SCI/TECH: What Color Is Mars, Really?

Thanks - took the words right out of my mouth

That's very interesting. I remember always reading that the Viking LAnder images having a blue sky were a film mistake. Maybe NASA saw the blue sky, # their pants because they didn't expect it, and made up the stuff about faulty images. Then they learn that Mars has some moisture and it could have a blue sky, so they say all is well

Uhh you are both wrong the reason our atmosphere is blue is due to due to Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air.

However, much of the shorter wavelength light is absorbed by the gas molecules. The absorbed blue light is then radiated in different directions. It gets scattered all around the sky. Whichever direction you look, some of this scattered blue light reaches you. Since you see the blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue.


www.sciencemadesimple.com...

looks like the dial is just in shadow... with the exception that the green mark that is in the top left on the first two pics isnt on the last... or i could just be too stoned to find it...

"looks like the dial is just in shadow."

You can clearly see the shadow from the upright on the sundial. It is exposed to the sun at an angle.

Anyone remember this movie from the late 1970's




Review: Astronauts Brolin, Simpson and Waterston follow Mission Controller Holbrook's instructions to fake a Mars landing on a soundstage when their ship is discovered to be defective. When they find out they're supposed to expire in outer space so that the NASA scam won't become public knowledge, they flee to the desert, while reporter Gould sniffs out the cover up. Based on a pseudonymous novel by Ken Follett.

Images from...
www.goroadachi.com...

Good find. It looks like they've noticed the same things we have.

I'm not sure I agree with their image correction attempt on the flag, but it's probably closer to reality than the altered version.

www.burlingtonnews.net...

Not really sure about this, but I figured I would add it to the discussion...

[Edited on 1-11-2004 by William One Sac]

Good stuff WOS. No one expected we'd be the only one looking at this... I'm actually surprised it too over 40 responses to start getting into other sites covering the same or similar observations.

Ok, I'm starting to get swayed.

www.tmgnow.com...

Painting a Deceiving Picture
There is more than circumstantial evidence that the concept of a "red Mars" is more of a conditioned idea than one based in fact. For example, consider the two images below, both released by JPL as original images; which one is the correct image? The answer is - they both are. The one at left was taken sometime on day 30 of the Pathfinder mission, which was to have been the final day of the mission, before it was extended. The image at right was taken at the end of day 30, as noted in the caption in the original image. Note the identical shadows cast by the probe and nearby rocks; either both images were taken within moments of each other, or they are in fact the same image, one of them color-adjusted. Did the image at left "slip through the cracks"?


mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov...


mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov...

What that guy has to say on that site though "Which one looks more natural to you?"

errrr...your altered one, because it looks more like Earth you moron, of course it looks more natural. We're on an alien planet for goodness sake!

From: LanFleming@aol.com
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1998
To: cydonia@majordomo.pobox.com

Below is a message I sent to SPSR members. I got an interesting response from Vince DiPietro, which I will send separately to the list.

I recently listened to a RealAudio interview from the Laura Lee Show archive that was done last July. The guests were Dr. Gil Levin (PI for the Labeled Release experiment on the Viking landers) and his son, Ron, who is a physicist at MIT. I'm sure you're all familiar with Dr. Gil Levin's story, but his son described something that I had never heard before:

Ron said that he was a 20-year old grad student and was at JPL when the first color images came in from the lander. He said those original images showed a blue sky and rocks with greenish patches on them, and that the Viking imaging team quickly adjusted the images so that the sky and the rocks all had the reddish color we're familiar with. Levin made it clear that there was no scientific justification for these "adjustments", and he speculated that the color was changed because the planetary scientists took a dim view of the greenish patches on the rocks, which suggested some primitive form of plant life might be growing right on the surface.

more at link below:
www.mufor.org...






(edit to remove most of the content duplicated on the other site)

[Edited on 11-1-2004 by SkepticOverlord]

Exactly. I want to stress that we can go trying to change the images from NASA into what we think the image looked like before the color corrections. Any of that is pure speculation because we're dealing with second-generation JPEG compressions of images which have had significant color work done -- meaning the original color data is gone... and any attempt to put it back will be in error.

We can just postulate that any green that MIGHT have been in the landscape would be missing due to the green tab being colorless.

I'm not even sure we can even go there... there's nothing to indicate there was any green in the scene, other than the content of the e-mail that was quoted in this thread.

However... the now-known missing color is a significant mystery.

"I'm not even sure we can even go there... there's nothing to indicate there was any green in the scene, other than the content of the e-mail that was quoted in this thread. "

That was about Images from Viking, not Spirit.



[Edited on 11-1-2004 by ArchAngel]

PSM....(Pure Speculation Mode)......let's say there was some green mossy organism growing on the surface, why would NASA want to cover it up? Maybe because it is some sort of terra-forming experiment by the US. That might also explain why no other mars lander is allowed to make it. PSM-off.........wonder what color(s) IS/ARE missing?

One Nasa researcher was Angry because he tell that the picture of Mars was 15% to muvh red. I will check to find the articles on this one... I see it on the web 1 week ago.