter, one at a time (not good for birthday parties) and the objects pictured were in motion relative to the camera.  So the person working on the images had to take the full-color image of one moon, and paste it onto the full-color image of the other moon, painting over the red and green version of Dione.  To me, this explanation fits the evidence provided perfectly.  And I'm glad, because if there was a space ship behind that moon, it would have to be bigger than Dione itself, which is about seven thousand miles across.  I think that deserves an anxious emoticon.  : /

Once again, the excited boy in me is disappointed by cold, boring reality.  This time a photographic process curbed my enthusiasm, but in the past it has also happened because of specs of dust, dreams, and people who are simply dishonest.

And, every time there is something like this photograph, something that is quite compelling, and really makes you wonder, and then that thing gets (I won't say debunked) shown to be more ordinary, it highlights the fact that there's so little really compelling evidence out there.  Our videos of UFOs are all taken from thousands of feet away, the best video of a little gray alien we have is an admitted hoax, then there's the Oliver's Castle video, which I've already discussed.  Our best bigfoot video, our best Nessie photograph.  Miss Cleo.  Milla Jovovich.

I want something I don't believe in to be true.  I want the laws of nature to somehow result in telepathy, or for an alien civilization to, as it turns out, be visiting us frequently, and to finally decide that they want a guest spot on the Tonight Show.  I want to be able to change the channel with my mind.

How many animals have been filmed as rarely as Bigfoot?  I would expect the Planet Earth crew to at least have found one by now.

So I guess I'll just sit, and read the various paranormal news blogs on the web.  And when  Barack Obama finally declares that the politicians have been shooting pool with the extra-terrestrials since the forties, I'm going to wait on the champagne for a week or so, because I'm sure, the next day, someone is going to prove that the speech was not given by the president, but by a man in a Barack Obama costume.

Thanks for reading.