Stunning 9/11 photos

The Staten Island (N.Y.) Advance: We all have images of 9/11 burned into our brains. Some of us more than others, depending on our proximity to the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

Even all those who watched the whole thing unfold on TV from miles away will retain vivid mental pictures of that day to the end of their days.

But most of what we remember is from a ground-level perspective.

Scene of horror

Maybe that’s why the aerial photos of the devastation in downtown Manhattan are so stunning. They showed the totality of a scene of horror far below the camera’s lens.

The photos, taken by a New York Police Department detective from a police helicopter, were made public recently.

The question we have is why it took until February 2010 — eight years — for the world to get to see them.

The detective who took the shots, now retired, had shared them with friends and a few were published without authorization in a book.