Blackout Image a Fake
The Universe
TERENCE DICKINSON

Fake Image Above

A spacecraft image of the big North American powerful failure, purportedly showing the vast blacked-out areas of the United States and Canada on Aug. 14 at 23:15 EST, from the ISAT GeoStar 45 space icraft, has proved to be a hoax. Widely circulated via the Internet, the bogus image was reproduced in The Economist and other respected publications.

Blacked-out area at 7 hours after the start of the blackout (right) and a comparative shot 20 hours before the initial power failure (left). NOAA News Online

However, anyone familiar with spacecraft operations nomenclature would know that the words and numbers on the picture are fake. For one thing, all spacecraft function on Universal Time (UT) or Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), not Eastern Standard Time (EST) as indicated. Also, there is no such spacecraft as ISAT GeoStar 45. Furthermore, the hoaxer did a sloppy job blacking out the affected area.

A large chunk of southwestern Ontario that should have been dark was left with lights ablaze. Sections of the U.S. east coast and Midwest were similarly incorrectly rendered. The original image (with fully illuminated cities) was released in 1995 by the U.S. Air Force and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to show the pervasive use of outdoor lighting over most of the continent.

The original picture was a composite requiring many spacecraft images taken over a period of months. A few genuine satellite images of sections of the blackout can be seen at: www.snopes.com/photos/blackout.asp

Terence Dickinson is editor of Skynews Magazine and author of books for backyard astronomers.