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Anonymous

Fascinating. That photo is weird. I've been a photographer long enough to get me thinking it has been heavily manipulated before release to the public. All the shades between pure white and pure black as well as mid-tones, and even the highlights and shadows, seem to have been "crunched". They have been pushed to either pure white or pulled to pure blacks, tons of detail lost as a result. The tonality is gone. It almost doesn't even look like an image anymore but rather a black and white map (albeit one that is hard to make out shapes in) created from a image in order represent what the image showed in an unclassified way? I wonder if that image had things in it that were not wanted to be made public, still, after all this time? :)

Anonymous

I think they do that to not give away the resolution of the image and thus the detail capabilities to the public/other nations. There was a case many years ago where the only images from a KH-11 (first non-film based spy satellite) ever public released (90's I think?) are widely believed to have "dumbed down" in terms of resolution compared to the real capability of the system.

Anonymous

its actually funny because the american spy satellites are so large (very similar design to hubble space telescope just turned towards earth) that its simple math to calculate the cross section of the mirror and work out the clarity at a distance. Weather conditions are the big impact. Amateur Astronomers have photographed the US spy satellites they are that Big.