Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Space Shuttle launch plume shadow

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[edit] Space Shuttle launch plume shadow.jpeg

Space Shuttle Atlantis launches at sunset. The sun is behind the camera, and the shadow of the plume is cast across the vault of the sky, intersecting the rising full moon. The top portion of the plume is bright because it is illuminated directly by the sun; the lower portions are in the Earth's shadow.
Space Shuttle Atlantis launches at sunset. The sun is behind the camera, and the shadow of the plume is cast across the vault of the sky, intersecting the rising full moon. The top portion of the plume is bright because it is illuminated directly by the sun; the lower portions are in the Earth's shadow.
Edit 1 - Noise reduction performed by Diliff. Slight artifacts remain.
Edit 1 - Noise reduction performed by Diliff. Slight artifacts remain.
Edit 2: Made from a much higher resolution original found on NASA web site. Noise reduced, contrast adjusted and other enhancements. Color balance more closely resembles original image. JPEG compression artifacts were present in original image.
Edit 2: Made from a much higher resolution original found on NASA web site. Noise reduced, contrast adjusted and other enhancements. Color balance more closely resembles original image. JPEG compression artifacts were present in original image.
Edit 3 by Fir0002. Retained warmess of other versions, but used moondiggers higher res image. Further smoothing has all but eliminated JPG artifacts
Edit 3 by Fir0002. Retained warmess of other versions, but used moondiggers higher res image. Further smoothing has all but eliminated JPG artifacts

This image, originally photographed by NASA and edited by Balster neb, is an interesting picture of the a shuttle launch. The multi-colored sky, sunlit smoke, shadow being cast toward the moon, and interesting subject matter all lead to an outstanding picture. The image appears in Space Shuttle program, the page Space Shuttle redirects to.

  • Nominate and support. - Miguel Cervantes 14:12, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Grainy at top and of poor quality. Nice image, but not accepting with FPC. AJ24 14:46, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Support edit 3! Good picture Cab02 15:28, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Support edit 1 by Diliff. This has the "wow" factor I've been missing lately. Incredibly many things co-operate to make this a stunning image. --Janke | Talk 18:03, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
My support still is for edit 1 - the better resolution of edit 2 brings out the noise & compression more clearly. --Janke | Talk 06:59, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Support edit 1 great pic, amazing aswell. Childzy (Talk|Contribs) 19:39, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Weak support The quality could be much better. My thinking is that there has to be similar image of better quality out there somewhere. After all, this is NASA. The image itself is quite amazing so despite the resolution issues, I have to lean towards support. --Nebular110 22:31, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong support for edit 3. --Nebular110 21:58, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Support edit 1 by Diliff with noise reduction. Could still use a bit more noise suppression, though. Support the edit by Fir0002, it's definitely the best of the bunch. Marumari 22:33, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Weak support for Edit 2. The compression artifacts bother me in all versions. However it is a terrific image, so I decided to support it. I found a higher-resolution original on the NASA website and prepped it for use here. The color balance is closer to the NASA original, and this one tops out at 1539x2200 pixels. (The other versions are 1111x1587.) -- moondigger 22:58, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Note: The original I found was even bigger, at over 2700 pixels tall after cropping out the distracting stuff at the bottom and left side. However the compression artifacts were just too distracting at that size. After cropping and reducing to 2200 pixels, it looks about as good as I could hope for. An original that was saved with higher-quality JPEG settings would be ideal. -- moondigger 23:05, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment For anyone hunting for a better version of this image, this is a picture of the launch of STS-98.--Miguel Cervantes 23:28, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Where is the picture? You linked to the STS-98 article on Wikipedia, not an STS-98 launch image. -- moondigger 23:36, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
      • Sorry, that was slightly murky wording. I probably shouldn't have linked to STS-98, come to think of it. Let's try this again: For anyone hunting for a better version of this image, this is a picture of STS-98. A GIS of that, however, doesn't turn up any good results. My apologies for the confusion. --Miguel Cervantes 23:42, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
        • Oh, I get what you're saying. You're informing us that the mission was STS-98, so that we could use STS-98 as a search term. I knew it was STS-98, so misunderstood "...this is..." to mean you had found another, better image, and were providing a link to it. Sorry for the misunderstanding.-- moondigger 23:47, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. Concerning Edit 2: The upper portion of the image is still very grainy and of poor quality (along the fire trail). AJ24 00:34, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Yes, it is. I don't think it's any worse on an absolute scale than the other images, though the increased resolution makes it slightly more visible. I've been browsing through some of the images on NASA's site, and it seems the majority I've found all suffer from compression artifacts... we're talking about 2000x3000 pixel images compressed so much they're less than 2 MB! I wish somebody would have provided versions with lower compression values for those of us who don't mind the longer downloads and want to do something with them. Noise reduction techniques work a lot better when an image isn't filled with compression artifacts. -- moondigger 00:53, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Edit 3. That is amazing. Talk about once in a lifetime. --Fir0002 07:00, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Edit 3 Joe I 09:42, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Fir0002's edit. Great pic, and interesting phenomenon. Strongly Oppose all previous edits other than Fir's.—Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξφ 10:13, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Fir0002's edit. As per Vanderdecken.Nnfolz 10:44, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. All edits blurred and grainy at top. -- AJ24 16:06, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Fir's Edit. TomStar81 21:35, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Weak support - Really nice subject matter but the image quality sucks. I wish we could get a hold of the film original and re-digitize it in a better way. --Cyde↔Weys 17:10, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
  • oppose - Awesome picture, but the compression artifacts are really blatant in all versions of the image around the moon and along the edges of the plume. Just ruins it for me. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I'm going to oppose this one on the grounds that it's really a curiosity rather than encyclopaedic. It's spectacular, but I don't think it can "help complete readers' understanding of an article in ways other pictures in the article do not". Stephen Turner (Talk) 11:16, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Although I doubt mentioning this will sway your opinion, the picture shows the flight path of the shuttle following the launch, while the rest of the pictures show shuttles heading straight up. When it comes to demonstrating the pitch and roll, what other picture could do such a good job? For reference, the picture appears next to this paragraph:
      "Shortly after clearing the tower the Shuttle begins a roll and pitch program so that the vehicle is below the external tank and SRBs. The vehicle climbs in a progressively flattening arc, accelerating as the weight of the SRBs and main tank decrease. To achieve low orbit requires much more horizontal than vertical acceleration. This is not visually obvious since the vehicle rises vertically and is out of sight for most of the horizontal acceleration. Orbital velocity at the 380 km (236 miles) altitude of the International Space Station is 7.68 km per second (27,648 km/h, 17,180 mph), roughly equivalent to Mach 23. For missions towards the International Space Station, the shuttle must reach an azimuth of 51.6 degrees inclination to rendezvous with the station." --Miguel Cervantes 02:28, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
      • That's an interesting view of it, and I agree that's worth illustrating. But I'm afraid I still don't consider that this is the picture to illustrate that, because in that case the shadow pointing at the moon — which is just an artifact of launching at full moon — is too distracting. Stephen Turner (Talk) 09:32, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Quality is just not there, even in best edit. Poor focus. I find it hard to believe that that blue thing going to/from the moon is a shadow as claimed. --jjron 09:41, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
  • oppose i agree with jjron's and Stephen Turner's reasoning --Vircabutar 18:56, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Promoted Image:Atlantis launch plume edit.jpg Raven4x4x 09:34, 25 July 2006 (UTC)