Space Shuttle Endeavour's Last Flight

[Eric Mc]

An orbiting satellite captured an image of Endeavour as she was flown atop one of the NASA 747's on her last ever ferry flight last week -

[Simpo Two]

Is that a shadow (an odd pale blue one) or an imaging artefact?

[Eric Mc]

It's an artefact. The wider view shows the real shadow -

[southendpier]

At a guess from my old remote sensing days is that satellites do not generally take "photographs" in Red Blue and Green. They will be looking at different wavelengths of radiation in the spectrum, programs are then used to create false colour images. eg you can make the "reflection" of water blue, of trees green etc based on known parameters. So perhaps the signature of the shadow on the ground has been coloured incorrectly for a shadow.

just a guess.

[Eric Mc]

The Daily Mail link actually explains the photo process used in the article. Being The Mail, of course, they may not be correct.