[JoeProBono]

[Quix]

Joe,

Some folks have claimed such is an artifact of the imaging systems.

Given all the noise on the net about it being real . . . I’m a little skeptical it could be dust on a lense.

Give your expertise in such things . . . what’s your best guess?

[Mr. K]

wha’t with the high pass flter image?

Does this prove or disprove that the image was photoshopped?

(serious question)

[dr_lew]

The three "spaceships" can be seen as blue shapes at separate coordinates at the SKY-MAP web site. I found this blog which conveniently shows the variously shaped excerpted images with their coordinates. The SKY-MAP site supports several image sources, but the default is called DSS2, and I found the site that gives the raw images.

Here's the original image from the SKYVIEW QUERY FORUM, with DSS2 Blue Optical Survey selected with coordinates 16 19 35, -88 43 10 :

The unseemly mess is evidently an artifact, since it does not show up on the DSS2 Red image of the same coordinates. Of course this is why it is such a pure blue.

The earliest blog references to these "spaceships" that I saw are from March 2010, and I surmise that the story originated with some UFO enthusiast perusing the SKY-MAP site.