Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2018

44 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2018 STRANGE IMAGES Fake images in astronomy by M. Ferrara et al. 2017 has emphasized the theme of fake news as if that phenomenon had never existed before, whereas it is ancient as humanity itself. Likewise remote is the origin of fake images, representations or al- tered interpretations of reality, which can be used for different pur- poses. This phenomenon is also widespread in the world of astronomy and often one is deceived by what is seen. N ot always fake images of astronomical nature are undoubtedly artworks like this background scene, presented in a documentary of the Na- tional Geographic magazine. Although the martian landscape represented here is decidedly realistic, we are certain that human beings have never reached the red planet, and it is therefore pure fantasy to repre- sent them descended from a spaceship and engaged in a patrol. In this case, we are not in the presence of a false image or a tendentious interpretation of it, it is simply a science-fiction illustration, whose task is to give an idea of what might someday happen. To this typology of images also belong the representations of other planetary systems, collapsed stars and ob- jects or phenomena never photographed from a close distance or in detail. Not always, however, the border