So, what's inside the small black hole?! Or simply a new meteor crater?

Lakdawalla determined that crater in question it wasn't exactly new - instead, it appeared to be a crater that had been moved from one spot on the picture to another spot slightly south.

Lakdawalla, who knows her way around spacecraft photo databases as well as photo-retouching tools, hit upon the likeliest explanation for the gaffe. Often, surface features that show up on two strips of data have to be manually corrected to produce the finished image, due to subtle changes in perspective.

"You know that there should have been seams in that image, and I just did not look for them carefully at the time," Lakdawalla told me today.

She said the Chinese must have blended together the seams between the strips - misplacing the crater. The picture may be pretty, but it's pretty much useless as a scientific product, Lakdawalla said.

The detective work came in for kudos from other space mythbusters. "Go check out her really amazing sleuthing," said Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait. "This is how it's done, folks. Case closed!"

NBC News space analyst James Oberg, who has had his own experience with moon-hoax controversies, also saluted Lakdawalla's efforts. Even though the Chinese insist that the first picture from Chang'e is scientifically accurate, Oberg said he expected the Chinese to "be forced to backtrack a bit" once they see the full evidence.

"This isn't the first time that photo problems have created illusory 'moon features,'" Oberg wrote in an e-mail. "The very first Soviet moon photo probe, Luna 3 in 1959, sent back images of the back side that included a view of what Moscow grandiosely called 'the Soviet Mountains,' stretching for hundreds of miles. It turned out to be an emulsion smear on the negative."

"For a 'dead world,' the moon sure continues to offer surprises to explorers," Oberg said, "even if many of the 'surprises' are self-induced flaws in the..Source

this is all based on how much anyone trusts bejing LOL....:laugh:

Atleast they havent claimed to have landed a man on the moon i bet china has searched hard
for that flag and moon buggy and just cant find it anywhere..... and forget nasa searching for
life on other planets.. they cant even find their own crap they claim to have left on the moon

buzz....we haven't been to the moon?....:shrug:

A man on the moon? Nah im not believing it.. i doubt they even got anywhere near it..

I thought you were a skeptical one CB.. well as far as i know that info came from a book..
and there was suposed to be a conference just recently to talk about just that.. but what
happend to it.. i havent heard a beep.. anyway nasa's only claim of proof to landing on
the moon is some moon rocks.. which also have been found in the antartic i think. so thats
not saying very much.. sure they had a big rocket and put a man into space.. that i can
believe but what happend next is anyones guess.. it just seems a to big
of a leap for mankind with only just getting into space and then sending a man to the moon...

Atleast they havent claimed to have landed a man on the moon i bet china has searched hard
for that flag and moon buggy and just cant find it anywhere..... and forget nasa searching for
life on other planets.. they cant even find their own crap they claim to have left on the moon