She’s about to get a giant dildo rammed up her backside. :eek:
Photoshop.
NASA is not in the habit of releasing photoshops on APOD.
The previous day’s video is stunning.
Every false-colour pic on that site is manipulated.
That has nothing to do with the point. Many astronomy images are processed for a variety of reasons, including to bring out subtleties, or to make visible wavelengths of light that otherwise are not.
But that is much different than photoshopping an image to create a fake picture.
Why was your first assumption photoshop? What about that makes you immediately scream “fake”?
A Shuttle is in fact being delivered to New York City for the Intrepid Sea, Air, & Space Museum. This is a known controversial point (Houston didn’t get a Shuttle). NASA is in the process of delivering these shuttles. They recently showed the one going to Washington DC for the Smithsonian, and a variety of pics of the Shuttle being flown around DC.
Why do you doubt this one?
I saw it fly by my office a couple of miles north of Manhattan. It flew up and down the Hudson River at about 1500 feet before landing at JFK.
I doubted it because it appears too pat and because too many other pictures that have been published as the truth in trustworthy publications, print or online, though not by NASA as far as I know, turned out to be fakes.
It was near-reflexive. I’ll try to accept it as genuine. (NASA is not pure as the driven snow.)
I mean, they faked the moon landing. Why would they have any qualms about photoshopping a shuttle picture? 
Indeed.
Thank you, Sunspace.
Awesome photos courtesy of the fact that those 747’s can’t fly very high with the shuttle on their back. 
I’m not crying for Houston. They expected to get one and made no effort. They assumed their lousy hurricane shuttle storage area and the fact that that they were Houston was good enough to get one. Too bad.
After Houston’s moaned about the shuttle distribution being politically based I answered “why do you think Mission Control is in Texas to begin with?”
I mean, a space shuttle is being flown into New York and we’re expected to believe it would be visible along with two reasonably aligned New York landmarks!? What kind of sheep does NASA take us for?
In seriousness, that’s a very cool shot. I’ll probably always regret not having gotten to see a shuttle launch or see Discovery flying over DC, but I did get to attend the sign-over of Discovery to the Smithsonian when they had it and Enterprise nose to nose which itself was a pretty awesome sight.
Can you imagine the out-of-the-box thinking to even come up with this idea? “What if…”
Actually, at least one APOD was a photoshop, in the sense that Kenm means: There was a shot of the full moon right next to the Andromeda Galaxy, to show their relative angular sizes, even though they’re always far apart in the sky. Of course, they admitted that right out in the caption.
Well, plus a bunch of April Fools jokes, of course.
I stated it only to point out that it is well known and publicized that New York is getting a Shuttle. I can’t comment on what “made no effort” means.
I personally think Houston may end up getting a better deal out of this. When Kennedy found out that Houston wasn’t getting a Shuttle, they offered up their Shuttle mockup that they are replacing with the real deal. The move is in works, which will park a mockup that can be fully toured at Houston, vs the real Shuttles that will not provide access to the flight deck, and possibly not the middeck.
There are plenty of pics that are digital composites, there are many that have captions added, there are several that assemble shots of various items and put them near each other for comparison. These are all described and admitted, and not anythink like what Kenm is insinuating.
“Welcome to the LBJ Ranch!”
Read the comments on the Flickr page, and check out the other photo of the same scene and you’ll understand that it’s NOT a PS job.
I only wish they’d mentioned what lens was used.
So you say. They haven’t had any moon-landing pics to trump up for a generation or more; they have to keep their skillz sharp somehow…
Which is totally different than the Ole BJ Ranch. 
EXIF data here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/7118799989/meta/in/photostream