What is with that black area? Is it censored or something? -zappa.jake (talk) 07:42, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I was going to ask. Why the heck would they censure such an image though? Makes nonsense... Tribaal 08:13, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Generally these images are massive composites made from thousands of pictures taken as the telescope passes overhead. It is likely that the telescope was manouvering or something else happened (e.g. thunderstorms above receiver on earth) that meant either those pictures were not taken or the data was corrupt. Large area maps of planets often have all sorts of "holes" in them where telescopes haven't covered. There was a whole strip of data lost from one project when they lost the tapes that contained the pictures - rather embarrasing!