SCI/TECH: What Color Is Mars, Really?

A member of AboveTopSecret.com has discovered what appears to be significant image alteration in the images taken by the Mars Spirit craft and released by NASA. When he compared the reference shots of the on-board sundial (used for color reference and calibration), to released panorama shots, he noticed a striking difference in color. Have a look at these two close ups found by AArchAngel: The reference shots on the left show what looks like a nice balance in the Red Green and Blue channels in the image. The shot on the right shows a close-up of the same reference sundial, but cropped from a now popular panorama shot. The question is, what color is mars? We can see that the blue channel has been significantly altered, so that in the panorama shot, blue is now a bright pink. So... what color is Mars... really? Many thanks to an alert and astute AArchAngel for finding this oddity. THREAD UPDATE Many thanks to some extensive resarch from our Staff-Member Kano who worked hard to solve the riddle of how the color shifts are happening, with some excellent clues as to why. Jump ahead to page 5 of the ATS thread here: Kano's Mars Color Explanations An excellent example of why AboveTopSecret.com is the leading conspiracy discussion community. [Edited on 14-1-2004 by SkepticOverlord]

If I were to guess I would say that Mars really has a blue-green sky and 'they' are editing the images to hide this fact.

Actually... the surprising thing is the blue channel... now pink.

But the really alarming aspect of this find is that the nice normal green in the sundial, is now tan color in the wide-angle image... meaning, anything that is green, is now hidden.

actually yes that is pretty frightening.
What if there was little bit of grass popping out here and there...little bits of green. Even moss? Algae...

Originally posted by AArchAngel on another thread It does make me wonder why they would do such a poor job on the images. You would think they would fix the colors on the sundial. Anyone here a photshop expert? Can you 'fix' this image so that the colors are correct on the sundial?

Yes... I've been working with Photoshop since it was version 2.0. The "poor" image correction is actually very good, it's probably an automatic filter applied to each incoming image (except the reference shots), and they were sloppy in not creating a "mask" so that the corrections wouldn't apply to the lander base. I tried brining the color layers back to match the original, and it's impossible. Too much color information has been lost.

can't someone on here manipulate the colour of the two images of the sundials to see what changes have been made and then take the picture of the mars landscape and make the same changes to reverse the process and see what it looked like to start with.
not knowing anything myself about the process this would have to be undertaken, I am assuming that it could be done in photoshop or whatever?


ooops I read AArchAngel's mind

[Edited on 11-1-2004 by pantha]

Yeah, see the post before yours. Too much color data has been lost... there's no hope of restoring it to anything close to a pre-modified version.

You'll notice it is not just the sundial that has color changed. Look at the wire snaking down from the top right of the image. The insulation(?) is blue in the calibration image, and is pink in the panorama.

www.mfa.gov.il...

An Israeli company is responsible for the image compression used by the Spirit rover.

Originally posted by AArchAngel www.mfa.gov.il... An Israeli company is responsible for the image compression used by the Spirit rover.

That has nothing to do with the color, but the file-size compression of the images transmitted to earth.

Every bit of hardware and software from the cam to the display back on earth is responsible for the exact color. The one part of that system that would have the chance to dramaticly manipulate the images(Assuming it was done before reception on earth) would be the hardware, and software designed to manipulate the images. That would be the compression software, and the associated hardware.

Originally posted by AArchAngel Every bit of hardware and software from the cam to the display back on earth is responsible for the exact color.

Then that puts into doubt the reference shot too doesn't it? In any event, there is a significant modification of color in the panorama, as compared to the color close-up of the sundial.

Sundial for pancam color calibration:

Color tabs are for Red Blue Green and Near-Infrared.

athena.cornell.edu...

More info on the pancam:

athena.cornell.edu...

www.news.cornell.edu...

Most interesting.

[Edited on 11-1-2004 by Kano]

Actually I was watching the NASA channel a couple of days ago and they spoke about this. They said that the camera will not see the exact same colours as the human eyes (well, of course), so that once they are processed they altar them so that the colours are exactly as we would see them if we were there.

Sorry, no big conspiracy here...

Well then... why does the camera see correct colors in one image... and way off colors in another?

"Actually I was watching the NASA channel a couple of days ago and they spoke about this. They said that the camera will not see the exact same colours as the human eyes (well, of course), so that once they are processed they altar them so that the colours are exactly as we would see them if we were there."

The calibration image was taken with the same camera as the panorama. The whole point is to have a reference to correct errors. I could understand if it were off a little, but blue-to-pink is a bit far fetched.

But maybe they will 'correct' the images in the future.

ummm how do they know how the human eye would see it without the human eye actually being there?
sorry if thats a stupid question

SO,

I'm curious (and dumb) about whether you can take the panoramic view and alter the color scale back to where the tab color matches the original...would that make the overall pic be closer to what it SHOULD be?

Is this a dumb question?

Valhall... Photoshop allows you to make extremely precise modifications to each "channel" of color (Red, Green, Blue), in addition to overall hue and saturation modifications. The, through its built-in "Actions" save any long-series of these color modifications into a one-button-action that applies exactly the same complex color modification to any series of images. Thus, the same filtering/modification can be applied to the mosaic of images that make up the panorama.

marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov...

(Panorama too large for page format)
marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov...


Here are the full original images from NASA.