HOW TO SPOT A FAKE SPACE PHOTO

Reveal if that sensational image is real or a fraud with All About Space’s top tips

- Stuart Atkinson

If you use any social media platforms you will know they are dominated by two types of images: pictures of cute cats, and photographs of anything to do with space. Every platform has thousands of members who enthusiastically share photographs taken through the International Space Station’s windows, by space probes on or orbiting planets and through telescopes. Many are jaw-droppingly beautiful, and during the past difficult year every time a photo of the northern lights blazing above snow-capped Canadian mountains or a view of a copper-hued eclipsed Moon hanging above a city skyline has popped up on our timelines, it’s not just been a pleasant surprise, but a welcome distraction from our everyday troubles. If there was a cat in it too, even better…

Unfortunately, many of the beautiful astronomical images posted on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram are not what they claim to be. Some are genuine, but stolen from other people. Others are composites, impressive but totally fake combinations of several different genuine photos to make something inaccurate or scientifically impossible. Others still are purely digital creations, produced inside computers with not a camera in sight. Why do people create, or knowingly share, these fake images? What do they get out of it?