There has been plenty of rumors, opinions, ideas and conspiracy theories that our government is not quite as honest with us as it could be. There is even the theory that the whole moon landing coverage was shot on a sound stage somewhere on good old earth.

But all this aside, let’s assume all our ventures out into space and to other planets is actually true, then this fascinating image of our Earth-Moon system as seen from Mars (actually from one of our space crafts up there) is in fact authentic.

But unfortunately it is totally misleading. It tries to create this feeling of being this small twin system out there in the void – alone but still the moon so close that we can identify with it.

Still, let’s still assume that this image is not photoshopped, then it uses the treacheries of three dimensions to mislead us. The moon must be either much closer to the observer – the little green Martian – or much further away.

How come?

Let’s do some simple math. The Earth diameter is about 12000 km (OK, I think in metric – so what?) and the distance of Earth and Moon is about 360000 km, that would put the Moon at the distance of about 30 Earth radii. In the NASA image the distance seems to be 6 Earth radii – pretty big difference, don’t you think?

If we – or the Martians – would look at our system at a time when the real distance of the two heavenly bodies in one image would be shown, we would see two specs of light without any awe-inspiring effect.

What do you think why they do this manipulation?