NASA's a waste of space

[Benjo Koolzooie]

NASA boffins who hailed a British lad’s photo as a dramatic snap of an exploding meteor were exposed as duffers last night.

Jonathan Burnett, 15, had emailed them a picture of what looked like the trail of a blazing meteor.

NASA saluted it as “Astronomy Picture of the Day” on their website. But other experts spotted it for what it really was — SUNLIGHT reflecting off the white trail of a jet.

Full article: http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-20034...3461335,00.html

[Starlyte]

His dad said Paul said: "We never said this was a meteor in the first place.  It was NASA who said that."

Okay, so I looked up what it really said as the caption for this "Astronomy Picture of the day", here is what it says:

Explanation: Jon Burnett, a teenager from South Wales, UK, was photographing some friends skateboarding last week when the sky did something very strange. By diverting his camera, he was able to document this rare sky event and capture one of the more spectacular sky images yet recorded. Roughly four minutes later, he took another picture of the dispersing trail. What is it? Experts disagree. The first guess was a sofa-sized rock that exploded as a daytime fireball, but perhaps a better hypothesis is an unusual airplane contrail reflecting the setting Sun. Bright fireballs occur over someplace on Earth nearly every day. A separate bolide, likely even more dramatic, struck India only a few days ago.

Of course, this is the amended version. How does NASA get something like this wrong?